Golf on Long Island

Check out GOLI's end-of-2010s feature, "A New Decade of Long Island Golf"

With the 2010s now recent history, Golf On Long Island published a three-part series on "A New Decade of Long Island Golf," examining where local golf stands and some of the issues confronting the industry and area golfers as the 2020s get underway.

• Part 1 covers the changing landscape of Long Island public golf and some of the significant topics and themes from the previous decade and the new one ahead
• Part 2 looks at the task of developing new players as the area's young adults run low on time and leave Long Island behind
• Part 3 examines how local public courses have struggled to market themselves and appeal to players in the age of social media

Shotgun outings at Wind Watch, Willow Creek on Thanksgiving

Sister courses Wind Watch in Hauppauge and Willow Creek Mount Sinai will host Thanksgiving shotgun outings this Thursday morning, November 26.

First to tee off is Willow Creek, where the shotgun start is scheduled for 8:00 a.m.  The Wind Watch outing will tee off an hour later at 9 a.m.  Both events are $69 per player and can be booked online.

For more on either golf course, visit the Wind Watch and Willow Creek flyovers.

Thanksgiving-themed outings coming up at Cherry Creek, Pine Hills

Riverhead-area golfers can roll out of bed and onto the tee at Cherry Creek this Thanksgiving morning, with a shotgun start planned bright and early next week.

Cherry Creek's annual Turkey Shootout will begin at 8:00 a.m. next Thursday, November 26 on the Links Course, home of Long Island's only par-6.  The outing includes hot breakfast and the opportunity to win raffles and prizes.  Entry fee is $65 per player with cart and range balls.

Register for the Turkey Shootout by calling the Links at (631) 369-6500.

Those who prefer to stay in bed a little later can opt for the annual Black Friday Shootout at Pine Hills in nearby Manorville.  Tee time is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on November 27.  The $75 entry fee includes cart, range, contests and golf balls. 

Call (631) 878-7103 to sign up (a cash deposit per player is required).

Thanksgiving Day Scramble at Timber Point

Not long after one "Tradition Unlike Any Other" at Augusta comes another one on Long Island -- Thanksgiving Day golf outings.

Timber Point will host its annual holiday scramble at 9:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning, November 26.  Format is four-person scramble played over nine holes, with pro shop gift cards given to the top team and winners of closest-to-pin and longest-drive contests.  (There will be no pre-round putting contest at this year's event because of crowding concerns.)

Entry fee is $50 per player.  Players can register online through the Timber Point website.

Due to Covid, there will be no pre- or post-round refreshments available, so players are asked to bring their own food and beverages, if necessary.

Origins: Bergen Point Golf Course

Golf On Long Island's "Origins" series explores the history and development of those local golf courses whose backstory is a bit more unique than most.  Stay tuned for more as the season progresses.

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At first glance there's not a whole lot that's noteworthy about the 1972 opening of Bergen Point Golf Course in West Babylon.  It can be summed up pretty succinctly:

In the mid 1960s, Suffolk County announced plans to develop a series of public parks and outdoor recreation venues, including new golf courses in West Babylon, West Sayville and Riverhead.  Across Long Island, the biggest course-building boom since the 1920s was underway, and dozens of public and private golf layouts had sprouted up since the turn of the decade.  Suffolk's plan set the stage for a new wave of Long Island municipal golf courses.  Its West Babylon course would be built on 168 boggy acres near Great South Bay; in West Sayville, the new muni would take over an old bayside estate, and the Riverhead site would be laid out over what was, way back when, an Indian Island duck farm.

By May 1968, West Sayville was ready to welcome Suffolk County residents and their guests.  It was the design work of William Mitchell -- long known as golf's "public defender" -- and the following season, Mitchell's eighteen at Bergen Point was just about ready to go.  And that's when the Bergen Point story diverges from the norm.  Why did it take until 1972 for the course to open to the public?

