Golf on Long Island

Rebranded Sandy Pond Links to reopen in March under new ownership

Riverhead's Sandy Pond Golf Course is taking a rare winter break this offseason, and when it reopens in March, it will do so with a new name, a modernized logo and an ownership group looking to blend the old with the new.  Brian Stark, one of the new controlling owners of the rebranded Sandy Pond Links, plans to restore some of the features he recalls from his youth, when the small par-3 course on Roanoke Avenue was in its infancy. 

And the way he sees it, one of the most effective ways to bring the course back to its roots is by reaching down and pulling them up.

"We've been in the ponds, removing the reeds from the ground instead of just cutting them back, so the water is clear like it used to be," says Stark, who worked at Sandy Pond while growing up nearby in the late '70s.  "When I was a kid, the third hole had a clear pond, and there were sand dunes and a big green up on the hill."

The 2023 season will be one of change at the course, including in the layout itself, the facilities and the amenities, but it will retain the quaint East End vibe it's been known for since it opened a half-century ago.

Previous owners Ken Weinstein and Chris Wahlers "built a great clientele," Stark says, since they took over operation of the course in 2012.  "They brought in leagues and outings, they have a few members.  There is a real religious following here."

On the course, much of the focus will be on expanding the greens to their original size.  "We're going to bring back the contours of the original greens," Stark says.  "You can still see areas where the contours were lost, and how the greens have shrunk significantly over time.  They used to have more character and pin positions." 

Stark, one of the original owners of the neighboring Long Island National Golf Club, also wants to reintroduce some of the course's original sand-dune features.  Sandy Pond was built out of an old sand quarry, after all.

The orientation of the course will change too, with the ninth hole flipping to the top of the scorecard as Sandy Pond Links' new opener.  (The other eight holes will move down a slot.)  That modification is being made to accommodate a new clubhouse to be built on the north side of the property near the current ninth tee.  Plans there include a simulator, an outdoor patio and beer and wine service.  Food trucks, a common sight at wineries and breweries in the Riverhead area, could eventually be part of the offerings as well.

Most noticeable on that end of the property will be the addition of a miniature golf course, which is currently pending approval by the Town of Riverhead.  Stark hopes it will be ready by the fall.

Even though the course's longtime shack (and its famous green-fee dropbox) will eventually become part of Sandy Pond's past, the new owners don't expect the facility to lose any of its charm.

"Complaints about golf always revolve around three things -- it's too hard, it takes too long and it's expensive," Stark says.  "Sandy Pond is none of those."

[PICTURED: Sandy Pond, as seen in 2014, following upgrades under previous ownership.]

The Rock Golf Club in Wading River turns private two months into its revival

The Rock came back to Wading River, and in a surprise move earlier this month, the club turned heel.

Just two months after its long-awaited reopening, The Rock Golf Club has slammed the door shut on the public players that it wooed back with promises of an all-inclusive member-for-a-day experience and elevated perks.  The course is fully private and will remain so beyond this season.  Golf director Bill Mackedon confirmed the course is no longer open to the public. 

Prospective members can join The Rock for a $25,000 initiation fee and $10,000 in annual dues starting in 2023.

The decision to make it a members-only facility, Mackedon told Golf On Long Island, was made after its July reopening.  Back in June, with the course preparing to welcome golfers again for the first time since October 2019, Mackedon said the club's goal was to provide a memorable experience "for the person who might only be able to get out and play a few times during the season, where everyone feels like they belong."

That spirit of belonging and inclusivity only lasted until Labor Day, however.  Then, players who called to book tee times were instead told the club was available only to members.

Given the optics and timing of such a drastic change of course, it seems more likely that public players -- some of whom spent several hundreds of dollars to play The Rock during its abbreviated summer season -- were simply used as beta testers before a planned decision to turn private.  Some players told Golf On Long Island they felt duped, especially since the course had been dropping hints of its return for well over a year.

In May 2021, new owner Chris Vene told the Riverhead News-Review that the concept for the rejuvenated course would be a club-level experience for those without the time to play a lot of golf or the means to afford membership costs.  "So you go to Great Rock and you're a member for the day," Vene said.

