Best Long Island Experience

[Anthony_Nysse]

Fellas,
 Golf is in full bloom out here on the island and the Open is right around the corner. With so many great courses out on the island, Shinnecock, National, Maidstone, Creek, Garden City, etc, I was just wondering what were some of your most memorable times out here. Where did you play, what did you shot, with who, etc....let play golf!!

[Tim_Weiman]

Anthony:

While living in Long Beach, California several years ago I was invited to play Shinnecock by a waiter at my favorite local restaurant.

Not exactly the most likely source for such an invitation!

But, this gentleman was close to 80 years old and had grown up caddying at Shinnecock.  Apparently, he was so well liked that he more or less had member privileges during his annual visit back to the Island.  Even to invite guests.

So, I jumped on a plane and enjoyed one of the most pleasurable rounds of my life.  

[Bruceski]

I've played North Hempstead a few times. It's another course designed by Tillinghast and quite a beautiful layout. The course is not long and not wooded, but the greens are very fast and more undulating than those at Bethpage Black. North Hempstead is a small jewel on the North Shore of Long Island.

[TEPaul]

Some of America's best courses and best architecture is on the East End of Long Island! And if that's not good enough about a half dozen of those great courses (that I'm aware of) now have a "playability" to them that led me to come up with the term "Ideal maintenance meld" a year or two ago.

Some of the architecture out there's great and when you combine that with some of these maintenance practices they're applying to them now basically you're going to have about the best experience on some of these courses that it's possible to have!

But the "ideal maintenance meld" is not just happening out there. Yesterday I was over at something called the Compher Cup (Golf Association of Philadelphia vs New Jersey State Golf Association) at Huntingdon Valley and that club and super Scott Anderson had HVGC at the "ideal maintenance meld"! Firm and fast "through the green" and greens that were firm and fast (and with HVGC's unusual cultivated grain in the greens too)! That "meld" highlighted just about everything about the architecture of that wonderful William Flynn golf course!

[Jeff Fortson]

Anthony,

I work as a golf professional in the MET Section and I love every minute of it.  Golf Pros are treated more like Golf Pros here and not desk clerks like nearly all other areas of the country.  The death of the Golf Pro hasn't taken hold out here in the New York City area yet.  

As for the courses, I don't think you can point to a section of the PGA that has a stronger contingent of courses than the Metropolitan Section which is Long Island, Westchester, and a few Upstate counties.  

Most memorable day for me was starting off at 8:00am at Shinnecock as a twosome in the first group with another pro and a caddie and shooting 69 from the US Open tees and then driving a 1/4 mile to National Golf Links of America and shooting even par.  That was one of the best days of golf in my life.  Only thing that could top it was playing the Old Course at St. Andrews the day after the 1995 British Open.

Long Island is definitely a GREAT golf location and offers the deepest line up of courses in the country.

Jeff F.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Date:October 1, 1992

Re: Bachelor Golf Outing (wedding date: Octber 3, 1992)

Where: Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Southampton, NY

It was a windy fall day with puffy white clouds and the leaves turning in the distance. Played with a number of friends, and while I cannot report a low score, it was one of the great days of golf. My friend "Sparky" from Minnesota was so excited that he ran into the clubhouse just before our tee time to call his Dad who got goose bumps in Minnesota thinking about what we were about to play. Drinks afterward at Southampton Golf Club with a friend who had to use up his minimum on his bar tab, and then dinner at John Ducks in Southampton. The wedding was great and the marriage has been great too.

[THuckaby2]

My LI experience has been described several times in here before I believe, but I never tire of thinking about it (leaving the names out for now so as to protect the innocent  :

A helluva great guy up and invites me out of the blue to join him and another GCAer at NGLA, just because he has read my ravings on here about it being my "dream / some day" course  and he decides to make it happen for me.  Side note - I still get goose bumps thinking about what an incredibly cool thing this was to do, and I VOW to some day be in a positition to return a gesture like this to someone else.  Anyway, as the plans are being made, another GCAer gets added, I get more excited... and then a few days before the big day, I get another email from said HGG (helluva great guy) saying "if you don't have any other plans, we'll be teeing it up at Shinnecock after the morning round at National."  I nearly wet myself, thinking, "any other plans? it would take the birth of a child to miss that and in that case I'd get the docs to delay the damn birth."  But I reply that yes, that is acceptable.  

