Golf on Long Island

Harbor Links approaching 25 years since its grand opening in a Port Washington sand mine

To the untrained eye, or rather, the eye of anyone who is not a golf-course designer, the big, barren sand mines of Port Washington were exactly as they appeared – big, barren sand mines. 

To Michael Hurdzan and his design team, the excavated pits that drove industry along Long Island Sound for more than a century might as well have been sun-splashed Caribbean beaches, where sand funnels between toes and imaginations run wild with vibrant visions of the future.  These pits were the gritty stuff a designer's dreams are made of.

"We looked and thought, 'This is awesome,'" Hurdzan recalls of his initial experience in the mines beside Hempstead Harbor, nearly 25 years to the day that his Harbor Links Golf Course debuted at the bottom of one of those quarries.  "We didn't have to worry about things like taking down trees.  The land was already destroyed.  We were going to put it back together."

The par-72 Championship Course at Harbor Links opened near the end of July 1998 and was followed later that year by the nine-hole Executive Course. 

Hurdzan left Long Island and the residents of the Town of North Hempstead with a challenging golf course that stands out as one of the region's most unique golfing options.  Tees and greens hover on plateaus built along the tall, once-sandy bluff left over from the property's mining days.  Fairways curl around rejuvenated wetlands.  Rocky features are more American Southwest than North Shore.  (One hole is aptly named "Arizona.")  And it's a case study in using a golf course to reverse an environmental calamity.  Hurdzan is known for creating eco-friendly golf courses, and Harbor Links almost immediately became a member of Audubon International's Signature Program.

"Harbor Links is special," says Hurdzan, who ranks the course in his top 25 of personal course designs, no small claim for someone credited with several hundred original designs and remodels.  Nationally, he says, "it's an undiscovered gem."

It was Hurdzan's previous work at a Massachusetts golf course called Widow's Walk that served as the inspiration for Harbor Links.  There, on a similarly destroyed, stripped-bare mining site near Massachusetts Bay, Hurdzan and a team of environmentalists collaborated on a design and built what he calls the first "environmental demonstration" golf course in the world.

Widow's Walk drew the attention of May Newburger, North Hempstead's town supervisor, who had a nearly identical problem on her hands in Port Washington.  The sandy canyons and the rusting waste dumped in the old Morewood property were an eyesore, and an expensive one at that.  The town purchased the property years prior, but plans to build an incinerator or other industrial and recreational developments had already been scrapped.  Newburger was determined to use the land for the public good, and she knew Hurdzan had a knack for turning a property around through golf.

"She thought if it could be done at Widow's Walk, it could be done at Harbor Links," Hurdzan says.  He credits Newburger as the figure most responsible for bringing the course to the property.  "She was a persuasive person and a very smart politician."  (Part of Hempstead Harbor was renamed "May Newburger Cove" in 2017.)

On the grounds, it took 60,000 cubic yards of compost and a stabilization of the eroded bluffs to make a sustainable golf course possible.  In the town halls and offices, it took cooperation between multiple departments and the golf-design team to ensure the project stayed on track without delays.  The 18-hole course, with its native grasses, wildlife habitats and 50 acres of wetlands, was complete in a little over a year.  "We made champagne out of that lemon, not lemonade," Newburger told the New York Times.

Unique landscape aside, Harbor Links is known for its three double-fairway holes, including one – the par-5 sixth – that is considered by many the course's signature hole.  It tees off from elevated grounds along the bluff, with players forced to decide between a risky shortcut to a high-side fairway and a safer but longer route down the valley.  The green sits up on a plateau.  The preceding par-4 fifth asks golfers the same question.  Stay low with safety or go for the daring target up top?  Hurdzan used these designs to find both golf and construction solutions.

"We worked with the contours on the site and made the different levels work for the double-fairway holes," he says.  "In the process we minimized the earth-moving and solved a golf problem at the same time."

The bluff, always in the background and sometimes part of play, gives the course the feel of an amphitheater, something that Hurdzan wanted to "celebrate."  On the back nine, two holes curve around its base, followed by the par-5 16th, where downhill drives tee off from a set of tiers built into the hillside.  Earlier, sandy mounds remain near the 13th tee ("The Dunes") as a tribute to the site's industrial past.

Not much has changed about the course since it opened a quarter century ago, other than a new set of elevated tees on the par-3 17th.  Time has transformed the sandy bluff into a high hill covered in trees and foliage.  First-time players likely have no idea they are playing 18 at the bottom of a sand mine.

Hurdzan is proud he was able to give town and Long Island residents such an asset, and he recalls fondly the cooperative effort between his group and local government.

"I didn't even mind the Long Island traffic to get there," Hurdzan says.

[PICTURED: TOP RIGHT – #4 green with the once-sandy bluff in the background; ABOVE LEFT – Hempstead Harbor's sand mines as seen in the 1920s/1930s.  The Harbor Links site is at top center.  (Photo courtesy Ian Zwerdling); ABOVE RIGHT – The par-4 10th and double-fairway 13th, with the bluff and sand mounds in the distance.]

The Fried Egg lists Timber Point among America's "great restoration opportunities"

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)]

The Golfer's Journal podcast and magazine piece examine past, present and future of Lido-inspired golf

Lido Beach golf both past and present, as well as local, national and even international, is the subject of the most recent podcast just published this month by The Golfer's Journal and narrated by New York sports and golf writer Brett Cyrgalis.

