Golf on Long Island

Double Play spring special again on offer at Cherry Creek's Woods and Links courses

Cherry Creek's "Double Play" spring special will be back in 2019. 

Double Play cards are available for purchase at the Woods and Links clubhouses, entitling players to discount rounds at the two Riverhead courses.   For $75 golfers can play one 18-hole round at each of the two courses with cart included.  The deal is valid for weekday rounds from April 1 through May 17.  (Rounds can be played on separate days.)

For more information, call the Woods at (631) 506-0777 or the Links at (631) 369-6500.  And for details on the two Riverhead courses, check out the Woods and Links flyovers.

St. Patrick's Day "Shamrock Open" on the holiday slate at Pine Ridge

Pine Ridge Golf Club will ring in the March holiday and the new 2019 golf season with a special "Shamrock Open" set to tee off on St. Patrick's Day morning.

Shotgun tee time at the Coram course is 11 a.m., and when the round is over, the celebration continues with a late-afternoon dinner party.  The $65 entry fee covers golf and Irish-themed festivities, which include beer, wine, live music and raffles.  Party-only guests can also register for $35.  Sign up online at the Pine Ridge website.

For more on Pine Ridge, check out the course flyover.

Second annual Spring Lake Championship scheduled for April 26-28

After a successful inaugural match-play championship in 2018, Spring Lake Golf Club in Middle Island is planning a second tourney this April with a bigger field and condensed play.

The 2019 Spring Lake Championship, open to golfers of all skill levels, will take place Friday, April 26 through Sunday, April 28.  Unlike last year's double-weekend event, this year's edition will be held over one long weekend, starting with a seeding round on Friday.  First round and semifinals will be played on Saturday with the final matches scheduled for Sunday. 

Entry fee is $420 per two-person team and covers up to four 18-hole rounds in best-ball format (two rounds guaranteed), in addition to range balls and a Friday evening dinner with open bar.  This year's field will be expanded to 56 teams divided into Men's, Women's and Senior divisions.  The three divisions will include championship and lower flights each comprised of eight teams.

The seeding round will tee off at 1:00 p.m. on Friday.  First-round matches will begin at 7:00 a.m. Saturday, with semifinal matches to follow in the afternoon.  Championship matches will begin at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

Prizes will be awarded as pro-shop credit to winning teams in each flight.  All rules and format details are listed on the official registration form available on the Spring Lake website.  Sign up by submitting the registration form or call the Spring Lake pro shop at (631) 924-5115.

Mill Pond planning pre-St. Patrick's Day outing on March 15

In addition to parades, green-tinted bagels and adult beverages, St. Patrick's Day is known, at least to local golfers, as the unofficial start of holiday-themed outing season.  A handful of Long Island courses celebrate the dawn of a new golfing year by inviting players to chilled fairways for golf and a side of corned beef and cabbage.

Mill Pond Golf Course will hold its annual St. Patrick's Day Golf Classic a bit early, with a 10:00 a.m. shotgun tee time scheduled for Friday, March 15.  Format for the outing is four-person scramble.  Entry fee is $79 (pre-payment required) and covers golf, cart and range balls in addition to a hot Irish buffet, draft beer and wine.  Prizes will be awarded to the top three teams and winners of closest-to-pin and long-drive contests.

To register for the St. Patrick's Day Golf Classic, call (631) 732-8249.  In the event of inclement weather, the outing will be canceled and all registrants will be refunded.

For more on Mill Pond, check out the course flyover.

2019 public golf course reopenings on Long Island

We're almost out of the winter free of blizzards, clear of long blocks of time with closed courses.  Offseason golfers have had plenty of days to tee it up while the rest stay put until spring.

Well, spring now appears on the horizon, and with March about to arrive, it's reopening season on Long Island.  The big reopening story in 2019, of course, is Bethpage State Park, which is hosting the PGA Championship in May.  That's great news for fans of professional golf's major tournaments, but a buzzkill for locals who'd rather have the Bethpage courses to themselves come spring.  There will be more on the reopening plan at Bethpage as the spring draws closer.

As for the rest, it's mostly reopen-for-business as usual.  Long Island's seasonal golf courses get back up to speed from mid-March through early April.  By the time The Masters whets everyone's golf appetite, most if not all area courses are typically open for play.

