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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A tiny minority of Long Islanders have the rare ability to walk off their front porches onto a street boasting the name of a famed U.S. Open golf course, turn onto the home of The Masters and loop around to a cul-de-sac titled for another historic American golf club. There are golf course views and access to pools, a spa, a rec center -- no, it's not a golf resort, but it's close.
The Meadowbrook Pointe Links and Spa retirement community in Medford is the next-door neighbor of Mill Pond Golf Course, and beyond its front gates weave residential streets like Augusta Drive, Pebble Beach Road and Cypress Pointe Court. Many of the large, modern homes look out over Mill Pond's lengthy 12th and 18th fairways.
Not long ago, the land beneath those homes and roads shared a much more intimate relationship with Mill Pond, because it was Mill Pond -- its East Course, to be exact, the third nine of what for a brief time in the early 2000s was a 27-hole golf facility.
Today Mill Pond is a popular 18-hole destination, but when it opened in 1999, it featured three distinct nine-hole layouts. The North, West and East courses were designed by Buddy Johnson and built over what was previously flat Medford farmland. From that level ground emerged a links-style course complete with mounds and dales, tall rough and a heavy wind presence. The complex featured six large ponds, three of which rippled peacefully on the East Course.
Like its sister courses, Mill Pond East dotted its fairways with small, round bunkers and protected its greens with larger traps and diagonal approaches. Some holes flipped the script, pitting the fairways instead with big, irregular traps and carving pot bunkers near the greens. Three holes required tee shots over or around the ponds, including the short par-3 seventh.
The East Course enjoyed only a fleeting moment along Mill Road, though. While play on the other 18 holes carried on, by 2006 Mill Pond closed and abandoned the East. For several seasons the fairways and greens deteriorated in plain sight, until builders finally broke ground in 2010 on the new Meadowbrook residences.
In addition to Pebble, Cypress and Augusta, the community also honors more modern American golf meccas with streets named for Pacific Dunes and Sand Hills.
Fun fact: Early in Mill Pond East's short run, two residential streets were built near the southern end of the course-- Tee Box Court and Mulligan Drive.
[PICTURED: Mill Pond Golf ad, circa 2005.]
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
Part 5: Riverhead Country Club -- Riverhead
