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 looks back at courses that have been lost — some for a few years, 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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Tucked away amid winding, wooded roads in western Suffolk County is a small, newly built residential community made up of nearly two-dozen luxury homes. The homes, each carrying a price tag comfortably north of $2 million, stand tall and glamorous along a pair of dead-end streets. By the sound of it, the developer in charge is not the type to lay up on par-5s.
Appropriately, the two streets — Long Drive Court and Eagle Court — end at cul-de-sacs of the exact shape and size of a putting green. From beginning to dead end, or let's call it tee to green, Long Drive is laid out like a double-dogleg par-5, roughly 500 yards in total. The only hiccup in the planning is that Eagle Court runs the length of a mere par-3.
And, coincidence or not, the development, titled Oak Hill Estates, shares its name with the renowned Rochester, New York golf club and famed championship venue.
Just a few years ago, though it wasn't yet Oak Hill Estates, the property was home not only to long drives and eagles but a dogleg par-5 oddly similar to what is now Long Drive Court. Back then, local golfers knew the site as Dix Hills Golf Club, the lengthier, more challenging alternative to the nine-hole Dix Hills Park Golf Course nearby. It was a par-35 with nine holes totaling around 2,600 yards.
The non-municipal beginner course has become an endangered species on Long Island, but before it closed in 2012, Dix Hills GC filled that niche across six decades. Built in the 1960s, Dix Hills was bookended by par-5s, and a series of short par-4s and unique par-3s filled out the middle. Its most prominent feature was the deep gully that cut across the front section of the course. Shots to the green on holes #3 and #5 needed to carry the pit or settle somewhere far below. It also featured deep, sticky rough that complicated what were otherwise simple holes. Like a lush, well-fed (future) Oak Hill lawn, the rough could snatch and turn a clubhead with ease.
Dix Hills' vibe was quaint and laid-back. An old-fashioned cottage with shuttered windows served as the clubhouse, shaded and nestled comfortably beneath tall trees. Players parked in a gravel driveway out front. The course, rising and falling over the hills and densely wooded in spots, had a pastoral feel.
The par-3s at Dix Hills were certainly diverse. The tiny fourth could be mistaken for a sled hill had there not been a green at the bottom. A generous 116 yards on the scorecard, the hole dead-ended abruptly at a fenced corner of the property. Ahead at #5, short or middle irons needed to clear the gully to reach a little green ringed by thick rough. And #8, listed at 239 yards, played nearly as long as the course's par-4s.
Quietly, with little notice to anyone beyond the inner circle of Dix Hills-area players, the course closed up shop in 2012. For more than two years it sat in a state of decay — behind the roadside entrance sign, weeds overtook the gravel driveway and obscured the empty cottage. By 2015, the future Oak Hill development was formally announced and broke ground on the site.
The course is remembered as a place where local players got their initial taste of golf. And its beginner-friendliness wasn't confined to its casual routing and vibe. One of Dix Hills' local rules — in the course's later years, at least — said bad misses to the right on the two par-5s (as in over the trees onto adjacent holes) could be picked up and dropped on the correct side of the tree line with no penalty.
All the more reason to go hard after long drives and eagles.
[PICTURED — TOP: Dix Hills' shaded cottage clubhouse. LEFT: Next to the clubhouse, #3 green sat behind a deep gully. The course's dense rough was cut close to the greens. BOTTOM: Dix Hills, as seen shortly before its closing in 2012, with the present-day roads depicted. (Image credit: Google Earth.) Long Drive Court is laid out on nearly the exact footprint of the par-5 ninth. Also, the course's 2009 scorecard.]
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
Part 6: Mill Pond East — Medford