If none of that seems to make much sense and the connection between South Shore muni golf and international golf design is a bit unclear, well, you have some interesting reading to do for Long Island golf history class.

The Golfer's Journal podcast focuses on the creation and disappearance of the short-lived Lido Golf Club -- considered to be one of the great architectural masterpieces in golf history -- and how it inspired three new Lidos, two of which are currently being built by renowned designers in Wisconsin and Thailand.  It is a companion piece to Cyrgalis's recent Journal feature entitled "The Hard Truth About Lido," in which the writer not only recalls many rounds played on today's local Lido but also describes in vivid detail a walk through the nearby Lido Beach dunes where the original C.B. Macdonald course stood for just two-plus decades.

Cyrgalis talks Lido golf on the podcast with Gil Hanse and Brian Schneider.  Hanse calls the original Lido a "mythical golf course, like Atlantis," one that he and Tom Doak often discussed when envisioning what they could possibly craft one day from a flat piece of land.  His soon-to-open Ballyshear Golf Links in Thailand is "a tribute" to Lido, he says, complete with its distinctive Macdonald template holes, and slight variations to the original's dimensions and routing. 

Meanwhile, at the Sand Valley Golf Resort in Wisconsin, Doak and Schneider of Renaissance Golf Design are in the midst of a full-scale Lido restoration.  With the help of photography and digital recreations of the course, Renaissance is duplicating every undulation of the original down to the yard.  "Macdonald is the architect of this project," Schneider says, "and we're trying as hard as we can to interpret his wishes and his design."  The course is scheduled to open in 2023.

And of course, there's Lido, the Town of Hempstead muni.  The course is a conundrum, and Cyrgalis explores it in greater detail in the magazine piece.  For every sunny recollection of waterside scenery along Reynolds Channel there is a local golfer's lament about overwhelming wind, muddy conditions or declining facilities.  Cyrgalis calls Lido "a joy in the winter" when the wind and hardened turf often make it play fast and firm like a true links, but admits that in the past "all I did was complain about goose shit and slow greens."  And though the Lido logo includes the year 1914 -- the start date of the original's construction -- there is no link between modern Lido and the "white whale" of golf course history. 

"It took a while before I cared enough to find out about the history," Cyrgalis writes.  "The sign out front reads '1914,' but that is a lie."

The Lido podcast is available for streaming and download on The Golfer's Journal website.  The magazine feature can be accessed with a Journal subscription.  For more reading on Lido, see previous Golf On Long Island entries below:

• Lido Golf Club, famed Macdonald masterpiece, to be recreated in Wisconsin
• A brief look back at the original Lido Golf Club in its "centennial" season
• Street Names: The Ghosts of Long Island Golf's Past, Part 2 (Lido Club)
• Original Lido Club featured on Golf Channel, golf history podcast
• Newsday slideshow features 11 places that were formerly golf courses
• Closer Look: Lido Golf Club #16

New book by Tillinghast biographer credits Burbeck as one of the "geniuses" behind Bethpage

Phil Young traces his love for the golf courses at Bethpage State Park to his early rounds as a teenager in the late 1960s, first on the Blue Course, then the famed Black.  Like plenty that came before him and many more after, he was first staggered by the Black while looking through the trees beside #3 green out toward the distant glacier bunker on #4.  (It was this same view that motivated the USGA's David Fay to fight for the Black Course to host a U.S. Open.)  From that moment, Young was not only an intense Bethpage Black enthusiast but also a devoted follower of course designer A.W. Tillinghast.

So when Golf Digest during the lead-up to the 2002 U.S. Open published a feature by senior writer Ron Whitten that reassigned Tillinghast's Bethpage Black design credit to unknown park superintendent Joseph Burbeck, it inspired instant debate and research in the growing golf course architecture field and upended what many Tillinghast disciples, including Young, believed to be true.

In his latest book, "Bethpage State Park and the Three Geniuses Who Created It," Young elevates Burbeck to lofty heights beside Tillinghast and Robert Moses as one of the indispensable founders of the enormous park, golf complex and Depression-era public works project.  Burbeck was responsible for the creation of the park, Young says, a "massive" task for someone who had to satisfy the powerful Moses and a panel of influential government officials.

"The fact that he could bring that building project to completion in two years, that alone puts him at the top of the top," Young says. 

The hardcover book -- Young's third release devoted to Bethpage and one of many chronicling Tillinghast's life and design career -- includes a chapter outlining Burbeck's many responsibilities in transforming the 1,300-acre Benjamin Yoakum estate in Farmingdale into a vast New York State-owned recreation hub.  Aside from answering to Moses and the Long Island State Parks Commission, Burbeck was tasked with, among other things, processing hundreds of federal relief workers, overseeing sports, course building and a caddy program, and supervising clubhouse construction and all park infrastructure.

"Burbeck had to run two offices," Young says.  "One to maintain the records for federal and state government, and another to run all operations for the park."

What the Tillinghast biographer and historian for the Tillinghast Association does not list among Burbeck's many accomplishments, still, are the designs of the Black, Blue and Red golf courses.  Design credits for those remain with Tillinghast.

Young makes his case over 80 pages that balance excerpts from newspapers and golf magazines with some personal anecdotes, all weaved between full-page photos and sketches.  Chapters chronicle the conception of the park (for which Moses earns his title of "genius"), descriptions of the courses and the "grand" golf exhibitions hosted in the 1930s and '40s.  The headliners, though, are the chapters devoted to Tillinghast's and Burbeck's intertwined roles during development of the golf courses and completion of the park as a whole.

