Glen Ridge in NJ

[mark chalfant]

I think this is a compact  course  with some input  from Willie  Park.
Are  there some holes of interest   ?
Bill  Quirins   MGA book  mentions some nice par threes.  
thanks

[SPDB]

Mark - These littlle inquiries seem to make up the bulk of your postings, curious what's up with them? Are you playing these courses and looking for some diligence, or researching?

[mark chalfant]

Sean,
How dare you  characterize  my posts  as "little inquiries '
George Plimpton  and  Truman Capote,  my writing  professors
at Mt. Holyoke,   would be  offended and hurt   !!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark,

You avoided answering SPDB's question.

[JNagle]

Mark,

Glen Ridge has Willie Park all over the place.  If you have the time give us a call and we can get you in contact with the right people should you wish to visit the club.  We are in the process of restoring the course.   With the exception of #4 and #9 the greens are original  The course is very compact with some exciting bunkers being restored, reinstated and some new ones.  Drop a line and we can talk about the course as it is easier to talk than type.

Wish we could post photos because we have a great one from '38' Thank you, Craig Disher!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Guys, I like Mark's posts. They usually are about little heard of courses throughout the East Coast that many don't know anything about, as well as hi-light golf architecture that many of us will never get to see. I find the posts fully informative although don't usually attain the high level of page views and comment as John Connelly's college football & college basketball posts on this golf architecture website.

The following photos are courtesy of the great Jim Nagle of Ron Forse Design. Thanks Ron & Jim for allowing us to see your guys handiwork, there are lots of features to the course that I can see that warrant a lot of questions.

1931 Glen Ridge


2000 Glen Ridge

[Brian_Gracely]

Glen Ridge is the home of Tom Cruise (actor) and one of college roommates.  I've never played the course, but I'll bet he used grew up one some of those diamonds in Tommy's pictures.

[SPDB]

Tommy -
you make it sound as if i dislike Mark's posts. I never
said such a thing. They are very cryptic (less so, now
that he has managed a normal text-flow. And say whatever
you'd like about his posts, but they are rarely, if  
ever, informative. Probably, because as you mention, they don't achieve the page views of threads that bash architects. I think the lack of page views is probably a function of the fact that the threads never contain anything substantive, it only looks for information, why, I don't know, that's what i was curious about.

[HamiltonBHearst]

Mark- It seems that Spdb would prefer that rather than ask for some design characteristics of some old and sometimes hidden gems, he would prefer that you talk about Mt. Holyoke football, or Southsides at Maidstone, or whom to call for access to Friars Head.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tommy Naccarato,

Nice photos, but unfortunatley, the newer one doesn't picture the horrid tennis courts that were put in when tennis was popular, at the expense of a wonderful, bowl like 9th green, which in your newer pictures is backdropped by trees.

Playing Glen Ridge is a neat treat.
You had to cross the street 4 times during the course of normal play, which was great for me, as there was a sweet shop that made the best sodas and had lots of candy, where you had to cross from # 1 to # 2 and from # 8 to # 9, # 10 to # 11, and if you had some time, from # 17 to # 18.

It's a tight course with some creeks that provide some neat challenges on reachable par 5's, par 3's and paralleling par 4's.

Ron Forse has recently set about restoring/renovation the golf course.  Unfortunately, the tennis courts remain.

I"ve been playing Glen Ridge for about 50 years and enjoy it.
It provides for a good use of the topography in conjunction with the streams, despite the roads and the loss of 9 holes to the north, some of which are pictured in the 1931 photo.

I also lament the loss of step bunkers seperating fairways, with trees inserted to replace them.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Pat,
This was one of th major things I noticed in the difference between these two very good aerial photos--the loss of the bunkers, some of them being used in cop-like fashion, and you can see a lot of neat capes and bays in them.  

The creek looks to be a neat sort of feature also, but with as many parallel fairways, does the course suffer from any repetition? I would imagine you might lose some of this with different bunkering schemes, but still the routing on what seems to be a very confined property, works, but have they changed the succession of holes?

It would be interesting to here from Jim if they plan on restoring any of the fairway hazards.

Sean,
Leave it to you to forgo great architectural discussion to try to argue a point. Why am I not surprised?  You were being critical of Mark and you know it.

P.S. Fazio still sucks!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tommy Naccarato,

I don't think the course suffers from repetition.
You're always interested in the hole you're playing because of subtle or frank differences. and, squeezed in there is a par 3 over the creek that you can barely see, that breaks up some of the back and forth.

The club house sits on the highest point on the golf course, with the four holes on the clubhouse side of the street going down and up a pretty good hill.

The old 9th, before the tennis courts was a wonderful par 4, uphill, with your second shot over the top of the hill to the blind green below in a little dell.

The par 3's are all interesting as are the par 4's.
The par 5's offer great risk reward with the creek fronting or backing the green and out of bounds right on # 16, where I used to play down the 3rd fairway before the trees got too big, just to take the OB out of play.

While the golf course is relatively short, it's sporty.
If you don't hit it straight, you'll make big numbers.
As you can see, there is out-of-bounds on about 8 holes, water hazards on about 7 holes, the greens are small and the fairways tight, and the greens have some good contours and slopes.