Golf on Long Island

June 7 is Women's Golf Day at Harbor Links

Harbor Links Golf Course in Port Washington will host Women's Golf Day on Tuesday, June 7, an afternoon gathering that combines golf, professional instruction and prizes. 

For $17, golfers can play nine on the Harbor Links Executive Course and take part in a free beginners' clinic held by course pros.  Players also have the option of a $29 nine-and-dine.  Tee times start at 4 p.m.; participants can join a group or form their own.  After the round, there will be a raffle drawing with prizes.

Sign up for a tee time and a spot in the pre-round clinic by calling the Executive Course at (516) 767-4828.

Women's Golf Day is a one-day international event giving girls and women the opportunity to practice or play golf in a fun, relaxed environment.  For more information, visit the Women's Golf Day website.

Newsday: Smithtown golfer sues local course for overcharging fees

Smithtown Landing Golf and Country Club is in the middle of a class-action lawsuit brought upon by an area golfer who alleges the municipal course has been overcharging fees for golf and motor carts, according to Newsday.

In the class-action suit filed on behalf of "at minimum hundreds" of Smithtown Landing golfers, Robert Dwyer of Smithtown contends that head professional and director Michael Hebron "has systematically charged plaintiffs at rates in excess of the rates authorized and agreed upon by defendants for the use of the golf course and for cart rentals," according to court filings quoted by Newsday.  Hebron is a member of the PGA Hall of Fame.

Dwyer realized he was being overcharged when he obtained a copy of Hebron’s contract with the town, which includes fee schedules for course access and cart rentals, said his lawyer, Michael Schulman of Melville, though the full amount of excess fees is still unclear.

“We don’t know the actual amount because it’s a class action lawsuit,” Schulman said. “Thousands of hours and thousands of golfers were involved. Everyone was overcharged a couple of bucks at a minimum.”

The suit seeks to “recover all previous payments made in excess of the rates authorized and agreed upon,” legal fees, and an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages, according to the filing.

The town of Smithtown is also named in the lawsuit because of Dwyer’s belief that “Smithtown permitted and/or failed to prevent the plaintiffs from being charged” at higher rates. -- Sophia Chang, Newsday, 4/21/2016

April aeration nearly complete at Bethpage

Aeration is already finished at four of the five golf courses at Bethpage State Park.  Only the Blue Course remains on the schedule, with aeration slated for April 18 and 19.

For those interested in current green conditions, the other courses were aerated on the following dates:

Green Course:  April 4-5
Red Course:  April 11-12
Yellow Course:  April 13-14

Bethpage Black will open for the season tomorrow, April 16.  Aeration was completed earlier in the offseason.  Some bunkers will be under repair at the start of the season, according to the park.

For a brief period 80 years ago, Bethpage was just Blue, Green and Red

The spring of 1936 arrived like the many seasons of rebirth that preceded it, though in the minds of Long Island's golfers, it undoubtedly felt like the dawn of a new era. 

Less than a year earlier, the A.W. Tillinghast-designed Red and Blue courses opened at the sprawling new Bethpage State Park complex, whetting the appetite of golfers near and far, especially those of modest means.  Not only did Bethpage announce the arrival of golf accessible to the masses, it also represented progress and promise at a time when clubs and courses were disappearing from view amid Depression-era hardship.

That spring would also be the last that local players welcomed a new season without Bethpage's Black Course as the centerpiece of Long Island golf.  For a very brief period, 80 years ago today, Bethpage golf consisted only of the Green, Red and Blue courses.

The Green Course predated Bethpage State Park itself, first appearing on the scene in 1923 as the Lenox Hills Golf Club, a Devereux Emmet design within the massive Benjamin Yoakum estate.  A decade later, New York State acquired Yoakum’s land and began operating Lenox Hills as the public Green.  "When the State took over the Yoakum estate and planned a country club for the people," described the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, "golf was given its rightful place, and for the first time on fashionable Long Island the man who is not a millionaire will have a chance on first-class golf links."

Tillinghast's Blue Course followed in April 1935, a month ahead of the Red Course.  The "People's Country Club accommodates 1,500 players a day and is the last word in swank," said the Eagle shortly before the Red's official debut.  It continued, Bethpage "aims to accomplish for golf what Jones Beach has done for saltwater bathing."

In its profile of the new golf destination, the paper described elements that modern players surely would find humorous -- talk of thin rough, benign bunkers and fast, streamlined play closely supervised by active rangers.  "At Bethpage, no sluggish group of players is allowed to block traffic."

While Bethpage's original three led thousands of players around their fairways, the Black sat unfinished, awaiting its May 1936 debut.  A 1935 aerial photo (left) shows a polo match in progress on what would soon become the Black's opening hole.  Nearby, construction continues on the Black, still months away from its grand entrance into Bethpage and America’s celebrated golf landscape.

[This article also appears in the April 2016 issue of Networking Magazine.]

Night golf special next week at Pine Ridge

Bundle up and bust out your glow-in-the-dark golf balls -- Pine Ridge Golf Club in Coram is hosting a nighttime outing next week on Friday, April 15. 

This early-season under-the-stars event will tee off with a shotgun start at 8 p.m.  Registration is $50, which includes cart, glow balls and a pair of drink tickets.  Sign up in the Pine Ridge pro shop or call (631) 331-7930.

By day, Pine Ridge is a challenging, serene 18 outlined by tall trees.  Built in 2006, it is one of Long Island's newest public golf courses.  For more on the layout, take a look at the Pine Ridge flyover.

Improvements continue at Sandy Pond's nine-hole course in Riverhead

Just because their little nine-hole golf hideaway in Riverhead has caught the attention of more and more East End golfers during their four-plus seasons at the helm of Sandy Pond Golf Course doesn't mean Chris Wahlers and Ken Weinstein are about to take a breather on one of their newly renovated tee boxes.  The arrival of spring is simply time to put the finishing touches on the latest round of updates and start thinking of the work that waits up ahead.

Set to begin their fifth season as co-owners of Sandy Pond, Wahlers and Weinstein continue to dig their fingers into the turf as part of the course's ongoing transformation from a no-frills nine holes into an attractive golf setting, complete with a relaxed throwback vibe. 

"We had a great season last year," Wahlers said last month.  "Our league play has been constantly growing and very successful."  Among the recent changes around the course, Wahlers said, are enlarged tees at #2, #4 and #5.  The fourth tee, an elevated perch tucked into a corner of the property, was expanded into an 'L' shape by cutting into the wooded perimeter. 

Back at #3, a permanent tee behind one of the course's namesake ponds remains on the agenda.  Ultimately the goal is to create a slightly elevated tee set off from the clubhouse area by trees and hedges.  Until then, a temporary tee is in place, offering a preview of its dramatic tee shot over water and a wooden footbridge. 

"The guys and girls in the competitive Wednesday night league love hitting from back there," Wahlers said.

Following up on a few seasons worth of beautification efforts that have filled the margins of the course with blooming flower beds and wispy fescue, the Sandy Pond crew planted a variety of flowering trees and installed new beds and hedge screens last year, Wahlers said.

For more on Sandy Pond, check out the course flyover.

[Photo taken August 2014.]