Among the new evidence Young introduces here is a state employment card that lists the exact dates Tillinghast was on Bethpage grounds offering his services as "consulting architect."  The government document refutes previous claims, including in Whitten's piece, that Tillinghast signed onto the job for a maximum of 15 days.  In fact, he was paid for nearly double that time, and in Young's estimation, the dates line up with the routing, shaping and grow-in of golf courses built at a rapid pace by hundreds of relief workers.

Young also recounts a story first told in his 2004 book, "Golf's Finest Hour: The Open at Bethpage Black."  Just weeks ahead of the 2002 Open, professional golfer and NBC commentator Roger Maltbie stood on the Black's fifth green and made his own contribution to the debate.  "I can tell you one thing for certain," Maltbie declared.  "No one named Burbeck ever designed that hole."

Who did he say that to?  Phil Young, eyewitness to a foursome of Maltbie and three Bethpage regulars playing a taped round for part of the Open broadcast.

ORIGIN OF THE TILLY-BURBECK DEBATE

For nearly 70 years, three of the four "original" Bethpage courses were tied to Tillinghast without dispute.  The new park absorbed the existing Lenox Hills Golf Club, later the Green Course, in 1932, then added his Red, Blue and Black in 1935 and 1936.  A month shy of the highly anticipated, publicly hosted 2002 Open at Bethpage Black, Whitten turned that widely acknowledged history on its head with a finality that struck Young and other Tillinghast supporters.  "[Burbeck] did design Bethpage Black," Written wrote.  "The evidence always has been out there, if anyone had bothered to dig for it."

Whitten's revelation in Golf Digest hinged on the account of Joseph Burbeck Jr., who as a 4-year-old took part in the August 1935 clubhouse grand opening, his presence captured in photographs of a young boy unlocking the new structure with a ceremonial key.  The younger Burbeck told Whitten he recalled long days watching his father pore over blueprints and drafts in the family's home on the park grounds and visiting construction crews hard at work on the new courses.  His father's contributions had been overshadowed by a prominent figure who was barely on site, and so the name "Tillinghast" was not spoken in the Burbeck house, per mother's orders.

These memories formed the foundation of Whitten's argument, backed up by two supposedly smoking guns -- that the courses had already been laid out when Tillinghast was brought on as a 15-day consultant in December 1933, and that a 1959 "official history" published by the parks department says Bethpage's golf courses were "designed and constructed under the direction of Joseph H. Burbeck."

Of the two, the claim that design work had already been done prior to Tillinghast's arrival is the most significant, and would likely settle the debate once and for all.  But that claim is not adequately supported say Whitten's critics.  There is evidence that some pre-Tillinghast work might have been done on the Blue Course, but nobody knows precisely to what degree, and by whom.

Neither Tillinghast nor Burbeck were ever quoted with specific descriptions of what they performed or were hired to do on the golf courses.  Only Tillinghast comes close.  In 1937 he wrote, "It was my very good fortune to be selected by the Commission as its consultant course architect," then lauds Burbeck for his valuable support.  Similar statements appear elsewhere, all of which open the door to other questions that researchers have sought to answer.  What does "consultant" mean in the context of government-hired workers amid a global depression?  What does the design term "laid out" mean when relayed by a 1930s news writer?  Whose word carries more weight -- Tillinghast's, or a reporter speaking for Burbeck, as golf writer Lester Rice did in a 1937 feature?

And that's where the Tillinghast-Burbeck issue bogs down on a rough-covered slope shaped by hearsay, semantics and deconstructions of news reports and public-relations speak.  Quotes culled from articles, golf magazine features and promotional pieces, plus sketches, models and anything bearing Tilly penmanship, have formed for nearly two decades the collective Zapruder film of the golf course architecture field.  Both sides rely on historical evidence that by nature is open to interpretation.   

Will the debate be settled by the time Bethpage hosts the Ryder Cup in 2025?  "No," Young says.  There likely is no document hidden away somewhere that will provide closure.  (One set of design drawings supposedly exists in a government archive, though searches have turned up nothing.)  Even if drawings were found somewhere, chances are they wouldn't have Tillinghast's signature on them anyway, Young says, because that's not always how he worked. 

"This is all there is," according to Young.

BURBECK'S LEGACY

Over time Young's understanding of Burbeck's expansive role at Bethpage has led him to appreciate the longtime superintendent on a whole new level.  "The purpose of this book is to really show what Burbeck did," he says.

When Whitten's piece came out in 2002, Young quickly became the go-to source for a discussion and defense of Tillinghast.  He appeared on CNN, The Golf Channel and was approached by newspapers around the country.  After all, his book, "Golf for the People: Bethpage and the Black," had just been published earlier that spring.

Needless to say, the relationship between Young and Whitten has had a Koepka/DeChambeau vibe.  The two communicated briefly in the wake of Whitten's feature, but neither moved from their position.  Seven years later, Whitten reaffirmed his stance with a second Golf Digest piece in advance of the 2009 Open at Bethpage.  In it he references a 1936 New York Times article sent to him by a "Tillinghast proponent" -- Young -- that seemed to support him as the designer.  "Does that one item convince us that Tillinghast deserves primary credit for Bethpage Black?" Written wrote.  "Nope."  [Whitten did not answer a request for comment from Golf On Long Island.]