You know that big treatment plant that separates Bergen Point from Great South Bay?

Around the same time Mitchell and building crews were putting the final touches on the county's new municipal golf facility, Suffolk's attention was focused less on contoured greens and more on construction of the taxpayer-funded sewage treatment plant right next door.  The plant was going up along the water south of the course, with original plans calling for it to be partially built over the bay on landfill.  Golf at Bergen Point would have to wait until the plant was complete.

But during construction, $10 million in cost overruns and a looming fight with conservationists turned the landfill part of the proposal sour.  For the much lower price tag of $300,000, the county could simply extend the plant property away from the bay instead -- onto 30 acres already occupied by the new golf course.

So in 1971, Suffolk County paid that price -- more than half of the original $500,000 cost to build the new muni from scratch -- to modify a golf course that, before it ever opened for play, lost three of its southernmost holes and parts of others.  If you've ever thought to yourself that the holes near the bay have a bit of an awkward feel, specifically the two sharp-turning dogleg par-5s, this late-stage redesign is likely the reason.

Bergen opened in 1972 with some added acreage on the north end, which today is the site of the course's driving range.

[PICTURED -- A map that ran alongside a Newsday article on January 16, 1971 with the headline, "Revised Sewer Plant Will Cut Golf Course." (Courtesy Newsday)]

OTHER POSTS IN THE "ORIGINS" SERIES:
Bay Park -- June 2019
Town of Oyster Bay -- March 2019
The Golf Club at Middle Bay -- January 2019
Wind Watch Golf & Country Club -- May 2018

Bethpage Black to close November 16, Red and Green to follow

[UPDATE: Bethpage Black will remain open an extra week until November 22, thanks to favorable weather conditions.]

Normally the sights and sounds of Augusta inspire the first rusty golf swings of a new season.  In the bizarre golf year of 2020, Bethpage Black will shut down for the winter in the week following The Masters.

The last day to play the Black Course at Bethpage is Sunday, November 15, and if you want to get out on the Red Course, you have until Sunday, November 29.  The Green Course will close at the end of play on November 29 as well.

Golf's pandemic-aided resurgence included a steep rise in play at Bethpage and its NYS Parks brethren at Montauk Downs and Sunken Meadow.  Even with a choppy start to the season thanks to changing state health guidelines, total rounds at Bethpage were up 20% over last year, according to a Newsday report last month.

The Blue and Yellow courses will remain open through the winter.  Call the park at (516) 249-0700 for updates on course availability during the offseason.

Topgolf Long Island opening now expected for summer 2021

If you drove near exit 62 of the Long Island Expressway in June, you might have caught a quick glimpse of the shell of a new driving range -- New York's first Topgolf location -- along the north service road.

And if you made the same drive in September, you might have noticed -- well, you might have noticed the same exact shell.  No construction, no progress.

There's no cause for concern, however, according to Brookhaven Councilman Kevin LaValle, who told Golf On Long Island yesterday that the $25 million Topgolf facility in Holtsville is expected to open sometime during August or September 2021. 

LaValle said he recently spoke with Topgolf representatives and noted there are no issues with the project, despite the lack of activity at the site this summer.  (Topgolf has not responded to multiple inquiries by Golf On Long Island regarding location status.)

"With a project like this, you want to make sure you open at the right time," LaValle said of the planned summer debut.  Back in February, Topgolf announced an early 2021 opening, but that was just weeks before the coronavirus pandemic halted business and construction projects in New York State.  A summer 2021 completion pushes the timetable back for construction, marketing and other pre-opening work.

"You'll probably see construction pick up on the site in January and February," LaValle said.

Topgolf Long Island will offer 102 hitting bays on three tiers, as well as live-music events, year-round lessons and upscale dining, in addition to the arcade-style bells and whistles that its facilities are known for.  It will also bring 500 jobs to central Suffolk County, according to a company press release.

