Golf on Long Island

Puccio Electric Golf Outing to support fight against Crohn's disease, May 9 at Swan Lake GC

Puccio Electric Contracting Inc. of Center Moriches will hold its second annual golf outing at Swan Lake Golf Club in Manorville on Thursday, May 9.  The event raises money to support the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America and is being held in memory of Paul Puccio, who lost his battle with Crohn's disease at age 38 after more than 20 surgeries and an intestinal transplant.

Entry fee for the event is $200 per golfer and includes full buffet breakfast, lunch at the turn, refreshments on the course and dinner after the round.  Long-drive and accuracy competitions will be part of the day as well, plus raffles, contests and a chance at a grand prize five-day/four-night golf resort vacation.  Shotgun tee time is 8:00 a.m.

Deadline to enter is Monday, May 6.  To register for the outing as a player or sponsor, or to make a donation, contact Mark Puccio at (631) 874-2098 or [email protected].  For more information, refer to the outing brochure.

And for a description of the host course, check out the Swan Lake flyover.

South Bay Country Club in Oceanside will be open to the public

[UPDATE - 6/3/2013:  South Bay Country Club is open for play with phone service and new website.  For more on the course, check out Golf On Long Island's South Bay Country Club flyover.]

The rebranded South Bay Country Club in Oceanside will be available to public golfers when it opens for play next month, according to director of golf Ron Wright.

Public golfers will have access to tee times at the semi-private course seven days a week, Wright said, with priority given to those who join the club as members.  Remaining tee times throughout the week will be open to the general public by walk-up or reservation. 

Wright said the club is offering three different membership plans, including an unlimited golf option and a preferred tee-time plan modeled after the private Colonial Springs Golf Club in East Farmingdale.  Amenities at the club will be limited this season as work continues to reconstruct the Hurricane Sandy-damaged clubhouse and catering facility.

"We'll have a halfway house and a driving range," Wright said.

South Bay is taking over the waterside golf course left behind earlier this year by the private Middle Bay Country Club.  Middle Bay closed in January, done in by a combination of financial difficulties and storm damage.

The course is 6,821 yards from the tips and sits on the opposite side of the bay from Lido Golf Club, the only other 18-hole course on Nassau's south shore.  South Bay offers sweeping views of the barrier islands, including Jones Beach and Point Lookout.

[This post was updated on April 29, 2013.]

2013 Suffolk County Junior Golf Tour tees off July 8 at West Sayville

[For information on the current 2014 Suffolk County Junior Golf Tour, please click here.]

It's a good time to be a junior golfer on Long Island.  The USSSA Junior Golf Tour is up and running across the Island, giving young players a chance to compete in tournaments and reach the national finals this summer in Florida.  One kid golfer is a few skills-challenge points away from playing beneath the magnolias of Augusta National as part of the Drive, Chip & Putt Championship.  And now, the annual Suffolk County Junior Golf Tour is back, a four-tournament challenge staged on each of Suffolk's four waterside municipal courses.

The 2013 Suffolk County Junior Golf Tour is open to all boys and girls from age 9 through 17.  It consists of four stroke-play tournaments, the first of which will be held at West Sayville Golf Course on July 8.  The Tour concludes a month later at Timber Point Golf Course in Great River.

Junior participants must be familiar with the rules and etiquette of golf and have a valid county Green Key Card.  Events are nine or 18 holes depending on age bracket.  Players must walk the course, be able to carry their bags (hand carts are permitted) and adhere to a standard golf dress code.

Tour fees are $140 for 12- to 17-year-old players (18-hole events) and $125 for 9- to 11-year-old players (nine-hole events).  All four rounds, practice balls at each event, a special two-hour golf clinic at Timber Point, pro-shop giveaways and an August awards banquet are covered by the Tour fee.

Junior Tour players are welcome to brush up for the main events at a special clinic hosted by Timber Point pro Andy Carracino on Monday, July 1.  The rest of the Tour schedule is as follows:

Monday, July 8:  West Sayville Golf Course
Monday, July 22:  Bergen Point Golf Course
Monday, July 29:  Indian Island Country Club
Thursday, August 8:  Timber Point Golf Course

All tournaments begin at 2:00 p.m.  Participants are urged to arrive no later than 1:00.

For more information on the 2013 Suffolk County Junior Golf Tour, call (631) 854-4947.  You can also download a Tour registration form at the Suffolk County website.

Observations: Spring Lake Golf Club

Spring has been slow to take hold on Long Island, but it seems to have arrived for good at Spring Lake Golf Club, and it doesn't have anything to do with the name.  All that was missing at the Middle Island course this past weekend were the leaves on the trees, which works in golfers' favor for just a short time longer.

Approaching the course from the opposite side of its namesake lake provided the perfect vantage point to admire the deep summer-esque green of the course standing out between the brown trees, themselves just starting to show first signs of color.  The course's fairways were in beautiful shape and the greens rolled fast and smooth -- if you ignored the bare branches and the hand-stinging chill that rolled in as the afternoon round wound down, you'd think you were playing in June.   

Spring Lake's crew deserves credit for having the course in such impressive condition so early in a season of cool, uncooperative weather.  Last fall, new drainage systems were installed on #1, #7 and #10 of the Thunderbird Course, with more planned for this season.  The grounds crew was hard at work this weekend preparing the 13th green for play (a temporary green stood in).

You're running out of time to take advantage of the relatively bare limbs at the heavily wooded Thunderbird Course and the Sandpiper nine.  Once May hits, trees overhanging the rough and fairways will be in midseason obstructionist form.  Good weather or bad, balls that settle inside the treeline sit at the mercy of green-blocking tree trunks.