What Golf Digest did to Burbeck was a "major injustice," Young writes in his book.  "They ruined Burbeck's legacy.  He was never the 'villain' in this story until 2002."

Young's passion for both Tillinghast and Burbeck is evident in Three Geniuses.  So eager is the author, at times, to present his wealth of information that misidentified years or hole numbers occasionally sneak into the text.  But it doesn't detract from the research.

Though the case will still be open when the Ryder Cup tees off in 2025, perhaps something else will be done by then, something that Bethpage has already done for Tillinghast and Rees Jones.

"I hope the park comes up with a way to honor Burbeck," Young says.  Judging by his respect for Burbeck, it's likely Tillinghast would agree.

"Bethpage State Park and the Three Geniuses Who Created It" can be purchased online at the Golden Age Research website.

[PICTURED -- TOP: Joseph Burbeck; SECOND: A 1935 aerial of the Red, Blue and Black courses.  A polo match is in progress on what is currently Black's first hole.; THIRD: A.W. Tillinghast; FOURTH: Plaques dedicated to Tillinghast and Rees Jones near the Black's first tee.]

Lido Golf Club, famed Macdonald masterpiece, to be recreated in Wisconsin

A replica of Long Island's very own Lido Golf Club is currently under construction with renowned designer Tom Doak at the helm, and will open to members and public guests sometime in 2023 near the Sand Valley Golf Resort in Wisconsin.

Why does the bustling Town of Hempstead municipal layout need a tribute course built halfway across the country, you ask?  Well, it doesn't.  The 1950s-era Robert Trent Jones course abutting Reynolds Channel that draws thousands of Long Islanders each year will remain unique to the barrier island and Lido Beach.

Doak's course near the Sand Valley resort will bring back to life the original Lido Club, the famed C.B. Macdonald course that was built from sandy scratch near the end of World War I, vanished in the early days of World War II, and now lives on in the hearts and minds of golf architecture and history enthusiasts. 

Old Lido -- whose only living remnant is the majestic Lido Towers condo complex that dominates the beach skyline -- has such a following among golf writers and historians that years of chatter about restoration somewhere, anywhere, have breathed the project into existence in central Wisconsin.  The Fried Egg covered the details of the project earlier this week, including a podcast with Doak on both the new course and the original.

So how did Lido jump from the pages of internet forum fodder, grainy photos and newspaper clippings onto the ground in a scenic spot next door to one of America's modern destination golf resorts?  It took more than the course's historical charm and romance.  First, Lido was considered by several writers of the early 1900s to be one of the finest American courses ever built, so its recreation, Doak says in the Fried Egg podcast, was worthy of consideration on its strategic merits. 

But much of the legwork and inspiration came from an unlikely source.  Peter Flory, a Chicago-area golfer with a deep interest in lost golf courses and a fluency in virtual-golf software, took those archived photos and clippings and got to work -- hundreds of hours worth.  Previously, Flory told Golf On Long Island in 2018, he had dabbled in recreating lost courses in his area at Olympia Fields and Mill Road Farm. 

Lido, though, offered a different challenge.  Over the course of the next two-plus years, Flory posted incredibly detailed renderings of all 18 Lido holes on the Golf Club Atlas forums, where golf historians and designers, including Doak, discussed and scrutinized his virtual fairways, hazards and greens.  Using aerials, models, ground-level snapshots and news descriptions, Flory was able to digitally resurrect Lido's slopes and undulations, in some cases using details like shadow lengths and angles in old photos to estimate the precise dimensions of mounds, bunkers and other features.

[PICTURED RIGHT: A 1933 Brooklyn Daily Eagle sketch of Macdonald's #4 "Channel" hole, one of the course's most notable designs -- and the inspiration for today's double-fairway 16th.]

Flory's work drew the attention of Michael and Chris Keiser of Sand Valley, who used the digital imagery to gauge interest from future members.  When it opens in 2023, The Lido -- renderings and descriptions available on its newly launched website -- will be open to members and resort guests.

Back here on Long Island, the Lido muni lives on just to the east of its famous predecessor.  The original Lido spread from channel to ocean on land that is now occupied by Long Beach High School and residential streets.  For more historical context, take a look at these past Golf On Long Island features:

• A brief look back at the original Lido Golf Club in its "centennial" season
• Street Names: The Ghosts of Long Island Golf's Past, Part 2 (Lido Club)
• Original Lido Club featured on Golf Channel, golf history podcast
• Newsday slideshow features 11 places that were formerly golf courses
• Closer Look: Lido Golf Club #16

The Lido Club is also prominently featured in the photo-history book "Images of America: Long Island Golf" by GOLI's Phil Carlucci.  Follow the preceding link for more info or click the book image at the top of the page.

Origins: Bergen Point Golf Course

Golf On Long Island's "Origins" series explores the history and development of those local golf courses whose backstory is a bit more unique than most.  Stay tuned for more as the season progresses.

******

At first glance there's not a whole lot that's noteworthy about the 1972 opening of Bergen Point Golf Course in West Babylon.  It can be summed up pretty succinctly:

In the mid 1960s, Suffolk County announced plans to develop a series of public parks and outdoor recreation venues, including new golf courses in West Babylon, West Sayville and Riverhead.  Across Long Island, the biggest course-building boom since the 1920s was underway, and dozens of public and private golf layouts had sprouted up since the turn of the decade.  Suffolk's plan set the stage for a new wave of Long Island municipal golf courses.  Its West Babylon course would be built on 168 boggy acres near Great South Bay; in West Sayville, the new muni would take over an old bayside estate, and the Riverhead site would be laid out over what was, way back when, an Indian Island duck farm.