The majority of those who played the course this summer and were surveyed by Golf On Long Island praised its greens, which have long been the strength of The Rock's layout.  But many also agreed that the rest of the course remains in need of significant improvements, especially its bunkers and uneven tee boxes.  Others pointed to ongoing irrigation issues and limited amenities.  Recalling the problems that plagued Great Rock in its final seasons, some players suggested the course needs to take more time to address its underlying turf and maintenance issues.  "They need to close for another year," said one player who logged multiple rounds there even after the course turned private.  "It's basically a glorified municipal course right now."

Bill Scherer said he enjoyed his four rounds at The Rock this summer (at $75 per) and was glad it reopened since it's so close to his home in neighboring Shoreham.  "It plays the way it used to," he said.  "I was disappointed when they told me I could no longer play."

The restaurant, Pulcinella's On The Green, remains open to the public.

For more on Great Rock's closure, sale and subsequent reopening as The Rock, see GOLI's write-up from this past June.

[PICTURED: The Rock's downhill ninth prior to the course's 2022 opening.]

New York's first X-Golf indoor facility set to open in Commack next week

Last fall Geoffrey Schwartz led a tour through an empty, white-walled shell deep inside a Commack strip mall, pointing to where he planned to set up golf simulators, a full bar and a mezzanine for events.  Six months and a full transformation later, the space -- previously part of a closed Toys 'R' Us -- is filled with two rows of hitting bays, clusters of cozy lounge furniture and the high hopes of Long Island's latest cutting-edge addition to the local golf scene.  X-Golf Commack, the first New York location for the California-based franchise, will officially open to Long Island golfers next week.

Its arrival follows other combined-experience golf venues that have debuted on Long Island in the past year, most notably Topgolf in Holtsville last summer.  Birdies, a golf and cocktail bar in Patchogue, opened in February.  X-Golf's appeal is in its state-of-the-art simulator technology, which features advanced innovations like automated ball retrieval, personalized tee heights and adjustable ground slope.

The Commack location has nine bays, including one exclusively for lessons and two for private parties.  But what sets his venue apart, Schwartz says, is the VIP-style treatment players can expect when they step inside.

"We want everyone to feel welcome when they come in," Schwartz says.  "They'll check in at the pro shop, leave their bag and have a drink at the bar or sit and relax.  We'll set up their bags for them so they're ready to warm up and start playing."

Unlike in other simulators, players are free to admire their shots without having to chase their ball and re-tee for themselves or a playing partner.  X-Golf's retrieval system does the work -- balls funnel into a slot in front of the tee while a new one pops up at the kick of a button.  Tees automatically adjust to each player's preferred height, and when part of a league, player preferences and handicaps are maintained in the X-Golf system.

The biggest game-changer, Schwartz says, is X-Golf's superior short-game technology.  Sensors around the tee pick up ball path and speed and translate chips and putts onto the virtual green with unprecedented accuracy.  "Putting is usually an afterthought in most simulators," Schwartz says.  "But nobody playing in a league wants to just guess at how to putt and take gimmes from eight feet."

X-Golf's network of 50-plus locations around the country (and growing, including a Westbury venue due to open later this year) allows local players to participate in national and regional competitions and tournaments, in addition to in-house leagues.  Paige Spiranac is the company's most notable brand ambassador, though a hefty appearance fee might prevent a visit to Commack in the near future.  ("Maybe one day," Schwartz says.)

Phil Barnhart, previously the pro at Willow Creek in Mount Sinai, will be on site for lessons and instruction.

Outside the hitting bays, a U-shaped bar will turn out beer, cocktails and small bites like wings, wraps and chicken fingers.  A second-level mezzanine offers lounge space and a private room for corporate meetings and events.  To reach it all, visitors first walk down a lengthy corridor lined with photos of famous players and murals depicting courses from around the world.  Even before its official opening, the long hallway has drawn curious strip-mall shoppers given X-Golf's convenient location amid heavy foot traffic from the adjacent Whole Foods, Harbor Freight and Five Below.