The following is a list of tentative 2019 opening dates for Long Island's seasonal golf courses.  (Year-round courses remain open as the weather allows and are not included in this list.)  Courses will be added or updated as information becomes available.  Be sure to check back through February and March for the latest info.

*All dates listed below are subject to change.  Call the courses directly for updated dates and times.

GOLF COURSE REOPENINGS:

• West Sayville -- March 12
• Timber Point -- March 15
• Bergen Point -- March 15
• Indian Island -- March 15
• Christopher Morley Park -- OPEN
• Bethpage Green -- March 16
• Bethpage Yellow -- March 16 (nine holes only)
• Brentwood CC -- March 16 
  
• Holbrook CC -- March 16
• Woods Course at Cherry Creek -- March 20
• Harbor Links - Championship/Executive -- March 23
• Bethpage Red -- March 29
• Town of Oyster Bay GC-- April 2
• Bethpage Black -- April 13 (restricted play) / May 25 (normal play)
• Bay Park -- April 15

The following courses typically reopen in mid-March:

• Sumpwams Creek Par-3

The following courses typically reopen in late March or early April:

• Glen Cove
• The Golf Club at Middle Bay
  
• Eisenhower Red
• Poxabogue

[This post was updated on March 15, 2019.]

Early Bird discount available for 2019 Free Golf Program

Golfing Magazine's annual Free Golf Program is open for registration, and if it's still too cold for most players to hit the fairways, then it means the mag's Early Bird discount is available.  From now through April, Long Island golfers who take part in the program can save even more on heavily discounted green fees.

Participants in the Free Golf Program receive a one-year subscription to the Hicksville-based magazine, as well as a certificate that entitles holders to discount golf at nearly a dozen Long Island courses, for $49.  Early Bird subscribers get in on the deal for just $39.

The 2018 program included nine courses -- Brentwood Country Club, Cherry Creek's Woods Course, Gull Haven, Holbrook Country Club, Island's End, Middle Bay, Mill Pond, Rolling Oaks and the Executive Course at Harbor Links.  In past seasons, the program has also included free sessions at indoor golf facilities.

Once the courses for the 2019 program are set, a certificate is sent to each subscriber, valid for a single use at each of the participating facilities.  Only a cart fee is due on the day of play (other restrictions on dates and tee times may apply). 

The certificate also gives subscribers the opportunity to sample golf courses around the Northeast.  It is valid at dozens of courses across upstate New York and New England.  A full list of courses on and off Long Island will be available when the program officially tees off in May.  Certificates are valid until the end of the year.

Visit the Golfing Magazine website or call (516) 822-5446 to sign up.

Sunken Meadow planning "Halfway There" golf outing on Super Bowl Sunday

Rare is the golf outing scheduled during the winter months on a Long Island course.  Sunken Meadow, however, is preparing to open up the playbook a bit, fittingly on Super Bowl Sunday.

The state-park muni plans to mark the midpoint of winter with a "Halfway There" event (yes, outside) on Sunday, February 3.  For $50, golfers can layer up and head to Kings Park for nine holes along with food, drinks and prizes.  Cart and range balls are included.

Tee time is 12 noon.  Sunken Meadow staff will monitor the forecast and cancel in advance if necessary.  Register in person at the Sunken Meadow pro shop or e-mail themeadows@pga.com to reserve a spot.

Street Names: The Ghosts of Long Island Golf's Past, Part 4 -- Sayville Golf 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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Like the previous entry in this street-name series, a relatively unknown course ill-prepared to pull its way through the Depression era left its mark on the local map with a Fairway Drive.  The only difference between the Valley Stream Country Club and this feature's Sayville Golf Club is that the Sayville neighborhood that replaced the golf grounds is left with two Fairways instead of one.

Sayville Golf Club debuted in 1903 during an era of course-building that served members of new and established country clubs as well as hotel guests and city dwellers.  Sayville was more of the latter -- it was one of several areas on Long Island's south shore known as a resort destination, and it would also develop into a popular community for summer residents from Brooklyn.  The course itself was built on a small parcel along Great South Bay, with nine holes covering around 30 acres along Candee Avenue. 

Previews included the type of exaggeration standard for the era.  "It is said that the turf comes as near to the typical Scotch soil as any to be found on Long Island," said a July 1903 write-up in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  Charter members paid $10 for the season and non-members could play for 50 cents, according to the 2015 book Sayville and West Sayville: Pictured Through the Years.