By May 1968, West Sayville was ready to welcome Suffolk County residents and their guests.  It was the design work of William Mitchell -- long known as golf's "public defender" -- and the following season, Mitchell's eighteen at Bergen Point was just about ready to go.  And that's when the Bergen Point story diverges from the norm.  Why did it take until 1972 for the course to open to the public?

You know that big treatment plant that separates Bergen Point from Great South Bay?

Around the same time Mitchell and building crews were putting the final touches on the county's new municipal golf facility, Suffolk's attention was focused less on contoured greens and more on construction of the taxpayer-funded sewage treatment plant right next door.  The plant was going up along the water south of the course, with original plans calling for it to be partially built over the bay on landfill.  Golf at Bergen Point would have to wait until the plant was complete.

But during construction, $10 million in cost overruns and a looming fight with conservationists turned the landfill part of the proposal sour.  For the much lower price tag of $300,000, the county could simply extend the plant property away from the bay instead -- onto 30 acres already occupied by the new golf course.

So in 1971, Suffolk County paid that price -- more than half of the original $500,000 cost to build the new muni from scratch -- to modify a golf course that, before it ever opened for play, lost three of its southernmost holes and parts of others.  If you've ever thought to yourself that the holes near the bay have a bit of an awkward feel, specifically the two sharp-turning dogleg par-5s, this late-stage redesign is likely the reason.

Bergen opened in 1972 with some added acreage on the north end, which today is the site of the course's driving range.

[PICTURED -- A map that ran alongside a Newsday article on January 16, 1971 with the headline, "Revised Sewer Plant Will Cut Golf Course." (Courtesy Newsday)]

OTHER POSTS IN THE "ORIGINS" SERIES:
Bay Park -- June 2019
Town of Oyster Bay -- March 2019
The Golf Club at Middle Bay -- January 2019
Wind Watch Golf & Country Club -- May 2018

A half-century in East Rock: Nassau muni Bay Park in the midst of its 50th-anniversary season

It's a special season at Bay Park Golf Course, though you won't find any milestones announced on a banner billowing over the park entrance or stretched across the facade of the course's faceless, utilitarian brick clubhouse.  There are no anniversary logos printed on hats and polos, no leather-bound books to chronicle the course's half-century beside the bay in East Rockaway.  No turn-back-the-clock green-fee specials with yesteryear pricing, for sure.  And if even a small handful of local golfers are aware that Bay Park made its debut the same year as Joe Namath's guarantee and the Miracle Mets, it likely won't come up in conversation. 

What you can bank on though is a scanned Leisure Pass, a point in the direction of the first tee and another day of basic nine-hole golf with local youngsters, seniors and all the groups of novices in between.

Bay Park has quietly gone about its business serving Nassau golfers since 1969, making this its 50th-anniversary season.  Tucked away at the southern edge of a recently rejuvenated Bay Park complex that's just about unrecognizable to even the longest of longtime visitors, the golf course itself remains a familiar throwback, its hilltop first and second greens standing tall behind a chain-link fence, leading golfers toward the bay.

With the golf world slowly readjusting its focus more toward accessible public and municipal golf for all, there's a certain charm to functional Bay Park and its Nassau County Parks brethren at North Woodmere, Cantiague and Christopher Morley.  Bay Park is free of pizzazz.  There are no dramatic, stylishly shadowed photos of its greens, few travel more than a couple of minutes to play it, and those who do swing by don't record their visit with pristinely filtered social-media tales.  It's simply golf pared down to its core -- grandkids learning the game with grandfathers, little sister swinging alongside big brother, groups of young friends and groups of seniors, all playing nine holes over 1,900-plus mostly flat yards at the neighborhood golf course.

Bay Park opened for play in 1969 on the site of a former dump with green fees of $1.25 on weekdays and $2 on weekends.  The course's debut wasn't without some Long Island-style political drama -- in December 1968, it was announced that Bay Park's spring opening would be postponed due to budget cuts.  So that spring and summer, with the course already built and prepared for play, it sat empty except for a crew completing the clubhouse building and a single greenskeeper tending to the grass.  Meanwhile, local residents and community groups bombarded the office of Nassau County Executive Eugene Nickerson with complaints, per Newsday.

When a reworked budget "found" some money to cover operating costs, the golf course opened in late summer.  Unlike today's course, the 1969 version was equipped with light stanchions that would allow for night play.  "I used to hit those poles all the time," says William Kienke, who lived near the course on Rhame Avenue.  "Big wooden poles like the ones on the way to Jones Beach.  Great ricochet."

Another East Rockaway resident at the time recalls how it was impossible to track the flight of the ball once it went above the lights during nighttime rounds.  Night golf at Bay Park, however, was very short-lived -- due to issues with water pressure, soil moisture and wiring, the lights rarely worked as designed.  "The lights were terrible and didn't last too long," he says.  "After they took the lights down, they left the poles up for years, which made bad shots even worse."