Hourly rates range from $49 on weekday mornings and early afternoons to $69 on weekends. A full 18-hole round takes about 45 minutes to an hour per player.  The list of nearly 50 courses -- with more to come -- includes a selection of highly regarded American classics (yes, Bethpage Black is there) and several lesser-known Asian layouts.

Reservations can be made at the X-Golf Commack website.  Follow X-Golf's website and social media accounts for information about an official grand-opening date.

Coming Soon: Heritage Spy Ring GC, Long Island's first shot at the Sweetens Cove model

Looking out from a flat, elevated square marked with dusty footprints, Jimmi Conway points toward a slender oasis in an expanse of tire-tracked sand, the pings of a bustling construction site echoing in the background.  Four bunkers stand in line from left to right, their wavy edges framed by strips of green sod.

"I can see this becoming the signature hole," Conway says.  "Picture what this will look like when it's all grown in."

Off to the right are the bare bones of a tumbling fairway, though all that's recognizable to the unfamiliar eye, at the moment, are three more sodded bunkers leading the way to a future green.

This square, possibly sometime next year, will be one of nine tee boxes at Heritage Spy Ring Golf Club in Setauket, soon to be the newest public course on Long Island and arguably the most ambitious public-golf project since Harbor Links was built on a reclaimed Port Washington sand mine nearly a quarter-century ago.  The tee will start players on the 145-yard seventh, and the downhill fairway will be the closer, the dogleg par-5 ninth.  Conway expects the high quality and appeal of these holes will leave Spy Ring's visitors counting down the days -- or maybe minutes -- until their next go-around.

Spy Ring, part of the newest residential development from Commack-based Heatherwood Luxury Rentals, is tentatively scheduled to debut in the second half of 2023 on the grounds of the former Heatherwood Golf Course.  Named as an homage to the Culper Ring and the Setauket area's prominent role in covert ops during the American Revolution, it will be a full-length nine that can be stretched as long as 3,300 yards. 

For many of its nearly 60 years, Heatherwood filled a niche as Long Island's only 18-hole executive course.  The plan is for Spy Ring to also fill its own local niche -- that of a modern, fun-forward nine-hole destination on par with others that have attracted design enthusiasts and curious golfers to places like rural Tennessee and suburban Florida.  There, imaginative architects took spent or outdated golf courses and spun them into darlings of the public-golf world with bold features, strategic design and a streamlined building process.  Conway and Heatherwood president Christopher Capece think they've captured the same formula on the north shore of Suffolk County.

"This has a chance to be something special and unique for Long Island," Capece says.  "I think this is going to be up on the same level with Sweetens Cove."

Tyler Rae is the man behind Spy Ring's design.  Though young as far as golf architects go, Rae has a wealth of experience that includes work alongside Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw (known locally for Friar's Head and East Hampton, of course), as well as Ron Prichard, Keith Foster and other acclaimed figures in the architecture field.  His resume is a laundry list of restorations and renovations of Golden Age courses, heavy on Donald Ross classics, with some Flynns, Raynors and Tillinghasts thrown in as well.  Spy Ring is one of his first solo designs, and he approached it with the heightened standards of Long Island golf in mind.

"Golf intellect is very high on Long Island," he says.  "You can't just come in with Mickey Mouse bunkers and flat greens and expect to have success.  Especially with a course like St. George's right down the street."

The enthusiasm for the project is hard to miss.  Conway, the longtime director and general manager at both Pine Hills in Manorville and the Heatherwood course, says working on Spy Ring has provided a jolt of energy.  Leading a walking tour on a sunny spring morning, Conway pauses to admire one of Rae's greenside bunkers at the par-3 fifth.  "Sometimes you walk around here and wish you could just spend the day with a bucket of balls," he says.  Capece stops on top of another perch to take in scenic views of rolling fairways and point out how the residences will blend into the course's background.  All in the group rave about Rae's use of open approaches, contoured greens and run-off areas.

For Rae, designing the golf course he envisioned and maneuvering it around the shared property was a challenge.  Initially he considered making the course a reversible nine, but that idea was scrapped over logistical concerns.  He opted to go with a clockwise routing that begins on the flattest part of the site, a "handshake," he describes, to ease players into the round.  Then Spy Ring "gets wild," beginning at #3, a straight, downhill par-5.  Conway says the third tee is "where the course really starts," kicking off a steady build of interest and excitement with each hole.

