Golf on Long Island: A New Decade of Long Island Golf, Part 1 -- A changed landscape, on and off the course

ALSO SEE:
Part 2 -- Developing lifelong players as time runs low and Long Islanders leave
Part 3 -- Finding a new voice for courses as marketing evolves in the age of social media

Another decade of Long Island golf is coming to a close -- the thirteenth, to be exact, since the first shots went airborne at Shinnecock Hills in the 1890s. Some have been decadent, others disastrous, and while the 2010s didn't meet either of those extremes, it will certainly go down as a decade of significant change to the Long Island golf landscape.

Golf On Long Island spoke with representatives from Long Island's public golf courses as well as members of golf media, a cross-section of area players and figures in related businesses to get their perspective on the local golf scene at the dawn of a new decade. What follows are some of the significant topics and themes related to Long Island's public golf courses and public golfers as the 2010s leave us and the 2020s approach the first tee.

Check back after the new year for Part 2, focusing on junior golf and the conversion of young adults into lifelong players.

CLOSINGS, OPENINGS AND PROTECTING GOLF COURSES

Tallgrass Golf Course in Shoreham entered the 2010s already fending off development plans. As far back as 2008, the Gil Hanse course announced in promos that it was "here to stay." Indeed it was -- for nearly a full decade, before a solar-energy company took over the land and ripped up a facility that had been named among the "Best Courses You Can Play" in New York State by Golfweek for nine straight years.

Course closures on Long Island mirrored the national trend in the last decade. Simply put, far more courses are shutting down than opening, a correction of the wild building race of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Its persistence meant that Tallgrass was the last course to fall off the public roster in the 2010s, preceded by other East Enders at The Links at Shirley, Calverton Links and Long Island National (sold and turned private). The quaint nine-hole Dix Hills Golf Club closed to make way for luxury housing. And Hurricane Sandy ended a long run for the Jones Beach Pitch and Putt, its oceanfront site beside the iconic park tower always prone to abuse by coastal storms.

Out of Sandy's wrath in 2012 came one addition to Long Island's list of public courses. The private Middle Bay Country Club, an Oceanside fixture since the 1950s, was battered by the storm and forced into bankruptcy. Savvy maintenance work and some good luck with post-Sandy weather allowed the course to reopen the following spring as the newly public, freshly titled South Bay Country Club. Lease issues threw more hurdles in its path, but eventually the course settled into its current identity as The Golf Club at Middle Bay.

"We've had a steady increase in rounds every year," says golf director Ronnie Wright. "We're at full capacity Friday through Sunday, and we do well on Wednesdays when Lido and Merrick are closed."

Pace of play is the club's selling point, Wright says, though golfers, especially water lovers, might insist it's the proximity to the bay. Its signature hole is a par-4 with the bay down the left side and a collection of bunkers nearly forming a ring of sand around the green. Beyond the green is a clear view toward Long Beach.

Last year, Middle Bay -- featured in the November/December issue of The Met Golfer -- was part of a Town of Hempstead proposal aimed at protecting golf courses against residential development. Hempstead's plan, designed to prevent the recently sold Woodmere Club from closing in 2022, would designate Middle Bay and the private courses at the Woodmere Club and Inwood Country Club as "golf course coastal residence districts." The new category would restrict residential development due to environmental issues like flooding and impact on area wetlands.

Woodmere, its roots more than a century deep in Five Towns, is one of a small handful of golf facilities already slated for at least partial development in the near future -- others include the public Heatherwood Golf Course in Setauket, to be cut down from 18 to nine holes to make way for senior housing, and the century-old Engineers Country Club in Roslyn, where residences are planned around the existing private golf course.

Previously in 2017, the Town of Brookhaven went ahead and created a new zoning category -- "golf course district" -- and has since redesignated the town-owned Mill Pond and Rolling Oaks golf courses and the privately owned Rock Hill Golf & Country Club. Properties zoned as golf course districts can build catering halls, restaurants and health clubs on site, but homes, non-golf offices and retail stores are not permitted.

And in early December 2019, the Town of Southold, in a deal facilitated by The Peconic Land Trust, purchased the development rights to the land housing Island's End Golf & Country Club in Greenport. The $5.1 million purchase by the town ensures that the 126 acres bordering Long Island Sound will be free from development and likely preserved as a golf course, per Newsday.

