After our morning 18 at Greate Bay, a neat Willie Park, Jr. course, Mark McKeever, Kris Shreiner, and I made the drive through Atlantic City and out to the barrier island Brigantine. Brigantine is a quaint little seaside town that also happens to a contain a Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek golf course. While others can provide more detailed history on the development of Brigantine, it is clearly one of America's first housing development golf courses, and it is a good one at that.
Per recommendation from Kyle Harris, we played the back nine at Brigantine, as we only a couple hours of sunlight left. Man, is that cool nine holes of golf or what?! The course is essentially dead flat, winding around tidal ponds and houses, but the turf is sandy and springy, and the architectural features break up the bland terrain perfectly. In 9 holes you get two excellent reachable par fours (10 and 18), two dynamite par threes (the 12th, with a partially hidden green, and the 15th, a moat-like raised green that is intimidating a target as you will ever see), and a smattering of excellent par fours.
My favorite hole on the course is the 11th, a sub-350, S-shaped par four. From the tee, all the player can see is the left edge of the fairway and a gaping bunker that covers the right two-thirds of the playing corridor. The goal off the tee is to drive as far to the right over the bunker as possible. Of course, the farther right one aims off the tee, the more uncomfortable one gets, but a drive that finds the right portion of the fairway is rewarded with an excellent angle for the approach shot. The green, like many at Brigantine, is raised and falls off on all sides, and it slopes devilishly from back to front. A brilliant short par four I feel like I would never tire of playing.
Brigantine's most important characteristic, I feel, is that it works as a housing development course. This is true for a few reasons:
1) Wide playing corridors. While many courses today are wedged in between condos, the original corridors at Brigantine give the golfer plenty of room to play (and keep golf balls farther away from the homeowners). Also, reeds and scrub on the edges of the houses soften the presence of the homes and give the course a more natural appearance.
2) Engaging architecture. Many housing courses are just plopped into a development to sell homes, but Brigantine has some real character to it. The green surrounds in particular pull golfers in, and keep them there. An interesting golf course will be much more likely to gain long-term customers and residents.
3) Well-attached routing. While the course weaves in and out of houses, there are no long walks between tees and greens. In many cases, you can see the next tee from the previous green, something less prevalent in the home development courses I've seen in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. A walkable course is one that folks will want to play consistently. Yes, believe it or not, there are golfers that still like to walk.
Anyone designing on a golf-centered housing development should be required to play Brigantine. And if you're a Philly guy who hasn't seen it yet, you really should.