Pandemic-related delays turned out to benefit the construction process.  Rae and his team of builders had the time to personally shape every feature on the course to their exact specifications, so project costs remained low, a source of pride for the designer.  The crew also stripped off all the topsoil from the site, leaving behind nothing but sand.  ("Boy, it's going to be freakin' dry," Rae says with a laugh.)  The course will be seeded with turfgrass adapted for sandy, firm-and-fast golf, and a state-of-the-art irrigation system will keep everything in balance.  But golf balls will bound down fairways and roll over mounds, a rarity for Long Island publics.

"We set it up to be a turnkey firm-and-fast course," Rae says.  "Very easy to maintain."

On the greens, Rae's internal contouring and funneling leave surfaces that will be fun without going over the top, unique but with enough restraint to make them appear as natural parts of the landscape.  The green on #6, he says, is inspired somewhat by Seth Raynor's famous punchbowl at Fishers Island.  The seventh has elements of a volcano par-3, a hole type often associated with Ross.

"There's a ton of variety in the greens, and plenty of pinnable space," he says.  "Each one can play really easy or really hard." 

To the experienced Long Island public player, Spy Ring might bring back memories of Gil Hanse's now-departed Tallgrass Golf Course in Shoreham, particularly the openness of the entire property and the creative introduction of elevation to a largely flat site (in Tallgrass's case, a former sod farm).  Some might look at the bunkering on the par-5 ninth and draw parallels to #13 on Bethpage Black, where a center trap is farther from the green than it appears from afar.

Whatever comparisons and thoughts players have in mind when they walk off that ninth hole, Rae simply hopes fun is at the forefront. 

"I want people to come off the course saying, 'I enjoyed those nine holes, and I can't wait to play them again.'"

[PICTURED -- TOP RIGHT: View from the par-3 seventh tee; TOP LEFT: The par-5 ninth tumbles downhill before turning left for the final approach; BOTTOM RIGHT: After a flat start, Spy Ring brings elevation change into the mix starting at the downhill par-5 third; BOTTOM LEFT: The last of three fairway traps is farther from the green than it appears on the par-5 ninth.  The green is located near the trees at center.]

Resurrecting long-lost Lido golf -- the Lido Springs Par-3 course

Turns out it's true.

Down in Lido Beach, a small oceanfront community that plays a giant role in golf history, there is an old, lost golf course, after all.  It's right next door to the present-day Lido Golf Course, and its features, drawn up by one of Long Island's most influential golf builders, remain almost fully intact.  One putting green is split by a knob in its back half, another sits with rimmed edges.  Raised tees, buried beneath a tangle of tree branches and weeds, rest amid overgrown hazards and muddy ponds, waiting to be found.

No, this isn't the glorious hallucination of the most ardent Lido Club enthusiast.  Plenty of golf historians have studied those hallowed grounds, and some have even walked the streets and Lido Beach dunes, knowing they'll never stumble across some trace of the famous pre-World War II masterpiece.  This other course, well, nobody's trying to find it.  And if they are, they better be toting bug spray.

No, this is the story of Lido Springs, a short-lived par-3 course that came and went, following dozens of other little-known area golf courses that also came and went, and made a few memories along the way.  It was lit up for night play and pitched side attractions like mini golf and a game room -- not exactly the type of place commemorated in club histories or sepia-toned coffee-table books.  Yet there's some history worth exploring, and for now it holds a very unique distinction in Long Island golf history.  Lido Springs is likely the only instance of a long-gone local golf course sitting untouched, undeveloped, right out there among all of Long Island's hustle and bustle.

And thanks to modern technology, plus help from one of the key figures involved in next year's resurrection of that other lost Lido course, we can see Lido Springs today, down to the finest detail, as if unobstructed by 40 years of physical neglect.

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When Lido Springs opened in the summer of 1963, the big Robert Trent Jones layout next door -- today's municipal Lido course -- was just a few seasons old.  And it had been only two decades since the famed original, C.B. Macdonald's Lido Club, was repurposed for military use in the early years of World War II.  That renowned course was to the west.  Lido Springs, on the other hand, played along Lido's eastern flank, its nine short par-3s wedged into a little triangular parcel dotted with five ponds.