Closures also impacted the driving-range business around the Island. At least three large ranges closed since 2011 -- first to go was Island Green in Selden, followed by the Oakdale Golf Center and, most recently in 2017, Skydrive Golf Center in Farmingdale. Many of those lost stalls will be replaced if a proposed Topgolf -- New York's first -- opens in Holtsville in the near future. (More on that below.)

[PICTURED: Top right -- Calverton Links, three months before abruptly closing down in 2013; Top left -- The view toward Long Beach and Jones Beach from the signature hole at Middle Bay in Oceanside; Bottom right -- Skydrive's farewell note to customers prior to closing in 2017.]

NINE-HOLE GOLF: RENOVATIONS AND NEW BEACH VIBES

The loss of Dix Hills GC notwithstanding, the 2010s marked a mini renaissance for nine-hole golf on Long Island. It's status quo at the Nassau munis -- Bay Park rang in its 50th year this season with zero fanfare -- but out east, two tucked-away nine-hole spots were reinvigorated by new, hands-on owners.

In Cutchogue, nestled among quiet streets behind the village green and community library is Cedars Golf Club, a fixture since the 1960s on land utilized for golf for more than a century. Tim McManus and Paul Pawlowski took over the course in 2014 and made immediate changes -- bunker and green renovations, irrigation upgrades, brush clearing and more. They added a comfy patio, built a simulator room in the vintage clubhouse and partnered with a company to offer kayak and paddleboard rentals in a creek off the ninth hole.

"Cedars has definitely exceeded our expectations," McManus says. "Every time I'm at the course I hear compliments from players on the conditions and the overall friendliness of the experience."

Nearly the same story played out a few seasons prior in Riverhead, long the home of Sandy Pond Golf Course, another nine-holer hidden in plain sight behind an anonymous shack amid more familiar 18-hole neighbors. It got a shot in the arm in 2012 from two new owners, Ken Weinstein and Chris Wahlers, who dug right in cleaning out ponds, resurfacing tees, repairing greens and clearing overgrowth around the perimeter. By 2014, the course gleamed with golden-brown grass between holes, colorful flower beds and vibrant green fairways.

“We’re noticing more skilled golfers coming to play,” Wahlers told Golf On Long Island at the time. "And people from the area are coming by and saying they never knew the course was here.”

The crew continues to run successful leagues and unique night-golf events.

While Cedars and Sandy Pond underwent their annual upgrades, another little course took shape out of the barren sandscape way back west in Lido Beach. Not that many people knew about it at the time -- outside of a county press release and a few news snippets, the Nickerson Dunes Pitch & Putt, Long Island's only newly built public course of the 2010s, came to be in beachfront secrecy.

Holes start out from turf mats with rubber tees and stretch no longer than 105 yards, but that simplicity is countered by the course's sloping greens, hilly terrain and features like punchbowls and grass mounds. Salvaged boardwalk planks stand in as walking paths and, on one hole, the retaining wall around a desert-style waste area. So noteworthy is the layout that The Fried Egg, a prominent golf design and architecture website, featured the course in 2019, holding it up as a shining example of modern entry-level golf.

"You could work a couple of Nickersons into just about any town -- nine holes on 10 acres, or four holes on five acres. At that size, golf courses cost far less to build and maintain, and could even fit into existing parks," writes The Fried Egg's Shaun Smith. "We need more ambient golf. If my daughter wants to pick up tennis or basketball or baseball in the future, it will be easy because the playing spaces will be right there. Golf may never be that open, but it could get closer."

[PICTURED: Above left -- looking up to a hilltop green at Sandy Pond, post-renovation in 2014; Above right -- Nickerson Dunes was featured by The Fried Egg's Shaun Smith (@GorseNod on Twitter); Screenshot courtesy of The Fried Egg (@the_fried_egg)]

BETHPAGE

If the 2000s thrust Bethpage Black into the spotlight as the new rock star on the national golf scene, then the 2010s was the decade the "People's Country Club" matured into a polished, well-coiffed celeb. By the time Brooks Koepka walked off the Black clutching the Wanamaker Trophy as winner of the 2019 PGA Championship this past May, the Black had added two editions of The Barclays to its resume (2012 and 2016) and earned the right to host the 2024 Ryder Cup.

And with its years-long march toward the 2019 PGA coinciding with the rise of Golf Twitter and Instagram, more and more of the Black's daily happenings -- from fairway, tee and green renovations to updates on pollinator gardens -- were chronicled in real time. Andrew Wilson, the park's director of agronomy and sporter of many hats during a lengthy tenure at Bethpage (including past jobs in the clubhouse and as a starter), is the man behind many of those updates, keeping followers in the loop with frequent glimpses of scenes around the grounds.