The course has seen its highs and lows over the half century.  It opened near the tail end of the 1960s/early-1970s Long Island golf growth spurt that introduced dozens of modern public and private courses and nearly all of today's county municipal layouts.  Long Island began to shed courses through the 1980s, but once the Tiger Woods era boomed in the late '90s, Bay Park, like most other courses, was jammed.  As Tiger took the golf world by storm, waits to get on Bay Park's 299-yard opening par-4 were often measured in hours. 

Valley Stream native Matt Krantweiss played Bay Park in between two-a-day soccer practices nearby at Valley Stream South High School in the late summers of 1997 and 1998.  "After morning practices we'd go over to Bay Park to get nine holes in before we had to be back in the afternoon," he says.  "The wait was so long, with so many groups waiting to tee off on each hole, we rarely could finish nine holes."

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy took down trees on the course and littered it with debris from boats docked nearby, along with other courses on the south shore that were submerged by ocean and bay waters.

Today, just about everything about the park has changed, including the access road that leads visitors down toward the course, though once on the fairways and greens, there's not much to tip off whether it's 1969 or 2019 -- save for the lack of light poles, of course.

For more on Bay Park, check out the course flyover.

Town of Oyster Bay Golf Course set to ring in its 30th-anniversary season

It was still far short of sunrise in the early-morning hours of April 18, 1989, yet a line of cars stretched near the gates of what had long been a leafy, bucolic private estate at Jericho Turnpike and Southwoods Road in Woodbury.  Inside those cars, dozens of local golfers sat waiting to secure a spot on tee at the first Long Island golf course built in a decade.

Once the sun brightened the sky over northern Nassau, the Town of Oyster Bay Golf Course officially joined the Long Island golf landscape, welcomed by hundreds of golfers -- nearly 300, per a Newsday recap the following day -- who gave the Tom Fazio design rave reviews.  This year is the municipal course's 30th anniversary.  Opening day is Tuesday, April 2.

This year's golfers will find some subtle differences around the course from when they last left it in the fall.  Cart paths have been added or repaved throughout the course, and dozens of trees were trimmed or removed to open up areas of play. 

"The goal of the trimming project was to make the course more player-friendly, less difficult for the average player and to provide more sunlight exposure on the course to achieve better grass growth," according to Oyster Bay town supervisor Joseph Saladino.  "The Town also purchased new golf carts and implemented a plan to purchase ten new golf carts annually to replenish the fleet.  Additional projects planned for the near future include improving tee boxes and bunkers, and refining areas near and around the course's water features."

Saladino said all improvement projects are being performed under the expertise of the course's new greenskeeper, Greg Kolodinsky, and new consultant Steve Matuza.

Despite heavy play, its name designer and a variety of truly impressive holes, Oyster Bay carries on in relative anonymity among outsiders, rarely spoken of in conversations about Long Island's best publics.  Perhaps it's due to past restrictions on advance tee times and what used to be a convoluted tangle of green fees and membership rates that ultimately made a trip to Woodbury cost-prohibitive for the curious one- or two-time visitor.  Or maybe its location just five miles north of one of the most recognizable public golf facilities in the nation at Bethpage leaves it overshadowed.  Town government seems eager to draw a more rightful amount of attention to its course -- Newsday reported in March that the town will run advertisements in New York Mets game programs at Citi Field during the 2019 season.  And for the first time in the course's history, tee times can now be booked online and are available for both members (30 days in advance) and non-members (seven days).

Those who do know the course are aware of its hilly, challenging layout that includes one of Long Island's most daunting par-4s.  The fourth doglegs to a blind landing area on the right before marching dead uphill to an obscured, triple-tiered green (pictured left).  The hill itself is covered in rough-length grass and features a long, snaking bunker.  Later, the 16th makes a harder dogleg turn to the right, this time leaving golfers with a full, unobstructed view on the approach, which features an elevated green cut into a rolling hillside (pictured below).  Oyster Bay's par-3s all feature either dramatically sloped greens, notable elevation changes or intrusive bunkering, if not some combination of the three.   

Part of what made the debut of the Oyster Bay course so highly anticipated 30 years ago was the era in which it came to be.  Locally, the 1980s was associated only with course closures, not openings.  The historic Links Club in Roslyn, an exclusive 1919 C.B. Macdonald course, was sold that decade with development of condos in the plans.  The failed, celebrity-boasting "superclub" experiment at Muttontown's Charter Oaks in the late 1960s ended quietly in 1982 as a course called Fox Run.  The course-building resurgence of the 1960s and early '70s -- which introduced many of Long Island's current municipal facilities -- had slowed by the time Swan Lake Golf Course arrived in Manorville in 1979.  In the years that followed, the climate was simply not conducive to golf development.  Even a decade later, Oyster Bay's early success was viewed merely as a one-off.  In his recap of Oyster Bay's opening day, Newsday's Mark Herrmann cautioned that Long Island's shiny new course was "perhaps its last for a long time."  Of course, few could have predicted the Tiger-fueled building craze that would arrive soon after.

Adding to the excitement was the history of the grounds.  Like many other post-1950s golf courses on Long Island -- especially those around Nassau's "Gold Coast" -- Oyster Bay's fairways and greens sprung from a repurposed private estate.  "Woodlands" was built in 1918 and designed by noted architect William Adams Delano.  In 1928 it was sold to industrialist, philanthropist and politician Andrew Mellon, who gifted the 121-acre estate to his daughter, Ailsa, as a wedding present.  Ailsa, a philanthropist described by the New York Times in her 1969 obituary as the "richest woman in the U.S.," married diplomat David Bruce and remained there until her death.  Oyster Bay Town bought the Bruce estate in 1979.  According to Newsday, supervisor Joseph Colby -- whose name was added to the course in 2013 -- first visualized using the grounds for golf during a visit to Woodlands.