"New Golf Course Opens at Lido," read the headline in The Leader, a Freeport newspaper, on July 11.  "Golf pros of the Nassau County clubs, as well as many other luminaries of the golf world were present at the opening," the article said.

John Brennan, a writer who chronicled the development and construction of Long Island's golf courses for various publications in the 1950s and '60s, indicated in one of his "Off the Fairway" columns that the new Lido Springs was built as an annex to RTJ's neighboring 18.  "Lidoites feel the addition of the short course will help take some of the load from the big course, with some of the older men members ... being detoured to the par-three layout," he wrote prior to its opening.

Players could enjoy a round well after sundown thanks to the "newest and finest daylight illumination on Long Island," according to the Leader.  Advertisements that ran in Newsday highlighted night golf as a selling point, and the course, at least in its early years, was open until midnight.  Rounds after dark were a novelty, and many who played Lido Springs fondly recall them.  Some just remember swatting the gnats and mosquitoes.

"It was so well lit, you saw the ball all the way up in the air and down to the green," says Jeffrey Bernstein, who moved from Brooklyn to Atlantic Beach in 1966.  Summers for Bernstein included trips to the driving range on the south side of Lido Boulevard, and eventually nine holes at Lido Springs.  He would grab one or two clubs and a putter and bike with friends from one end of the barrier island to the other.  Sometimes they'd leave the bikes home and hitchhike to the course instead.

Other elements set Lido Springs apart from the typical pitch-and-putt course.  It was initially planned as a semi-private club with memberships, tee times and an on-site pro.  Most notably, the design of its nine short holes was credited to William Mitchell, the golf course designer whose frequent work in the 1960s and early 1970s altered Long Island's golf landscape the same way Macdonald, Seth Raynor, Devereux Emmet and others left their marks in the early 20th century.

By July 1963, Long Island's second golf building boom was already well underway, and Mitchell played a big part.  His course at Pine Hollow Country Club in 1955 was the first to be built in the region since the end of the Depression and ensuing war years.  When a dozen new courses opened locally in 1961 and 1962, Mitchell's hand was on at least two of them -- Old Westbury and Woodcrest.  Mitchell would come to be known as golf's "public defender" -- he felt strongly about designing courses public players could take pride in, with features that were fair to the average high-handicapper.  He was a proponent of executive-length courses for their smaller demand on time and land use, and his goal was to eventually build a women's golf course on Long Island.  (Plans had already been drawn when Mitchell passed away in the early '70s.)

It's hard to know exactly how much time and energy Mitchell invested in the Lido Springs layout (his 18-hole course at Noyac in Sag Harbor opened the same year), but it certainly incorporated many of his design principles.  Greens featured some interesting contours, though nothing too "gimmicky," as he described movement that could potentially penalize good shots and reward bad ones.  For the less-skilled player, bunkers were in full view, mostly fronting greens.  ("I don't like to hide a trap," he often said.)  A series of small ponds came into play on all but two or three holes.  As far as time and land use, the nine holes took up less than ten acres and likely no more than an hour to play.

"It was a real golf course, just scaled way down," says Rob Koff, a lifelong area resident who recalls many night rounds there, complete with burgers and fries at the snack bar.  "The greens were legitimate, and the fairway areas were kept in great shape."

"They took care of it," Bernstein says.  "It was in better condition than Lido next door." 

Beyond the initial grand opening, and some newspaper advertisements that ran through the '60s and '70s, there's not much else that officially documents the course's 20-year run, which ended with its abandonment sometime in the early '80s.  It's not mentioned in any profiles or retrospectives about Mitchell's design career, and there are no reports of its closure.  Yet signs of it are still as clear as day to anyone driving down Lido Boulevard or up the 12th fairway at the current Lido course.  The light poles that illuminated so many summer nights and brightened so many memories still stand tall and slightly crooked above the overgrowth.  One that towered over the ninth green is just steps from the boulevard, not far from the rusted remnants of a chain-link fence that separated the course from the parking lot.