Wilson was front-and-center during PGA week, talking up the Black Course on TV, radio and podcasts. And as Wilson discussed the meat and potatoes, other outlets poured on the dressing. Over on sites like Golf Club Atlas, spirited debates quickly ignited on course setup while Golf Magazine's Josh Berhow took a deep dive through anecdotes and fuzzy memories in an effort to pinpoint the origin of the famous "Warning" sign.

For Wilson, the famous Joe DiMaggio quote, the one about giving his all because a kid might be seeing him play for the first time, is always in mind.

"We know people travel from all over to play at Bethpage," Wilson says, "so we want to give them the best experience we can."

Though locals and tourists might arrive at Bethpage with higher expectations now that the Black Course has been a household name nationally for nearly two decades, the focus around the grounds remains on simply putting the best foot forward. Much of the maintenance work is the same as it was at the close of the 2000s. Technology has obviously improved, taking much of the guesswork out of course conditions. And the staff now has years of experience preparing for major events -- Wilson says this offseason's renovation of the bunkers on Black #4 are being done with one eye on the '24 Ryder Cup. The staff is also considering shortening the turf around traps to bring more of them into play, among other changes.

Off the course, Bethpage -- and its fellow NYS park courses at Montauk Downs and Sunken Meadow -- took a leap into the 21st century with the long-overdue switch to an online tee-time portal. New golf director Kelley Brooke, another Bethpage multitasker ("I'm running everything here but tee times," she told Golf On Long Island last year), has plans to lengthen the driving range and expand the facility's use of state-of-the-art video and biofeedback systems for instruction. A primary goal is to make Bethpage a "full-service academy" with instructional programs, clinics and camps.

Behind the scenes, a marketing team focused on revamping the facility's digital presence. For way too long until 2018, Bethpage was represented on the internet by a bleak website half-focused on hawking apparel. Brooke hired Zach Toste, a digital-marketing consultant who played golf at Notre Dame, to craft an online personality befitting the country's most prominent public-golf facility.

Toste and the digital-marketing team introduced "Experience Tradition" as the park's slogan and filled its rebuilt social-media feeds with video demonstrations, action shots around the course and other features.

"There was a sense of urgency due to the upcoming PGA Championship," Toste says. "Until then there had been no sense of history on the site. Our initial focus was on tradition and history, bringing the courses' stories and milestones to light."

With the PGA event in the past, much of the online focus now is on Brooke's successful junior programs, including the park's first-ever summer camp, started in 2018.

"It's nice being out on the course and seeing 40 or 50 young kids playing," Wilson says.

[PICTURED ABOVE: First two photos -- scenes from the PGA Championship in May 2019; Bottom right -- Wilson's Twitter updates (@Greensideup17) on the Bethpage courses recently included photos of renovations to the famous glacier bunker on Black #4.]

GOLFNOW

The last holdouts -- Bethpage and the NYS parks, plus Oyster Bay this season -- finally hung up on the phone-reservation era last year, though that doesn't mean the phone-reservation era actually ended. It just means dialing is old news. Tapping and scrolling for rounds of golf via GolfNow and other reservation apps has made locking down 18 holes easier than ever and revolutionized the tee-sheet business. Golfers can now find nearby tee times the same way they find Christmas gifts on Amazon -- by initiating a search and perusing the results. And in an era where time is of the essence, any convenience is valued.

GolfNow didn't emerge in the 2010s, but its massive financial backing from NBC Sports and Golf Channel allowed it to gradually acquire other booking engines (the latest as recently as last month) in a decade where online commerce and mobile technology rapidly grew more sophisticated, accelerating the company's growth into an industry behemoth. The company boasts 3.5 million registered users worldwide that can book rounds at more than 7,000 courses. On Long Island, public green fees have remained close to the same as they were a decade ago, while tee-time apps streamline the search for heavy discounts.

The prize catch for the player on a GolfNow search is the small inventory of "Hot Deal" tee times at each course that slash green fees by as much as 80 percent. Like the base economy rate of an airline ticket or a hotel room, the Hot Deal price is paid up front and non-refundable. And taking that comparison even further, GolfNow offers a rewards program that allows players to earn points on booked tee times. So between the convenience, the potential discounts and rewards, it's a win for the player.

But on the business end of the transaction, not everyone is sold on the merits of GolfNow. Critics in the golf-course industry argue that by training consumers to treat golf courses the same as a pack of boxer shorts on Amazon, GolfNow is pressuring courses to price their rounds too low to remain sustainable. And by further incentivizing bookings through GolfNow, the benefits to the player ultimately come at the expense of the facilities they play.