It wasn't until July 1922 that a clubhouse was built on the property, offering the services of a country club in addition to golf.  Prior to that, a second course opened on a piece of farmland north of the original course on Montauk Highway and shared space with a tennis club.  Throughout the 1920s, the various clubs starred as lively social gathering spots serving well-known families from the local area and parts of the city.

But as the common story goes, the Depression set in and bent many of Long Island's less prominent clubs until they broke.  Sayville was sold in 1935 to a developer who planned a neighborhood of "Elizabethan and New England-style" homes, per the Eagle.  In the golf course's place sat about a half-dozen new residential roads, two of which -- Fairway Drive East and Fairway Drive West -- live on today sized and spaced like parallel par-4s.

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

Newspaper images courtesy of Brooklyn Daily Eagle via Newspapers.com

2018-19 Winter Rates Roundup I

The first weekend of 2019 is about to arrive toting temperatures somewhere in the 40s along with a little early rain.  Sounds like favorable winter golf conditions to us.

Golf On Long Island loves winter golf, and you should too, if only for the chance to play quality courses with limited crowds for a discount price.  Below is a sampling of this offseason's 18-hole rates at area courses.  For full details about rates and course conditions, contact the course pro shops or visit their websites.  Note that these do not represent discounted rates at all courses.

For offseason rates from previous years and a primer on winter golf in general, refer to Winter Golf on Long Island: 2018-19 Edition and our Winter Golf on Long Island overview.

• Cherry Creek Links:  $25 to walk and $35 to ride on weekdays; $35 to walk, $45 to ride on weekends and holidays (nine-hole rates also available)
• Rock Hill:  $32 to walk and $45 to ride on weekdays; $42 to walk, $55 to ride on weekends; all days $35 to ride after 2 p.m.
• Spring Lake: $44 to walk, $56 to ride weekday mornings, $38/$46 in the afternoon; $48 to walk, $65 to ride weekends until 11 a.m., $38/$50 after (nine-hole rates also available)

Winter Golf On Long Island: 2018-19 Edition

The winter of 2018-19 has arrived with buckets of rain that will keep Long Island's offseason golfers away from the course for a saturated day or two, though it could always be worse.  Drop the temperature by 20 degrees or so and turn that rain into snow and you have a dreaded December blizzard potent enough to wipe a winter golf season right off the calendar. 

Scrutinizing the snow forecasts is as common to local winter golfers as frost delays, hand warmers and jamming tees (unsuccessfully) into frozen turf.  For those who can bear the brisk breezes, the wide-open fairways and green-fee discounts are worth the slight discomfort. 

Winter golf on Long Island isn't for everyone -- most Long Island golfers call it a season long before Thanksgiving -- but it's nothing to sneeze at (the sneezing might begin a day or two later, though).  Ground conditions usually hold up until the first prolonged snow cover, and the empty tee sheets mean you can play in peace or bring a newcomer to the course to get a first taste of live play with no pressure from trailing groups.  Rounds are cheaper, too.

The winter scene is slightly different this year.  With the PGA Championship coming up at Bethpage State Park in May, only one course -- the Blue -- will remain open full time over the winter.  The Yellow Course, typically Bethpage's other winter option, is undergoing PGA-related preparation that will keep it either closed or shortened to nine holes. 

See also: Winter Golf on Long Island overview

Elsewhere, the handful of seasonal golf courses have already closed or are preparing to shut down for the winter.  Most of them will reopen in March.  The rest keep the tees open year-round.  To keep winter golfers up to date on playing options around the area, Golf On Long Island will periodically post available discount rates and specials through the offseason.  At some courses, winter rates can be as low as two bucks a hole.  Some include lunch.  Check back for updated specials throughout the winter.

In addition, as Long Island golf courses very slowly begin to dip their toes in the social-media pool, a few have made life a little easier for winter customers.  Munis like Bethpage (@BethpageGolf on Twitter) and Sunken Meadow State Park (@TheMeadowsPGA on Facebook) regularly post updates on frost delays, opening times and course conditions.  Other public courses send rate updates and open tee times by e-mail blast.  

For a full primer on offseason golf, check out the Winter Golf on Long Island page, which will feature some of this season's special rates in addition to offers from previous years.