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That's the fascinating thing about Lido Springs.  It's still there, waiting to be found.

All Peter Flory needed was an aerial photo and some public data to bring Lido Springs back to life.  Followers of Lido golf history might recognize the name -- Flory, a Chicago-area golfer who counts digitally reconstructing lost golf courses as a hobby, is serving as an advisor for the Lido Club restoration at Sand Valley in Wisconsin.  He spent three years meticulously generating incredibly detailed renderings of the Lido Club by piecing together clues from aerial photos, ground-level images and written works, then posted them on Golf Club Atlas to be studied and scrutinized by fellow historians and designers.  His work drew the attention of Tom Doak, then Sand Valley's Mike Keiser, who used his images to pitch a restored Lido to prospective members.  That highly anticipated course is scheduled to open in 2023.

Resurrecting Lido Springs took Flory about two days.  An inquiry at the Long Beach Historical Society found its way to Flory, by now established as a trusted Lido Beach golf-architecture historian.  Using archived and current aerial images, he was able to quickly estimate and sketch the location of tees and greens, and publicly available LiDAR data allowed him to paint the picture.  The precise surface elevation data not only revealed that all but one green remain on the ground at Lido Springs, it also pulled up all of their ridges and slopes.  Once plugged into his golf-design software, the LiDAR exposed the surface as if it was bare ground with no overgrowth.  Flory used his judgment to flesh out rough and short grass around the holes, but the greens needed no manipulation. 

"The contours that you're seeing on the image are actually there on the ground," Flory says.

So we know now that the first hole was around 80 yards, give or take a few by tee placement, with a pond short left.  "There's a very cool pocket on the right side of the green," Flory says.  Only three of the holes went beyond 100 yards.  One of them, the fourth, had ponds long and right, and a front bunker with a raised lip.  The 121-yard ninth required a pond carry to a green with a back-half knob and raised shoulders.  By the looks of it, misfires there could easily find themselves lost onto Lido Boulevard.

With the three-dimensional model finished, Flory can make Lido Springs playable on a gaming PC, PlayStation, XBox and even some golf simulators.  It's something Flory did with his Lido Club renderings, complete with his digital self decked out in vintage golfwear, hickory clubs in hand.

As far as playing it again outside under the Lido Beach sun (or stars), technically it's not that far-fetched.  Anyone with a few million dollars handy and the stomach for a battle with the Town of Hempstead or Nassau County could conceivably resurrect the course in real life.  The property has been up for sale for years and is zoned to allow municipal recreation.

Bernstein thinks of the course every time he walks the fairway of the adjacent 12th hole at Lido.  Just a few paces away, on the other side of a fence, Bernstein once stood on a raised tee, looking across the entire Lido Springs course lit up in full view from one end to the other.

"You saw fathers and sons, groups of friends, kids with six-packs," he says.  "People from all walks of life out there just having a lot of fun."

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[PICTURED (click to enlarge): TOP -- Rendering of Lido Springs #1; MIDDLE -- Advertisements printed in Newsday in May and September 1966.  The course advertised in the paper throughout the '60s and '70s and typically promoted night golf; MIDDLE RIGHT -- Aerial photo of Lido Springs, the triangular property at center, as seen in 1966.  Lido Golf Course is to the left, and the Lido Beach Nike missile base is seen to the right; BOTTOM RIGHT -- The full Lido Springs routing, as interpreted using public LiDAR data.  All greens remain intact on the site except #2.  The rendering of #9 shows a bunkerless green with raised shoulders and a knob at back center.  Lido Boulevard was located directly behind the hole.]

The digital renderings published here are the intellectual property of Peter Flory.

For more reading on Lido golf history, see previous Golf On Long Island entries below:

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

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.]

Bethpage Red open for 2021, Black to follow as crews finish projects around the course

Mother Nature washed out Opening Day at Bethpage Red with a soggy April Fools' joke that saturated the course, much like the cold and snow that Old Man Winter whipped up to lop off six weeks of offseason golf and maintenance work.  Bethpage Red instead reopened for the 2021 season yesterday under a stiff breeze, and the Black Course is on schedule to open April 15.

