Interesting article on Ridgewood from TGC.com posted today:
Why Tiger Might Play Barclays - 01/30/2008
By Brian Hewitt
The wooing of Tiger Woods has officially begun. Now that New Jersey’s prestigious Ridgewood Country Club has acquired the rights to host The Barclays, which will also serves as the FedExCup playoff opener in late August, the drive is on to get the world’s No. 1 into the fold.
By all accounts, Ridgewood Country Club, a classic 27-hole A.W. Tillinghast design complex in Paramus, N. J., is golf in its purest form. There is an East nine, a West nine and a Center nine. The tournament course will be a composite of seven holes from the East, five holes from the Center and six holes from the West. That configuration will play 7,304 yards to a par of 71.
“It will flow very well,” said David Reasoner, Ridgewood’s head pro. “And that particular composite course will allow us to handle the infrastructure concerns.”
One high-ranking USGA official told GOLF CHANNEL that room for corporate tents and other on-site support trailers and equipment could be a problem at Ridgewood. But that same official said it wouldn’t matter what 18 holes the TOUR selected for The Barclays. “They’re all great,” the official said.
The USGA’s headquarters are also in New Jersey. So are other Tillinghast designs at Baltusrol and Somerset Hills. Tillinghast also designed Winged Foot across the state line in Westchester County.
The sixth hole for the Barclays (normally the third hole on the Center nine) is a drivable 294-yard, par-4 and Ridgewood’s signature hole. In the old days the members called it the “five and dime” because most played it 5-iron off the tee and a 10-iron (now a wedge) into the green. Woods, who recently began designing courses himself, is on record as saying golf courses should have a drivable par-4.
Woods tied for fourth at the 2005 PGA Championship at Baltusrol and missed the cut by three strokes, not long after the death of his father, in 2006 at Winged Foot. But Woods has often spoken fondly of his rounds at the San Francisco Golf Club when he was a member of the Stanford Golf team in the mid-90s. San Francisco Golf is also a Tillinghast design.
“I believe Tiger would love Ridgewood,” Reasoner said. “It’s an old, traditional, tree-lined course and you have to be able to work the ball both ways.”
It was no secret that Woods didn’t like the layout at Westchester Country Club which preceded Ridgewood as The Barclays’ venue. And to be sure, if he decides to skip The Barclays this year it might be purely a matter of scheduling and have nothing to do with Ridgewood’s relative merits.
But if he stays away, most course critics will tell you, he will be missing something special. “Ridgewood is not overly tight,” Reasoner says. “But it has incredible green complexes.”