"The cost to operate and maintain a golf course increases 3 to 6 percent per year, yet green fees remain the same price as they were in 2008," says one Suffolk course manager. "The GolfNow model is helpful to some but damaging to others. Operators cannot increase green fees because people simply won't pay it. Eventually there is a breaking point."

The structure of the popular Hot Deal is largely the source of critics' concerns. GolfNow's agreements with courses require each facility to trade a certain number of tee times every day in exchange for use of GolfNow's booking platform and other perks like website design and e-mail marketing. Those exchanged tee times are then promoted as deeply discounted Hot Deals, paid in full to GolfNow, not to the course. Then GolfNow heavily promotes its available Hot Deals in a particular region (see screenshot below) and pushes them to the front of searches, ahead of the rest of the standard-rate tee times paid to the course. GolfNow is helping courses up with two hands, the argument goes, while kicking their legs out from under them.

Wright at Middle Bay says he's not fully for or against GolfNow. "We definitely needed them to help us get off the ground," he says. "Their advertising can be very helpful."

On the other hand, "I've never seen a relationship where one side always benefits," Wright says. "You have to watch what's going on and stay on top of them when issues arise, otherwise the course loses out."

Part of the reason local courses don't ditch the GolfNow model is fear of the unknown. Courses not under the GolfNow umbrella do not appear in searches. So a consumer scrolling for tee times by zip code might think he or she is getting a full, real-time menu of golf in a particular area, when that's not the case.

"I would bet a lot of money that if the public owners could get together, they would agree not to participate in GolfNow," says the Suffolk manager. "The only reason they are using it now is that everyone else is."

Supporters of GolfNow argue that this is simply business at work, that the aggregation of tee times is yet another positive innovation of the modern digital marketplace. Anything that helps lead more players to local courses should be considered a win for the industry.

Sometimes the lines are blurry. A search for tee times on a recent December afternoon revealed a $15 mid-day Hot Deal at Eisenhower Park's White Course. Eisenhower, of course, is a Nassau County muni, and residents pay the county for Leisure Pass access to tee times and resident golf rates. Yet an arrangement with GolfNow allows all comers to swoop in and pay much less.

As for the tens of thousands of dollars worth of tech and marketing services acquired in the tee-time trade (one daily tee time at $40 per player is worth more than $50,000 annually), the courses still have to get their hands dirty to get their money's worth. Needless to say, a GolfNow-sponsored e-mail blast that is simply a tee-time ad with a course logo on top is not a sound marketing strategy.

Neither is what went on at Great Rock this past season. The Wading River course fell into disrepair in 2019 while its Twitter feed and e-mail blasts pumped out almost nothing but generic GolfNow ads linking to tee-time lists. The course abruptly shut down for the season in October, and its e-mail and social-media campaigns subsequently refocused on the fact that the course is, well, closed.

[PICTURED ABOVE: GolfNow prioritizes the sale of its Hot Deal tee times, a practice that some in the golf-course industry argue is more harmful to courses than helpful. Screenshot courtesy GolfNow.com]

TOPGOLF

Unofficially, the topic that inspires the most chatter among Golf On Long Island readers is the prospect of Topgolf making its New York debut in Suffolk County. And, as of now, it will, on a site just north of the Long Island Expressway at exit 62 in Holtsville. It's made its way through government proceedings, faced the requisite share of NIMBY opposition, and appears to be in the clear provided it meets some conditions outlined by the Brookhaven Town planning board in September.

Topgolf adds elements of a trip to Dave & Buster's to the typical driving-range experience, allowing players to hit microchipped golf balls toward arcade-style target areas for computer-scored games and contests, in addition to food and drinks. Climate-controlled hitting bays are rented by the hour and typically include televisions, WiFi and access to food and drinks. Standard range features like lessons and clinics are also included.

There are nearly 60 Topgolf locations generating lots of buzz around the country and overseas, including a Las Vegas site that lives up to its locale with glass-walled swimming pools and a concert venue. The question that remains unanswered in golf circles is whether or not the popularity of Topgolf actually makes green-fee-paying golfers out of its many followers.

"I can't wait for it to be built," says one local course manager. "I only see it as a benefit, getting more people interested and increasing rounds locally."