Despite those weeks of sitting snow, "the winter treated the courses fairly well," says Andrew Wilson, director of agronomy at Bethpage.  "No winter damage to the greens, which is always the major concern."

In fact, much of the work this winter focused on residual cleanup from last summer's Tropical Storm Isaias, which caused extensive tree damage around the park when it swept through in August.  Crews pruned or removed affected trees, including a large oak on Red #1.

Returning players will notice some minor changes on the Black Course when it opens this month.  The tall native grass surrounding the lobed greenside bunker on #2 has been replaced with bluegrass sod and will be mowed at regular rough height.  This change makes the area more manageable for players and staff, Wilson says, while also allowing for other irrigation tasks to be completed near #2 green and #3 tee.

Black Course superintendent Mike Hadley oversaw the expansion and resodding of walking paths around the course.  "Increasing width on the paths, particularly the holes with native grass from tee to fairway, was a request of the PGA of America that we can slowly accomplish over the next few seasons," Wilson says.  Bethpage Black is scheduled to host the Ryder Cup in 2025.

Less obvious to players are drainage improvements made on the #18 fairway bunkers, including the discovery of a jammed drainage pipe.  "A much-needed infrastructure project," Wilson says.

Elsewhere, a new back tee is open on the eighth hole of the Yellow Course, offering a new look on the drive at the short par-4.  "Adding a new back tee is a bit of a novelty for us," Wilson says.  "We've been adding forward tees the last few years, which have been popular with our shorter hitters."

The six lost weeks of winter scuttled plans for one additional tee project that would have been very noticeable to Red Course players.  Back in the fall Wilson posted a photo of a newly built forward tee on Red #13, a split-fairway par-4 with a large bunker complex in the center of the fairway.  Due to follow was a renovation of the main tee that would raise the box by several feet and offer players a slightly elevated glimpse of the diverging fairways.  As Red players know, many of the hole's features are hidden from the current tee.  But winter conditions took that project off the agenda, at least for now.

Wilson credits superintendents Hadley, Vincent Herzog, Erik Feldman, Eric Newell, Hamilton Lopes, Shawn Brownell, Ryan Murphy and their maintenance crews for doing the heavy lifting in prepping the courses while also battling the realities of the coronavirus era.  "Our staff was impacted, some quarantined, all while rounds were up last year," Wilson says.

"We hope to have less disruption this year and more opportunity to improve bunkers, tees and other parts of the courses."

View photos of the offseason and ongoing renovations by visiting Wilson's and Bethpage Golf's Twitter pages at @Greensideup17 and @BethpageGolf.

[Photos above courtesy of Andrew Wilson.]

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.

Crab Meadow renamed to honor former Huntington supervisor

The Crab Meadow Golf Course in Northport will be renamed for Robert J. Flynn, the former Huntington supervisor whose work in acquiring parkland paved the way for the town's two municipal golf courses, according to a press release. 

The Huntington Town Board unanimously approved the rededication of the 18-hole course, which will now be formally known as Robert J. Flynn Crab Meadow Golf Course.  Flynn's tenure as town supervisor from 1959 to 1965 included the creation of Suffolk County's first municipal parks system and led to the creation of the public Crab Meadow and Dix Hills Park golf courses.

In a 2016 profile, Jeff Neuman of The Met Golfer said Crab Meadow's launch during the early-1960s course-building boom was a result of Flynn's "forward thinking."

"Flynn believed in protecting open space as part of a strong parks system, and he led the fight for a bond act passed in 1962 that funded the purchase of 700 acres of land for town parks large and small. ... Crab Meadow is bordered to the north and west by wetlands that might have been filled and sold for development in those pre-EPA days had the town not gotten involved." -- Jeff Neuman, The Met Golfer, Nov/Dec 2016

Crab Meadow opened to the public in 1965, the design work of William Mitchell, who's credited with many of Suffolk County's municipal golf courses and considered golf's "public defender."  The history of golf on or near the Crab Meadow property actually dates farther back to the early 1920s, when famed designer Devereux Emmet built the short-lived Northport Country Club beside the wetlands and Sound.

For more on Crab Meadow, check out the course flyover.