A round on the Blue and Red courses at Timber Point in Great River is a bit of a walk (or ride) through history. Since the 1920s, when the course emerged on the edge of Great South Bay as a highly touted and equally exclusive private club, players of all social strata have aimed the same wind-blown shots over the water on the Harbor hole and toward the bay on Gibraltar.
And as the study of golf course history and the evolution of golf architecture slowly entered golf's mainstream over the last two decades, followers of historical golf design have imagined what it would be like to align that walk at Timber Point even more closely with its celebrated past. The Fried Egg, a prominent golf architecture and design website, recently listed Timber Point as one of America's "sweet 16 of golf courses we'd love to see restored to their original glory."
While the lost Lido Club farther west on the Island's south shore is the Atlantis of golf history -- and will soon be brought back to life in two spots around the globe -- Timber Point is a different type of lost course, in that much of it physically remains. But many of the elements that made it unique and memorable have grassed over through time, tantalizing architecture enthusiasts who envision a return to the original's gusty sands and bayside dunes. Daniel Wexler states in his 2000 book Missing Links that Timber Point could possibly rank as one of America's top 25 golf courses if it existed in its original form, and at least a few course designers reportedly have pitched their restoration services to Suffolk County in the recent past.
So, a quick history review:
Timber Point opened for play in the latter half of the Roaring Twenties on a former estate, with the purpose of providing golf and club amenities to a very select few. So private was the club, according to legend, that members attempted to purchase a vast neighboring estate (today's Heckscher State Park) just to keep outsiders away -- far away. Another story goes that the club once refused mosquito control services from the county, choosing instead to tolerate swarms of biting insects if it meant preventing any intrusion by curious non-members. Designed by Charles Alison, the front nine played inland through what at the time was forest-like terrain. Six of those inland holes live on today as holes #2 through #7 of the Red Course.
Following #9, the course set out on a path toward an awe-inspiring sandscape bordering Great South Bay. An imaginative 11th hole featured three island-style fairways offering alternative routes to the green. The back nine then turned toward the water's edge. Sand enveloped the Harbor 12th (today's Blue #2) and Gibraltar (Blue #5) up ahead. One of the few early-era photos of the course shows a man teeing off toward an ocean of sand, Gibraltar's 15th green far off in the distance. Another captures a twosome on the Harbor tee gazing at what more closely resembles the moon than a short par-3.
Timber Point followed the same trajectory as most clubs of the era, struggling through the Depression and onset of World War II. Contentious lease and ownership issues simmered as early as the 1930s, and the club was past its prime by the post-war years. (A 1953 Newsday article referred to it as the "once-famous" Timber Point.) It went through a series of name and operation changes through the 1950s and '60s, alternating between names like the Connetquot River Club and Great River Country Club.
In the early 1970s, amid a local boom period that spurred the growth of county-level municipal golf, Suffolk County brought Timber Point into its parks system and hired William Mitchell to lay out a new nine between the inland and bayside halves. That nine became the White Course. Mitchell also tacked new holes onto the 12 remaining originals to complete the freshly titled Red and Blue nines.
To architecture enthusiasts like The Fried Egg's Andy Johnson, and the designers who've made preliminary gestures toward a Timber Point revamp, the course is a no-brainer candidate for a classic restoration. Especially now in a national golf climate that has proven suitable for restorations and renovations. "After all," Johnson writes of Timber Point, "there's certainly a demand for great accessible golf on Long Island."
But the hurdles are massive. The red tape surrounding a Suffolk County-owned facility might be enough on its own to sink any proposal. Throw in the public perception of spending on a municipal golf restoration -- no matter the fine details or framework -- and it becomes even more politically daunting. And while the course is still there physically, there are environmental considerations. Wetlands exist on the course today that were not present in the 1920s. Just two days after the Fried Egg feature, CNN highlighted climate change's impact on the future of golf courses. Timber Point is notoriously prone to coastal flooding and major storm damage. Hurricane Irene battered the course in 2011 and Sandy partially submerged it the following fall.
Yet the most relevant questions might be the ones nobody has really asked. Is this something that Long Island's golfing public would actually want? What about Suffolk County? As it stands today, Timber Point is one of the best golf values on the Island, with or without a resident discount. Green fees are under $50, the scenery is on par with just about any private club in the area, and when played as a Red/Blue 18, Timber Point is not far from the upper tier of Island public courses. Tee times, not surprisingly, are hard to come by.
So given Timber's current appeal, would Long Island players be willing to trade it in for a fantastic restoration, albeit one that would ultimately price out some of its clientele and heighten competition for fewer tee times? While there certainly is demand for great accessible golf, as Johnson states, there might not be an appetite here for making accessible golf less so in the jump from good to great. A Golf On Long Island survey shows two-thirds of local golfers polled in an active online players group prefer to keep Timber Point as is.
For more on Timber Point, see the Blue, Red and White course flyovers.
[PICTURED: Gibraltar #15 (top) and Harbor #12 (middle left), as seen in Golf Illustrated; a modern look at the same two par-3s, Blue #2 and #5 (bottom right)]
