Gentlemen (and Pat
),
Thank you all for attending and most importantly for so passionately reviewing and opining on our beloved Paramount! It was great to see you all, catch up and have a little fun...even if it cost me $1 to Mucci.....a small price to pay to avoid him in the future, no?
Your creativity and ideas about how to solve our problematic road holes are interesting and thoughtful, but not without some previous consideration. Beginning with #1, we view it as most definitely our greatest potential danger liability and while a challenging opener, a hole that might be best retired, it's fairway replaced with a short-game practice area, and it's green become the practice putting green.
Those suggesting we petition the township and county to move, alter, or control the flow of traffic on Zukor Rd would see their craniums implode if they knew what kind of costs, time, lobbying, and herculean legal efforts it would take to try to change it's path, traffic or replacement. Trust me when I tell you we've looked long and hard at ALL our options re: Zukor Rd! Sadly, what was once an internal horse & buggy path is now permanently a considerably protected N-S county artery.
Along the same lines, Jim, myself, Brian and Jeff have been continually examining all the potential options to eliminate the road from future playing impact. The creation of a new drop-shot par 3 after # 6 coupled with the removal of #1 would unquestionably mitigate the road-related issues. Such a hole could have new diagonal tees built where the trees exist at present on the right(East)side of the hill and might range from 120-160yds.
On our early am tour, Brad and myself saw what Jim already had.....#'s 6 and 8 could be well lengthened to re-capture the reduced distance (
btw...we don't care about adding any raw distance for distance's sake) with the latter becoming a very sturdy par 5. The existing #7 would become#8 and played as a drivable par 4 and would likely see a bit more tweaking and re-defensing of the front of it's existing green site. Of course, the existing and infamous L-shaped "Lapper" bunker at the end of the fairway could be enlarged to
upset, irritate, disturb, infuriate, annoy everyone
Those of you who like the notion of returning to the previous state of the hole and play it as a longer par 5, using the far back old tees, share the sentiment of many of our older members. Such a play necessitated the selection of a shorter club to lay-up to the fairway pad on the near-side of the road with another shorter-club 2nd shot. The problem inherent to this solution was the redundancy of again crossing Zukor Rd on a shot (albeit with a short club), rear-elimination of real risk-reward, and the forced removal of driver from the bigger-hitter's hands. The view from those tees is indeed breath-taking but it's a blind downhill shot that requires little strategic thought.
Our existing mid-hill tees have permitted a temporary solution giving the golfer adequate room observe oncoming traffic and safely hit over the road, however, the compromise is a semi-neutered par 4. Thus, you all can now understand the full matrix of our road-related issues. Mike Sweeney's idea of essentially lengthening #18 into a new #1 is interesting, but ultimately flawed as it once-again introduces a safety issue...this time creating a slicer's delight into the pro-shop, locker-room, cart-staging area and member's parking-lot.
. It also would destroy what many of us feel is the marvelously unique Reef hole at 18.
Our goal was to get Jim's immediate and through restoration finished, roll-out a golf course we knew our members, our guests and ourselves could take pride in and freshly enjoy. Our philopsohy was to never add distance for distance's sake nor protect some arbitrary par# (though I'll admit that we'd certainly work to preserve a par of no less than 70). Our only competitive aspirations are to host Amateur events for the Met section and perhaps one-day a USGA Senior Am.
Phil Young worked diligently to dig-up every shred of evidence of Tilly's original hand and Jim worked equally hard to preserve or enhance just that. Brian, his crew, and Jeff "Smiley" Stein and his peers all poured 100% of their collective energy and soul into executing these ideas. Jeff M gave his 100% support like only few owners in this game can. Finally, my job, as the club's & course's "Consigliere" was the easiest, just making sure all the ingredients gelled, the proverbial "cake" would rise, and we'd leave this ground better than we found it. It's been a true labor of love.
Thanks again to all for coming out and affirming our efforts and beliefs.
Now...please resume giving us your opinions and sharing any warmth you have about the place with your peers...we are listening and appreciative!!