At this point I am nearly hyperventilating, and decide that it can't possibly all be true.  Someone is messing with me.  But out to Southampton I go... and it all does come true - a DREAM day of golf.  Perfect weather, perfect friends, I get completely blown away emotionally and visually from the first tee onward at National, then literally get blown away by the stern test that Shinnecock is.  We meet for dinner later and then discuss all life's issues (which of course means which golf course is better, how they fit in the all-world greats) till the wee hours of the morning.

Only the single greatest golf day of my life, that's all.  Ok, maybe a recent great day at Cypress with a few other HGG's and GCAers is up there, and a famous one with my Dad at Pebble is its equal, but that's for sentimental reasons.

I can go into WAY more detail, but this is long enough....

TH

[Craig Disher]

My best LI experience is also my only LI experience so it also qualifies as my worst. Two years ago, a friend invited me to play in his social club's Spring outing at Piping Rock. I took the train up, spent the night in NYC, had a great dinner and went to bed during a slashing thunderstorm. The next morning, the sun was out and we drove out to PR in perfect, calm conditions. When we arrived, the club was strangely empty of cars. Well, we thought, we're early (I wanted to walk a couple of holes and take some pics) so let's just have a cup of coffee and loosen up. A friendly sort (the superintendent it turned out) came up to us and asked in a nice way what we were doing. We told him we were there for the outing. He said hadn't we been called? Last night the club's secretary attempted to contact all the participants to inform them that the heavy rain had left the course unplayable and that the outing was canceled. We were the only pair that hadn't gotten the message. Well, the club gave us a very nice breakfast and sent us on our way.

Last year, my friend invited me again. The day before the outing the NY area was drenched with rain and the weather forecast was so unpromising that we both decided to cancel. As it turned out, the outing was scratched.

This year, I didn't even get a call.

[TEPaul]

Craig:

Jeesus, that's an unfortunate story! I don't think I want to go anywhere with you! But who knows, maybe I can overcome your unfortunate curse. Basically everywhere I go the sun shines, just not necessarily at all times, though. There are times it rains but never heavy enough to close a golf course and even if it does rain, when the time comes to play golf somehow I seem to be able to make the sun shine, or at least the rain stop. This takes a very special talent when in Ireland but somehow I was able to pull it off without fail last time there!

I believe I get this knack from my great aunt, the new American Saint, Katherine Drexel, and when we were in Rome watching the Pope canonize her during the worst muddy sky soaking rain day in memory I was following the Pope in Latin (that's another story) and when he actually spoke the words that canonized her--BOOM! the sky opened and an enormous bolt of sun shone through and lasted for a good long while. This was not at all lost on the app. 400,000 people who were in St Peter's Square and all the way to the river!

There was another facility she seemed to have too that I'm curious about myself. The basic reasons for her canonization was the work she did in America for the blacks and Indians in the 19th and early 20th century and when she was confronted with a Ku Klux Klanner who informed her if she did not stop her policy of integration in her churches he would burn the one in his community down. She informed him she would not stop her policy and he very well might have burned her church down but as it happened that Ku Klux Klanner was struck and killed by lightening the very next day!

[Ed_Baker]

Well I'll be dipped in See-ment! The Doyen has an honest to God Saint in the family!! This might explain the other worldly short game.

Pretty strong gene pool there TEP.

Now,about this lightning thing, I have this Oil Company road man that is becoming a real pain in the ass.....

[NAF]

I have a few great LI experiences from last year...

1)Shooting 85 my first time around Shinnecock and then sitting on the veranda on a bright sunny day and looking out at the course and Peconic Bay with National in the backround.

2) On my 2nd trip to Shinny seeing my good friend Jim Reilly shank an 8 iron into the posterior of a doe grazing nearby the 11th hole after I implored him that the deer was not in play..

3) Seeing Friar's Head on a windy/rainy day and still taken with its design, the land it sits on and the magnifigance of Ken Bakst's vision and C+C's design.