Players don't venture into the estate house -- now a wedding and event venue called The Mansion at Oyster Bay -- during their visits, though they do get a brief taste of old estate life late in their round.  The par-3 12th tees off directly in front of an elegant brick patio at the rear of the mansion.  The tiny 117-yard hole is not as easy as it seems, with a bunker in front and a green that slopes to a hidden rear water hazard, plus the chance of cocktail-hour guests watching over the shot.

The Town of Oyster Bay Golf Course also includes the Lucas Golf Center, which operates the driving range, pro shop and private instruction and is already open for the season.  

For more on Oyster Bay, visit the Golf On Long Island course flyover.

Origins: The Golf Club at Middle Bay

Golf On Long Island's "Origins" series explores the history and development of those local golf courses whose backstory is a bit more unique than most.  Stay tuned for more as the season progresses.

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Ralph Trost, chronicler of local golf history for the early-20th-century Brooklyn Daily Eagle, summed up the "epidemic of golf-course building" in the late stages of the Roaring Twenties and the dawn of the Depression era like this:

"One day you see a farm, a wood or meadowland.  A few days afterward a sign pops up announcing a new golf course and before long that sign is gone and in its stead one sees acres of plowed land, the rounded forms of greens rising from the flatness."

Golf courses exploded during the booming 1920s, but clubs that waited until late in the decade or into the '30s to post those signs ahead of new layouts found themselves cornered by financial crisis right from the opening drive.  Some persevered, though most were short-lived.  One of the rare "success" stories remains in Oceanside. 

The Golf Club at Middle Bay knows plenty about perseverance.  At the beginning of this current decade, it was a 55-year-old private club.  Two years later Hurricane Sandy arrived, inflicting millions of dollars worth of damage to the grounds, clubhouse and equipment, and the club made the decision to close in the face of bankruptcy.  Within months, a former member resurrected the club as the semi-private, publicly accessible South Bay Country Club.  After only one season, issues with the lease led to another brief closure, a new operator and a new identity as The Golf Club at Middle Bay.

But rewind to the early 1930s, when Trost's description of the course-building rush served as the lede to a story about yet another new course, this one called the Oceanside Golf & Country Club, opened in 1931 on both sides of Waukena Avenue at its intersection with Skillman.  The course had actually been in the works since 1929, mere months before the stock-market crash.  John Duncan Dunn designed it, and despite its proximity to the bay, there was only one water hole on the course, and its hazard was artificial.

"This new course is essentially inland in character," Trost described during an April 1931 tour.  "No back-breaking carries, no awe-inspiring water holes like ... at Lido.  But there'll be wind.  And coolness.  And trouble.  Depend upon that."

And so Oceanside set out on its quest -- one that proved fatal for many new clubs of the era -- to provide golf for its members while powering through the Depression, which would be followed soon after, of course, by World War II and the subsequent rush on land development.  The club hosted the 1938 Metropolitan PGA, and at least a few times bounced between public course and private facility.  Its original pro left after a decade to fight in the War, then immediately returned to his post after being wounded and serving four years overseas.  There were ownership changes and requisite mid-1940s chatter about home building on the site.  The layout had enough notoriety among Long Island courses that Pee Wee Reese and some Brooklyn Dodger teammates headed to Oceanside for a round after a 1950 rainout at Ebbets Field. 

Amazingly, despite the general turmoil of the day, there were some rumblings about constructing a new extension of the course closer to the bay.  Trost, two decades after his preview of Oceanside, reported in the Eagle that the new layout would go by the name Golfbay, to be designed by Alfred Tull. 

Meanwhile there were other more ominous rumblings regarding a threat that would ultimately take out Oceanside's neighbor in Baldwin, then part of Oceanside itself -- schools.  New neighborhoods require new schools, and the rise of post-WWII suburbs meant open season on open space.  By 1951 the Oceanside School District set its sights on the golf course and carried the support of local taxpayers.  The following year, Baldwin's Willowbrook Club (formerly Milburn) on Grand Avenue was bulldozed to make way for Baldwin High School, and Oceanside would soon lose the same fight.  Thirty-five acres of the course north of Waukena were lopped off, soon to become the grounds of Oceanside High.

Still, Oceanside trudged forward.  "Rather than throwing in the sponge when Oceanside High School takes its 35-acre bite," wrote Newsday's Bill Searby, "[the club] will continue to operate on a limited basis for the rest of [the 1952] season and plans to reopen as a better-than-ever country club in '53."

Gone were the first six holes (and about half its members to Engineers CC in Roslyn, per Newsday), but the club made use of its remaining 12, all while preparing to build southward over the expansive marshland that separated the course from the bay.  "The chore" of building on filled-in marsh "is a mountainous one," Searby wrote, but confidence in the revamped course -- to be called Middle Bay -- was high.  Trost returned in 1954 to give yet another preview during the course's grow-in phase.

"The new course ... will be rugged and strictly seaside," Trost wrote.  "The wind will be the dictator, really controlling par, yardage and the type of shots."  He concluded, "Altogether Middle Bay won't look a bit like Oceanside.  The name change is fitting."

