[NOTE: The Vineyards Golf Club is a private facility, but it will be featured in this Observations post since it has been allowing public play for much of the 2015 season. Additional course content will be available if the club permanently opens to the public.]
Sandwiched between the public Cherry Creek Links and Woods courses to the east and nine-hole Sandy Pond just south on Roanoke Avenue, The Vineyards Golf Club carries on largely hidden from view in a bucolic stretch of Riverhead farmland. Known as the Olde Vine Golf Club until the spring of 2014, Vineyards today is a member-owned private facility that for the past several months has made tee times available to the public.
The Vineyards might be neighbors with Cherry Creek's two layouts, but other than the rural scenery just outside its doorstep, the club has little in common with the Woods, where every fairway is closely surrounded by trees. And at a maximum of 5,873 yards, it offers nothing close to the length and driver-friendliness of the Links across the street.
However, Vineyards is indeed reminiscent of at least a few eastern Suffolk publics. The sheer volume of sand traps -- Vineyards has around 100 -- is comparable to Willow Creek in Mount Sinai, not to mention the wide range of styles, from small, circular pot bunkers to massive, multi-lobed pits. The limited yardage, clever contouring and wide-open feel of the property is on par with Shoreham's Tallgrass.
Secluded and serene, Vineyards leads players through a procession of mid-length par-4s -- from the tips, only one breaches the 400-yard mark, and that's not until the final hole. Most max out between 300 and 360 yards, with wind, undulating greens and strategic bunker placement their main defenders. One Golf On Long Island reader who recently logged a 36-hole day at Vineyards noted that the shifting winds from morning to afternoon were significant enough to make a two-club difference on some shots.
Boosting the challenge, especially for high handicappers, is the thick fescue beyond the rough on all holes. Vineyards sports the more penal variety of tall grass, so dense and unforgiving that anything that even grazes the heavy stuff is likely lost, buried or awkwardly perched. In one spot off the 11th fairway, we found 14 lost balls, yet there was no sign of the pulled drive we were searching for.
The first two par-4s are severe doglegs to the right -- #2 offers risk/reward potential with a diagonal line of circular traps guarding the turn; #4 curves around the edges of a water hazard. From that point on, however, the par-4s straighten out, limiting the strategic questions off the tee to simply whether to stay short of fairway bunkers or go long. A little more variety off the tee would be welcome on a course of such length. Approach shots are much more interesting given the contours of the greens and the diverse bunkering around and in front. Most dramatic of all is the par-3 14th (pictured), an uphill clout with a dramatic false front capable of spitting short attempts 30 yards back toward the tee and far beneath the putting surface.
Homes in the adjacent residential community are largely out of play, though there are a few spots where white stakes signify when playable rough is actually someone's side yard.
It took some time to adapt to the tee colors, since Vineyards eschews the standard black/blue/white/red for what is actually a North Fork-inspired color scheme of purple and green. The back of the scorecard reveals the tees are, in fact, Merlot, Chardonnay and Cabernet.