4) Playing Bethpage Black on a misty Friday by myself for $19 at twilight and getting the round in..One of the best bargains in golf

5) Playing National for the first time and getting that excitement (like a 10 year old going to the amusement park) while driving up the entrance.

[TEPaul]

Ed:

I don't know about a strong gene pool there when it comes to Saint Katherine Drexel. The canonization was impressive but I did do a bit of extra reading about her. Basically although she was actually viewed as a "Living Saint" for many decades during her life (died in the 1950s at 90 something) if you ask me she was more than just a little bit weird!

She apparently had very little interest in the here and now and was only concerned about preparing souls and transporting them beyond this world to another world of Eternal Light when their time came!

It takes two incredibly well documented miracles in the face of scientific analysis to satisfy canonization and even my own overriding skepticism, and there were two very remarkable ones that got her the pass to Sainthood, but there are also about 5,000 other miracles ascribed to her!

But for my friends, taking care of an Oil Company road man (not sure what that is but it doesn't sound good to me) in some clever way should probably be a snap.

These are powers though that I'm not sure of yet and at the moment I feel a little like those scientists that were testing the Manhattan Project underneath Chicago Stadium and fearful that if their experiment worked well enough it just might take out Chicago. I don't want to take out Boston when I deal with your Oil company road man, and I've been practicing today on some squirrels outside my window on the farm here and so far not a damn thing has happened to them. Matter of fact they seem very animated and completely disrespectful of me!

[Ed_Baker]

Thanks Tom,

Let me know how it goes with the squirels, Road Men are in the same family...Rodent! I suspect the ultimate fix is going to have something to do with nuts! Maybe we could get the lightning to ricochet.

[AndyI]

TE Paul:

I don't mean to sidetrack this thread too much, but could you say a little bit more about what you mean by the "unusual cultivated grain" in the greens at HVCC?  Thanks!

[Will E]

Oh how I hate these "I'm so great" threads. This is for Gib.

Best:
actually got in 62 holes on three courses (all CBM/Raynor)

Worst:
Trying to find Lido and then the Links on a cold rainy day in April. We actually found um, so sad.

[TEPaul]

AndyL:

As to the unusual cultivated grain in Huntingdon Valley's greens!

Let me see if I can remember how this was actually explained to me last year by one Lincoln Roden of Huntingdon Valley, the man primarily responsible for encouraging the unusual restoration of not only the course but maintenance practices that are supposed to return the course to a "playability" somewhat akin to that of many decades ago.

First of all the course maintains a very firm fast condtion "through the green" and on the greens too almost all the time--which itself is very unusual. Secondly the greens are of a firmness which you could see yesterday did not even allow the ball to leave a pitch mark or much of one--more like a small "dent".

But they have actually worked to return very noticeable "grain" back into their greens when the rest of the world seems intent on removing as much grain as they possibly can from their greens. The reason they've done this is Linc Roden believes that "grainy" greens add another complete element to putting and chipping and an added complexity to the game! He's right about that!

GeoffreyC might remember better how they did it because he was with me when Linc Roden explained it. But I think it goes something like this. Dial down the water and the grass roots will go deeper and consequently be heathier in combination with reducing the individual grass competition and the individual leaves will become bigger, longer and will then tend to lay down creating what we know as real "grainy" greens.

The greens at Huntingdon Valley are very fast anyway and when the ball slows down and gets near the hole the "grain" can really take over and move the ball more than most people are used to.

Another thing about the grain on their greens is the color! Very light green and super shiny down grain and darker and duller into the grain. There's one green in particular, #15 that has grain going every which way in various sections so you  can have a putt that goes up a little incline into some serious grain and they goes downhill very much down grain! It's very complex to figure out how to putt! And of course the array of coloration is fascinating.

That's what I meant by unusual cultivated grain in their greens!

[GeoffreyC]

Tom Paul-  I certainly have little expertise in agronomy but I believe you explained it exactly as Linc did last year. I don't really know if this is the really reason for the grain but I can say that whatever Scott Anderson is doing is working.  A good explaination is also in Linc's book

"Golf's Golden Age 1945-1954-From Nelson to Hogan to Palmer" which I can recommend enthusiastically.