Middle Bay, designed by Alfred Tull, opened in full as a private club in 1955.  Tull touched up the new holes over the first several seasons, making modifications as irrigation and saltwater spray required.  It remained private until 2012 when Sandy struck.

Golfers who play Middle Bay today often take note of the contrast between the open bayfront holes and the tighter, tree-lined fairways away from the water.  The latter, those parkland-style holes, are distant remnants of Oceanside, albeit altered over time.

Modifications and alterations continue at today's Middle Bay.  Each season since its post-Sandy rebirth, the course slowly brought back its driving range, added a cafe and installed new paths and bulkheads.  Earlier this year it leveled its 1960s-era clubhouse, and a new one is expected to open sometime in 2020.

[PICTURED -- TOP RIGHT: A newspaper sketch of the clubhouse prior to Oceanside's 1931 opening; MIDDLE RIGHT: Oceanside survived the tumultuous 1930s and sought new members, as seen in this 1941 Newsday ad; MIDDLE LEFT: A 1952 ad, not long before the course was partially consumed by Oceanside High; BOTTOM RIGHT: A present-day shot of The Golf Club at Middle Bay's signature par-3, looking over the water toward Point Lookout.]

OTHER POSTS IN THE "ORIGINS" SERIES:
Wind Watch Golf & Country Club -- May 2018

Origins: Wind Watch Golf & Country Club

Golf On Long Island's "Origins" series explores the history and development of those local golf courses whose backstory is a bit more unique than most.  Stay tuned for more as the season progresses.

******

After a generation of stagnant growth on the Long Island golf landscape, the golf boom of the 1960s dotted the local area with a variety of new clubs and courses.  Within this sudden rush of course-building was the rapid spread of practical, publicly accessible golf facilities.  Many of today's county-run municipal courses and daily-fee layouts emerged during this period, built on vacant or acquired land in the late-'60s and early '70s to serve the growing communities quickly filling space across Nassau and Suffolk.

In stark contrast to these modest golf outposts were a few ambitious yet ultimately short-lived spectacles, complete with big-name backing or A-list attractions on top of a general air of sophistication.  Charter Oaks, dubbed a "superclub" for wealthy businessmen upon its conception in 1969, filed for bankruptcy before it ever opened on a converted Muttontown estate.  Ken Venturi was to be golf pro and director.  He was gone by the time Charter Oaks opened instead as a family-oriented club that fizzled out a decade later under the name Fox Run.

Farther east, in 1971, Colonie Hill transformed a wooded tract on one of Long Island's highest points into a sprawling complex featuring a massive catering facility, a small hotel and an 18-hole golf course.  It didn't take long before the venue became synonymous with glitz and glamour, with an opulent ballroom capable of holding 5,000-seat black-tie affairs.  Colonie Hill found itself among the Island's leading wedding and special-event venues and a favorite facility for political dinners and rallies, especially among Nassau and Suffolk Republicans. 

With so many seats to fill year-round, Colonie Hill needed attractions beyond filet mignon and luxurious china glistening under sparkling chandeliers.  Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio raised money for charity playing in events.  Wayne Newton and Tom Jones sang.  The course became a stop on the pro tour in 1977, attracting the LPGA with its huge facility, and the leading players with an uncommonly high purse, for a tournament dubbed the Long Island Charity Classic.  Bob Hope and Sammy Davis Jr. played in the pro-am, then teamed up to perform a comedy routine on the eve of the competition.  With their pitching days behind them, Whitey Ford and Ralph Branca swatted golf balls in the pro-am, as well.  So did Rod Gilbert and Denis Potvin.  The list went on. 

Behind the scenes, though, the facility buckled under the weight of financial burden, nearly from the beginning.  Newsday outlined Colonie Hill's struggles in a 1988 obituary on the complex, which offered hints that, in anticipation of legalized gambling, the facility was originally intended to be a casino.  Without it, the revenue streams were limited.  The catering hall closed on New Year's Eve 1986, per Newsday, and was demolished the following year, while the golf course was eventually left neglected and overgrown.

Developers soon announced plans for a new 10-story hotel on the site, in addition to a reconstructed golf course with townhouses clustered inside the layout.  Course designer Joe Lee, whose work can be found throughout Florida and the Southeast, was hired to transform Colonie Hill's 18 into Wind Watch.  Lee remodeled and rerouted holes, eliminated others, and altered the character of the course by adding several water hazards to what had previously been a dry back-and-forth layout. 

Later in the 1990s, architect Stephen Kay modified the Lee design to make room for the long-delayed residential phase of the development, to be built in the center of the course.  Kay's most recognizable contribution is the current 18th, a 90-degree dogleg par-4 climbing uphill to a triple-tiered green. 

In 2011, the Holiday Organization sold then-titled Hamlet Wind Watch to ClubCorp, which dropped the Hamlet name from both Wind Watch and sister course Willow Creek in Mount Sinai.  The holes were reordered to their current position the following year.

For more on Wind Watch, check out the course flyover.

[PICTURED -- ABOVE LEFT: An ad in the 8/16/1973 edition of The Bethpage Tribune publicizes one of Colonie Hill's many celebrity outings for charity, this one featuring a dinner with Bob Hope. (Courtesy: NYS Historic Newspapers); ABOVE RIGHT: The par-3 sixth (formerly #15) plays over one of the ponds introduced when Joe Lee redesigned Colonie Hill into today's Wind Watch.]