SEE ALSO:
Long Island Topgolf taking shape in Holtsville
A New Decade of Long Island Golf, Part 1 -- A Changed Landscape, On and Off the Course
Topgolf inches closer to to first Long Island location with latest board approval

Great Rock sign confirms course is out of business

No further confirmation was really needed -- the abrupt closing last fall, the disconnected phone line, frozen-in-time social media and lack of a 2020 playing season were all dead giveaways regarding the fate of the Great Rock Golf Club.  And without an official notice or a brief snippet in the newspaper, it seems a three-word sign on the course's locked gate is as close to a confirmation as local golfers are going to get.

Great Rock Golf Club is out of business.  The sign reads "CLOSED for Business" -- obscured behind it is a previous posting that the Wading River semi-private golf facility would reopen in the spring. 

From the time the course suddenly closed last October until early January of this year, "closed for the season" and "See You Next Year!" were the main messages sent out to area golfers on the club's website and social media outlets.  But as Golf On Long Island wrote in May, next year never arrived.  Before the course closed last fall, golfers complained about deteriorating conditions as rumors of a sale lingered.

Public golf on the East End has taken a couple of heavy blows since 2013 when Calverton Links closed in similar sudden fashion, and that includes Long Island National turning private that same year and The Vineyards switching back to fully private play in 2020.  (A detour while apple picking in Riverhead featured a drive past the remains of Calverton Links, a stop at Great Rock and could have quickly added a visit to the massive solar farm now occupying the former Tallgrass Golf Course.)

Great Rock opened in 2001 during the latest course-building surge and came to be known for fast greens and elevated service.  Holes like the signature tenth (with the namesake rock) were featured by Newsday and Golfing Magazine.  In 2010, Newsday highlighted Great Rock's staff -- some of whom were brought over in 2008 from Shinnecock Hills  -- and its focus on customer service and pristine conditions.

The course briefly closed prior to the 2014 season but reopened later that year under new ownership.  A year later, the club completed a dramatic remodel of its on-site restaurant and opened Pure North Fork, a modern American bistro.

Last year, golfers turned to review sites like Golf Advisor to voice their displeasure over what was essentially an abandoned golf course, complete with crabgrass-strewn fairways, weedy bunkers and bare greens.  Unfortunately, for some, that will be the lasting image of the Wading River club.

Street Names: The Ghosts of Long Island Golf's Past, Part 5 -- Riverhead Country Club

Street names can give clues about a community's past.  That's especially true with golf courses.  When Long Island streets are tagged with golf-related terms, it often means that buried beneath sidewalks and front lawns are the remains of a long-forgotten (or fondly remembered) course.

This series of posts will look back at courses that have been gone for decades, some close to a century, and whose presence is only marked by what developers scratched on road maps and signs.  To see other courses in the "Street Names: The Ghosts of Long Island Golf's Past" series, click the links at the bottom of the post.

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Many points of interest contend for the attention of the Long Island admirer on a drive heading east from downtown Riverhead.  First up are the shops and riverside cafes in the business district, the Long Island Aquarium, then a short jaunt to the northeast before reaching the produce stands, wineries and spacious farms and fields of the North Fork.

Along that curving road between county seat and Wine Country are two attractions that few beyond followers of golf and local history would consider eye-catching -- one is a street sign marking Fairway Avenue and the other, just a block ahead, a vintage-looking Elks Lodge.

Roads named for fairways, of course, are often a tell.  Chances are, whether named as some variation of Fairway Drive or Fairway Road, the signpost marks the site of a long-gone golf course.  Here, where Route 25 turns toward Aquebogue, once stood the Riverhead Country Club golf course, its clubhouse still in existence as the aforementioned Elks Lodge.

Riverhead Country Club came to be in 1921.  The golf course was built over farmland on both sides of Route 25 with a driving range behind the clubhouse.  Newspaper accounts of the course's opening didn't hold back on the type of grandiosity standard for golf writing of that era.  Riverhead was "declared by some experts to be one of the handsomest and best on Long Island," according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and "was formally opened ... by social functions more brilliant than anything ever before held in this town."