"Any time we can get a golf club in somebody's hand, it's good for the game," says Middle Bay's Wright, who adds it could also benefit local PGA pros if they get the opportunity to give lessons in the offseason. "Even if it's having fun over a beer and a bucket of wings, it will be helpful in growing the sport."

Andy Carracino, PGA pro and director of golf at Timber Point, agrees Topgolf is good for the sport but is unsure if it's a match for Long Island. "It's up to the industry to turn those Topgolf customers into 'real' golfers," he says. "My hunch is it's too big an investment to succeed here. Too many off days between October and April for a return, and the winter storms will kill the equipment."

At the moment there is no timetable for when the Long Island Topgolf might open, and it's not listed among the dozen "Coming Soon" locations on the company website. For now, Long Island golfers will have to travel at least as far as central New Jersey to get their Topgolf fix.

[PICTURED ABOVE: Topgolf in Edison, New Jersey, currently the closest location to Long Island. Photo courtesy Topgolf.]

COULD A SWEETENS COVE WORK ON LONG ISLAND?

In September, Rob Collins and Tad King leaked word of their latest golf design project. Nine holes of ambitious New York fairways and greens, roughly 90 minutes from Manhattan, sure to draw scores of players from the city onto area parkways, golf bags in tow.

The two partners -- together known officially as King-Collins Golf Course Design -- are the darlings of modern golf architecture thanks to their work transforming a flat, unremarkable golf course in rural Tennessee into a pilgrimage site for followers of golf design and those simply seeking a fresh take on the golf experience. It's been featured in the New York Times, hailed as a model of innovation in Sports Illustrated and profiled by golf publications whose writers chronicle their journeys to Sweetens Cove -- formerly known as Sequatchie Valley Golf & Country Club -- with pictures of the course's weathered signs and tiny shed of a clubhouse. Golfweek ranked it #49 on its 2019 list of top modern courses, a rarity for nine-hole layouts.

Sweetens Cove and other similar projects around the country -- Winter Park in Florida, a revamped muni, for one -- might just be setting the foundation for the post-Recession, post-Tiger wave of American course building. Taking spent or outdated golf grounds and reimagining them with a focus on bold features, strategic design, no-frills fun and a streamlined building process that allows for affordable public and municipal golf.

Reimagining golf is the key -- as Collins told the Times, "People had been building golf courses completely wrong for years." He and King are already in the very early stages of an unnamed project in Mississippi where the finished product would be a 12-hole course -- a nine-holer with a separate three-hole loop.

The King-Collins project in New York will not be east of the city out in these parts though, it will be north, a meandering drive from the Thruway in a town called Accord. Nine new holes are in progress on what previously was Rondout Golf Club. The 18-hole course is being cut to nine by King and Collins while the rest of the property will be bolstered with a boutique hotel, cabins and shops.

Innovative golf design, limited amenities and daring features, all with a laid-back, player-friendly mentality -- could it work on Long Island? Rob Collins thinks so.

"I have no doubt it would be a huge success," Collins told Golf On Long Island earlier this month. At Sweetens, much of the challenge for the designers was bringing their new ideas to life and succeeding in a rural area of a depressed county, as Collins describes it. That wouldn't be the case here.

"Sweetens Cove was the ultimate pie-in-the-sky project," Collins said. "There's a lot less risk on Long Island. You have a built-in golf population, and most of the great courses are private. If you could make a course on par with the privates that's open to the public for an affordable price, why wouldn't it work?"

"Something like Sweetens would do wonders to help grow the game," said one Long Island general manager. "I hear it so often from people who don't play -- they don't know how to get started and they are afraid of embarrassing themselves.

"The focus is to eliminate the formalities of what golf has always been and have a course that is available to the public where the emphasis is fun."

Jeff Warne, director of golf at The Bridge, isn't sold.

"The availability of cheap golf on Long Island, even with recent closings at Tallgrass, Shirley and Calverton Links, make it unlikely," Warne says. "A municipality could easily pull it off, with the model being Winter Park, but I don't see government on Long Island doing it."

But given the recent success stories on the nine-hole front, and other changes coming to the area, perhaps the 2020s will prove to be the right time for some innovation on the Long Island golf scene.

"You will see how many people buy into an idea like this once Topgolf opens," says the local GM. "I think the younger generation would eat this up."

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Also please note the closing of nine holes (East course) at Mill Pond to make room for condos. Fortunately 18 holes survived thanks to Brookhaven Town. On the plus side, Olde Vine in Riverhead went from private to public (The Vineyards).

Posted by: John L Usher | December 25, 2019 at 03:38 PM