For the full Spring Lake overview, check out the Thunderbird and Sandpiper flyovers.

"Eagles for Education" Golf Outing at Mill Pond, May 13

Upper Room Christian School of Dix Hills is inviting area golfers to participate in its "Eagles for Education" Golf Outing and help support the school's need-based scholarship fund.  The outing will be held on Monday, May 13 at Mill Pond Golf Course in Medford.

Tee time is scheduled for 7:45 a.m.  Prior to the event, players can enjoy a continental breakfast and practice on the range.  A barbecue lunch will follow the round, in addition to a silent auction, raffles, 50/50 prize and awards presentation.  Entry fee is $150 for single golfers or $500 for a foursome.  Players and sponsors can register online at Upper Room's golf outing website.

Upper Room's Scholarship Fund gives children from failing school districts and systems the educational opportunities they deserve.  Visit the Upper Room website for more information on the school and the scholarship fund.

Mill Pond is a wide-open, wind-blown course in Medford.  Driving areas are spacious, but fescue and mounding can sneak up on players who get careless.  For more on the course, check out the Mill Pond flyover.

Newsday runs correction for use of false data in golf business feature

Newsday has published a correction of the false data that ran in a graphic in the Sunday LI Business cover story on April 7 regarding Long Island golf courses.  The correction appears in the Wednesday, April 17 print edition.

The business feature, which analyzed the "shrinking" of the local golf course industry, claimed that the number of golf courses on Long Island has fallen from 279 in 2004 to 269 in 2012 (after rising from 247 in 1993).  However, none of those figures are accurate.  Golf On Long Island's reaction to the original Newsday story can be found here.

Newsday's correction reads as follows:

"The number of Long Island golf facilities -- defined as a single location where one can play at least nine holes of golf -- fell from 129 in 2004 to 127 in 2013.  A graphic in an April 7 story misstated the number of golf facilities."

As Newsday's golf writer Mark Herrmann reported last week, the recently closed Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside will reopen next month as the semi-private South Bay Country Club.  So that 2013 figure will soon be back up to 128, leaving The Links at Shirley as the only course to close permanently since 2004.

Rock Hill to host 29th annual St. Jude R.C. Church Golf Outing on May 8

St. Jude Roman Catholic Church of Mastic Beach will hold its 29th annual golf outing at Rock Hill Golf and Country Club in Manorville on Wednesday, May 8.  All proceeds from the event will support St. Jude's parish outreach program. 

Participants in this year's outing will certainly be well fed.  The $150 entry fee includes buffet breakfast, lunch at the turn, on-course beverages and snacks, a post-round dinner and open bar.  There will also be a putting competition and several hole contests during the round.  Format for the event is team scramble.

Shotgun start is scheduled for 10:00 a.m.  Registration and breakfast begin at 8:00.  Interested golfers, sponsors and dinner guests can sign up for the golf outing at stjudegolf.org.

At 7,050 yards from the tips, Rock Hill is one of Long Island's longest golf courses.  It finished in second place in 2012 and 2013 in the annual Long Island Press "Best of LI" reader poll, behind only Bethpage State Park.  For more on the Manorville course, check out the Rock Hill flyover.

Bay Park open again in East Rockaway

After a silent start to the spring, the Bay Park Golf Course is open again along the south shore in East Rockaway.  The gates to the clubhouse and parking lot had been locked and phone calls to the park left unanswered since Hurricane Sandy tore through the area in October. 

Shortly after the storm, Golf On Long Island stopped by and noted some damage on and around the course.  The surrounding area and neighborhood have been in the news since Sandy because of damage to the treatment plant located inside Bay Park.

Bay Park's reopening means all four Nassau County nine-hole municipal courses are now available for play.  For more on the course, check out the Bay Park flyover.

Bethpage, Eisenhower are local sites for nationwide "Drive, Chip and Putt" junior competition

Believe it or not, there's a way for the junior golfer in your life to play Augusta National that doesn't require trespassing or becoming the world's youngest corporate bigwig.

As told to the national viewing audience this week by Jim Nantz and Nick Faldo, junior golfers across the country can compete for the chance to walk Augusta National next April as part of the Drive, Chip and Putt Championship, a golf event made possible by the USGA, PGA and Masters Tournament Foundation.  This memorable experience is open to boys and girls from age 7 to 15.

Bethpage State Park and Eisenhower Park are the two Long Island sites that will host local qualifiers in the Metropolitan New York/New Jersey region.  Entry in the competition is free.  Participation at all local sites is limited and will be selected by random drawing from the pool of applicants.

Winners in each of four age groups at the local qualifiers will advance to regional competitions, with regional winners then earning a spot in the national final at Augusta National on Sunday, April 6, 2014.  Complete competition rules, eligibility requirements and scoring outlines are available at the Drive, Chip and Putt website.

Deadline to register online for the Drive, Chip and Putt Championship is Tuesday, April 30.

Treat Mom to holiday golf at Spring Lake's Mother's Day nine

Show Mom your appreciation by teaming up with her and sinking a key putt to beat Dad at Spring Lake Golf Club's Mother's Day celebration, beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, May 12.

For $95, you and Mom play nine holiday holes with cart and enjoy two post-round cocktails each plus hors d'oeuvres.  Even better, bring the family (of four) and play, eat and drink for a total of $175.

Groups participating in the Mother's Day special will tee off starting at 10:00.  Reserve a spot by calling (631) 924-5115.