The Eagle continued: "The very face of nature was changed to produce the course.  An expanse of swamps, unsightly hedgerows and waste land have been molded into a scenic panorama that makes even passing motorists stop and take a second look."

Covering a modest 82 acres according to news and historical accounts, Riverhead's golf course was likely similar in build to a modern-day executive course.  Or perhaps it was a bit longer, packing in as much yardage as possible at the expense of safe boundaries between holes.  In the club's inaugural season, a member of the East End's well-known Griffing family took an errant shot right to the kisser, his bloody lips and loosened teeth chalked up to the overwhelming popularity of the nine-hole course (it was expanded to 18 in season two).

The club stood out as a prominent social and recreational venue through the boom of the 1920s, but the music stopped and the tee shots were eventually grounded as the malaise of the 1930s set in.  A 1940 news article on a local group's bid to resurrect the course indicates the property had "not been used in any way for several years."  For the next few seasons it saw intermittent play, though not enough for the club to remain solvent.

In 1946, the clubhouse and surrounding land was purchased by the American Legion, which then sold the larger parcel on the west side of Route 25 the following year for the development of homes for military members and veterans.  This small community was called "Riverhead Greens" -- and is still known locally as The Greens -- in honor of the golf course buried underneath.

The Riverhead Elks purchased the clubhouse in the 1950s, and the historic lodge is now closing in on its 100th anniversary.

[PICTURED: Riverhead Country Club postcard, circa 1920s; courtesy Gail Evans]

SEE OTHER STREET-NAME POSTS:
Part 1: Cedar Point/Meadowlawn/Westwood -- North Woodmere
Part 2: The Lido Club -- Lido Beach
Part 3: Valley Stream Country Club -- Valley Stream
Part 4: Sayville Golf Club -- Sayville

Fall aeration underway around Long Island

We're at the height of fall aeration season on Long Island's public courses.  Fall maintenance is underway or recently completed at many local courses, so be aware of potentially sandy greens and fairways when booking tee times this month.

The Red Course at Eisenhower Park is currently closed for aeration and will reopen for play on Friday, September 18.  The White will be aerated starting Monday 9/21; Blue on Monday 9/28. 

Bethpage Blue will be closed today and tomorrow 9/16, followed by Yellow, Red and Black later this month.  (See the previous Bethpage aeration post for dates.)  The Green Course was aerated earlier this month.

Timber Point will close one of its nine-hole courses over the next three days, beginning with the Red Course today, Blue tomorrow and White on Thursday.

Sunken Meadow is currently aerating its Red nine, followed by the Green nine next week.  The Blue nine was aerated last week.

The Town of Oyster Bay municipal course will complete two days of aeration this afternoon and reopen for play tomorrow.

Glen Cove's municipal course is closed through tomorrow and will reopen for play on Thursday 9/17.

At Cherry Creek in Riverhead, the Woods Course will close for aeration tomorrow 9/16, followed by the Links Course next Wednesday 9/23.

Pine Hills in Manorville is aerating today and tomorrow 9/16; all tee times must be made directly through the pro shop.

Island's End in Greenport was aerated on September 14.

For information on other aeration/maintenance dates, special rates and more, contact the courses directly.

Fall aeration starts next week at Bethpage

The calendar turns to September next week and Bethpage State Park is wasting no time beginning fall aeration across its five golf courses.

The Green Course will be the first Bethpage 18 to temporarily close for seasonal maintenance.  Green will be out of the rotation on September 2 and 3.

Bethpage's other four courses will close as follows:

• Blue Course: September 15-16
• Yellow Course: September 23-34
• Red Course: September 28-29
• Black Course: September 30-October 1

Be sure to call the park office at (516) 249-0700 for updates on course availability.