Changes are in store at Riverhead's Long Island National Golf Club, one of which is to clear the place of Long Island's public golfers.
Long Island National, the Robert Trent Jones Jr. design that opened on the East End in 1999 and filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, will turn private at the conclusion of this season. Real estate developer Donald Zucker agreed in June to purchase the course for $6 million and, according to the Daily News, announced his plans to make the course private at an outing last week with members of the Metropolitan Golf Writers. Zucker was the only bidder.
Public golfers will have a few more months to challenge the rolling, wind-blown layout before they are closed out for good. Then the course will welcome back "really good golfers," provided they have equally prolific stock portfolios, of course. More from Hank Gola at the Daily News:
“I hope to attract really good golfers. It’s a tough track and it’s going to stay a tough track,” [Zucker] explained. “But it’s going to be a welcoming course for people who are really into golf.”
The course will still be open to the public for the remainder of the season.
“Whenever the season is over from a weather point of view, that’s when we will stop the public from coming in,” said Zucker, who hopes to close on the property by next Wednesday. “Interestingly enough, the people who had it have kept the names and emails of every single person who ever played the course who we will be able to email every single person and let them know what’s going to happen.”
Zucker says he doesn’t have a lot of definite plans yet but he will improve the practice areas and expand the men’s lockeroom. -- Hank Gola, Daily News, 7/12/2013
After the sale agreement, Newsday's Mark Herrmann relayed Zucker's intentions to have course architect Tom Doak take a look at Long Island National -- the first signal that news would likely be bad for public players. Doak restored the private North Shore Country Club in Glen Head for Zucker after the developer purchased that bankrupt course in 2009.
For public players, the pickings remain plentiful in and around the Riverhead area, with Great Rock and Tallgrass to the north, the Manorville courses to the south, and Cherry Creek, Indian Island and the restored nine-hole Sandy Pond right down the road in town. Long Island National will now compete with golf juggernauts Shinnecock Hills, National Golf Links and Sebonack, to name a few, plus nearby North Fork clubs.
Newsday has more on the details of Zucker's purchase here. First-timers at Long Island National or returning players looking to tee it up one last time can learn more about the layout by reading the course flyover.
[UPDATE -- 7/22/2013: The club announced in an e-mail that new ownership will not honor any prepaid vouchers purchased before July 17 on third-party sites like Groupon, Amazon Local and LivingSocial.]
Their website is down and they haven't picked up the phone in weeks. I just tried calling now and it says that it's a non-working number.
What is going on over there? Seems like they are done.
I pre-purchased a round on livingsocial.com but now fear that I flushed money down the toilet.
Posted by: Joe | July 22, 2013 at 09:42 AM
Unfortunately it looks like you're out of luck. They sent out an e-mail to those on their mailing list over the weekend and specifically said that any vouchers purchased prior to July 17 will not be honored.
They also have a new number: (631) 591-3733.
Posted by: Phil | July 22, 2013 at 09:48 AM