Golf on Long Island

Great Rock sign confirms course is out of business

No further confirmation was really needed -- the abrupt closing last fall, the disconnected phone line, frozen-in-time social media and lack of a 2020 playing season were all dead giveaways regarding the fate of the Great Rock Golf Club.  And without an official notice or a brief snippet in the newspaper, it seems a three-word sign on the course's locked gate is as close to a confirmation as local golfers are going to get.

Great Rock Golf Club is out of business.  The sign reads "CLOSED for Business" -- obscured behind it is a previous posting that the Wading River semi-private golf facility would reopen in the spring. 

From the time the course suddenly closed last October until early January of this year, "closed for the season" and "See You Next Year!" were the main messages sent out to area golfers on the club's website and social media outlets.  But as Golf On Long Island wrote in May, next year never arrived.  Before the course closed last fall, golfers complained about deteriorating conditions as rumors of a sale lingered.

Public golf on the East End has taken a couple of heavy blows since 2013 when Calverton Links closed in similar sudden fashion, and that includes Long Island National turning private that same year and The Vineyards switching back to fully private play in 2020.  (A detour while apple picking in Riverhead featured a drive past the remains of Calverton Links, a stop at Great Rock and could have quickly added a visit to the massive solar farm now occupying the former Tallgrass Golf Course.)

Great Rock opened in 2001 during the latest course-building surge and came to be known for fast greens and elevated service.  Holes like the signature tenth (with the namesake rock) were featured by Newsday and Golfing Magazine.  In 2010, Newsday highlighted Great Rock's staff -- some of whom were brought over in 2008 from Shinnecock Hills  -- and its focus on customer service and pristine conditions.

The course briefly closed prior to the 2014 season but reopened later that year under new ownership.  A year later, the club completed a dramatic remodel of its on-site restaurant and opened Pure North Fork, a modern American bistro.

Last year, golfers turned to review sites like Golf Advisor to voice their displeasure over what was essentially an abandoned golf course, complete with crabgrass-strewn fairways, weedy bunkers and bare greens.  Unfortunately, for some, that will be the lasting image of the Wading River club.

Street Names: The Ghosts of Long Island Golf's Past, Part 5 -- Riverhead Country Club

Street names can give clues about a community's past.  That's especially true with golf courses.  When Long Island streets are tagged with golf-related terms, it often means that buried beneath sidewalks and front lawns are the remains of a long-forgotten (or fondly remembered) course.

This series of posts will look back at courses that have been gone for decades, some close to a century, and whose presence is only marked by what developers scratched on road maps and signs.  To see other courses in the "Street Names: The Ghosts of Long Island Golf's Past" series, click the links at the bottom of the post.

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Many points of interest contend for the attention of the Long Island admirer on a drive heading east from downtown Riverhead.  First up are the shops and riverside cafes in the business district, the Long Island Aquarium, then a short jaunt to the northeast before reaching the produce stands, wineries and spacious farms and fields of the North Fork.

Along that curving road between county seat and Wine Country are two attractions that few beyond followers of golf and local history would consider eye-catching -- one is a street sign marking Fairway Avenue and the other, just a block ahead, a vintage-looking Elks Lodge.

Roads named for fairways, of course, are often a tell.  Chances are, whether named as some variation of Fairway Drive or Fairway Road, the signpost marks the site of a long-gone golf course.  Here, where Route 25 turns toward Aquebogue, once stood the Riverhead Country Club golf course, its clubhouse still in existence as the aforementioned Elks Lodge.

Riverhead Country Club came to be in 1921.  The golf course was built over farmland on both sides of Route 25 with a driving range behind the clubhouse.  Newspaper accounts of the course's opening didn't hold back on the type of grandiosity standard for golf writing of that era.  Riverhead was "declared by some experts to be one of the handsomest and best on Long Island," according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and "was formally opened ... by social functions more brilliant than anything ever before held in this town."

The Eagle continued: "The very face of nature was changed to produce the course.  An expanse of swamps, unsightly hedgerows and waste land have been molded into a scenic panorama that makes even passing motorists stop and take a second look."

Covering a modest 82 acres according to news and historical accounts, Riverhead's golf course was likely similar in build to a modern-day executive course.  Or perhaps it was a bit longer, packing in as much yardage as possible at the expense of safe boundaries between holes.  In the club's inaugural season, a member of the East End's well-known Griffing family took an errant shot right to the kisser, his bloody lips and loosened teeth chalked up to the overwhelming popularity of the nine-hole course (it was expanded to 18 in season two).

The club stood out as a prominent social and recreational venue through the boom of the 1920s, but the music stopped and the tee shots were eventually grounded as the malaise of the 1930s set in.  A 1940 news article on a local group's bid to resurrect the course indicates the property had "not been used in any way for several years."  For the next few seasons it saw intermittent play, though not enough for the club to remain solvent.

In 1946, the clubhouse and surrounding land was purchased by the American Legion, which then sold the larger parcel on the west side of Route 25 the following year for the development of homes for military members and veterans.  This small community was called "Riverhead Greens" -- and is still known locally as The Greens -- in honor of the golf course buried underneath.

The Riverhead Elks purchased the clubhouse in the 1950s, and the historic lodge is now closing in on its 100th anniversary.

[PICTURED: Riverhead Country Club postcard, circa 1920s; courtesy Gail Evans]

SEE OTHER STREET-NAME POSTS:
Part 1: Cedar Point/Meadowlawn/Westwood -- North Woodmere
Part 2: The Lido Club -- Lido Beach
Part 3: Valley Stream Country Club -- Valley Stream
Part 4: Sayville Golf Club -- Sayville

Fall aeration underway around Long Island

We're at the height of fall aeration season on Long Island's public courses.  Fall maintenance is underway or recently completed at many local courses, so be aware of potentially sandy greens and fairways when booking tee times this month.

The Red Course at Eisenhower Park is currently closed for aeration and will reopen for play on Friday, September 18.  The White will be aerated starting Monday 9/21; Blue on Monday 9/28. 

Bethpage Blue will be closed today and tomorrow 9/16, followed by Yellow, Red and Black later this month.  (See the previous Bethpage aeration post for dates.)  The Green Course was aerated earlier this month.

Timber Point will close one of its nine-hole courses over the next three days, beginning with the Red Course today, Blue tomorrow and White on Thursday.

Sunken Meadow is currently aerating its Red nine, followed by the Green nine next week.  The Blue nine was aerated last week.

The Town of Oyster Bay municipal course will complete two days of aeration this afternoon and reopen for play tomorrow.

Glen Cove's municipal course is closed through tomorrow and will reopen for play on Thursday 9/17.

At Cherry Creek in Riverhead, the Woods Course will close for aeration tomorrow 9/16, followed by the Links Course next Wednesday 9/23.

Pine Hills in Manorville is aerating today and tomorrow 9/16; all tee times must be made directly through the pro shop.

Island's End in Greenport was aerated on September 14.

For information on other aeration/maintenance dates, special rates and more, contact the courses directly.