As Linc tells it, he believes that it takes more thought and touch to factor in grain, slope and distance when putting.  You can have really fast downhill- downgrain putts while on the same green uphill into the grain putts will be exceedingly slow.  Likewise, downhill into the grain putts will be intermediate in speed and so on.  The point is that you just can't "dial in" your putting touch.  You need to think and factor in several variables.  Likewise the firm conditions through the green require thought about how to shape shots to hold fairways and stay on the putting surfaces.  Huntingdon Valley is a model for Tom Pauls "ideal maintenance meld" on a day to day basis.  

Back to the question of this thread.  I was the last addition to Tom Huckaby's dream day of golf.  I woke up at 4AM to get to SouthHampton from Westchester County.  I can not imagine a better 36 holes of golf then National in the morning and Shinnecock after lunch.  It was an ALL WORLD experience.  Thanks again to our kind host!!!!!!!

[TEPaul]

GeoffreyC:

Linc's ideas about the 'playbability' of grain in the greens at Huntingdon Valley is the real reason it was done! I've talked to him a few times more about that.

It seems like there can't be enough of it for Linc. They verticut the "C" nine's greens apparently this spring a bit too severely for Linc and he was disappointed that some of the grain was minimized because of it! But it will be back I'm sure.

[Mike_Cirba]

To steal and modify a scene from "Field of Dreams"...

Q) Is this heaven?

A) (chuckling) No...this is Long Island..


I'll name two.  

I got an invite to attend an outing at Maidstone from Tom Huckaby's aforementioned Mr. Heluvagreatguy, with the Miller brothers joining us.  All four of us played 18 in the morning in 15mph winds, and then our gracious host had to leave and the remaining three played another 18 in the afternoon in 25-30mph winds, finishing 18 in the pitch dark.  I can't imagine a better day doing anything, anywhere.

If that isn't heavenly enough, two autumns ago I played NGLA with Mike Rewinski, who had grown up on the course (his dad was the superintendent there) and knows every inch of it.  If one could imagine a better tour guide, ole CB himself would have to be there.  We were virtually the only two on the course during an Indian summer day with not a cloud in the sky.  

That only includes eastern LI.  Don't get me started on Garden City with Patrick, Geoffrey, and Matt.  

Sometimes, life is even better than the hype...

[Geoffrey_Walsh]

Call it determination or insanity, but I always wanted to be the first group off on the Black so that I could play the course at my own pace and truly enjoy the surroundings.

Two years ago, I left my office in Delaware around 4pm on a sunny October weekday and travelled up to Farmingdale.  I arrived around 6:30pm and was relieved to see that spot #1 was still empty!  (Note: Car #2 arrived 20 minutes later)  I must admit that it was a little nerve-wracking driving up and not knowing if I would indeed be first in line.

There is nothing quite like standing on the first tee at The Black, knowing that you have the entire course to yourself.  I also think that determination and perseverance required to obtain that time slot makes you appreciate the round even more.  I still have the ticket on my desk here at work to remind me of that day.

[Evan Fleisher]

Geoffrey,

Great story, RE: First off on the Black.  My story is somewhat similar...played there for my first time ever last summer.  A few guys and I decided to do the overnight thing on a weekday.  Got out there around 8pm or so and were #2 in the car park.

Turns out, the next morning the #1 car takes a LATER tee time, and we snag the ol' 6:36am first off the tee slot!!!

Like you said, no better feeling in golf than realizing that the entire course is yours for the taking...what a great feeling.

[Todd Stucky]

Although I have been an avid fan of this site, this is my first contribution.  Last fall I joined a group which played Shinnecock, National Golf Links, Garden City Golf Club and Quaker Ridge after having started our trip at Pine Valley.  We enjoyed perfect weather and met some wonderful people along the way.  Our group consisted of low handicap players who share a love for classic golf courses.  We all felt that National was the most remarkable course on Long Island, we really enjoyed Garden City and were struck by how difficult Quaker Ridge was from tee to green.  We are from Oregon and are a bit jealous of the courses you have back east.  Needless to say, our trip was quite special.