{"id":15,"date":"2010-04-19T09:57:27","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T16:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgpnolan.com\/?p=15"},"modified":"2010-04-20T09:17:01","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T16:17:01","slug":"new-york-irish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/golf\/courses-and-travel\/15\/new-york-irish","title":{"rendered":"New York Irish"},"content":{"rendered":"

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16th Tee. Anything Over the Bunkers Kicks Hard Towards the Green<\/p><\/div>\n

Architect Steven Kay likens a good golf course to a good movie. \u00a0\u201cI like to design holes that absorb golfers while they\u2019re playing them, and that they remember afterwards,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s no different than what moviemakers strive for. \u00a0Make something engaging and memorable.”<\/p>\n

If golf courses worked like movies, Kay and his senior associate, Doug Smith, might have some metal on the mantle for their Links at Union Vale course.\u00a0 They took a 200-acre parcel of former farmland in the upstate New York town of that name and created a semi-public layout that is always engaging, and frequently memorable. \u00a0Built on a nearly treeless site, its wide vistas give it the feel of a links course, while it’s greenside bunkering calls — on most holes — for a more like a parkland style of play.<\/p>\n

Kay calls the blended outcome a heathland course. \u00a0Labels aside, it’s beautiful to look at, and offers plenty of opportunities for tactical thinking. \u00a0The USGA was impressed enough to hold U.S. Amateur qualifying play on the course several years ago, and now, in the year of its tenth anniversary, we can say it’s held up well with absolutely minimal tinkering. \u00a0Besides being virtually treeless, the gently rolling site is festooned with \u00a0the blackberry canes, purple loosestrife, untamed fescue and squadrons of the Christmas-tree sized junipers that seize reverting farmland in New York. The property also contains a wetland, narrow and swampy in some places, ballooning into small ponds in others.<\/p>\n

Letting the shape of the land influence the shape of the holes, Kay and Smith rode the easy swells and troughs of the site.\u00a0 They drew from the character of linksland a dependence upon lethal rough (that fescue, loosestrife, and cane gorge themselves on errant shots) along with fast turf (\u201cWe keep it a little bit hungry,\u201d is how members describe it), and a smattering of bump and run opportunities. \u00a0It\u2019s fleshed out with shaggy-browed bunkering evocative of \u00a0the Old Country, and a good number of lozenge-shaped greens set obliquely to the center line of play. They\u2019re quick but not greased.\u00a0 Pronounced slope and contour make imaginative approaches the most important element in leaving it close.<\/p>\n

The result, with four sets of tees providing very different looks ( 5198 from the front and nearly 7000 from the tips), is an eminently flexible course \u2014 Kay says he wanted middling players coming in under 100, and better players toiling to break 80.\u00a0 To that end, the golf course calls upon tactics most of the way, and muscle for a finish. It\u2019s a layout of great beauty, and one that rewards the cunning tactician over the robust attacker.\u00a0 Shrewd are the players who walk off the 18th\u00a0green with a score better than their average. \u00a0It\u2019s a course that asks for some muscle at the last, but even the long finishing holes can be worked for up-and-down pars.<\/p>\n

That the site evokes links-style golf is no surprise, for it is the realized dream of roughly a dozen New York City-area Gaelic golfing societies.\u00a0 Filled with passionate players, the societies lacked a course of their own.\u00a0 Their love of the game found them spending Friday nights in the parking lots of \u00a0municipal courses, waiting to secure a tee time for Saturday morning.\u00a0 The waiting was miserable, the rounds long, the playing conditions poor. \u00a0They wanted their own course, and they wanted it to evoke the courses of Ireland.\u00a0 Pooling resources and setting a condition that their course should be within roughly one driving hour of New York, they went site-shopping.\u00a0 Their purchase, at 200 acres a postage stamp in terms of golf course site size, was made affordable by its location beyond easy commuting distance to New York. \u00a0They created a first-rate semi-private club, crowned by a 19,000 square foot Georgian-style clubhouse on the site\u2019s highest spot.<\/p>\n

They hired Kay on the strength of a resume that includes a layout, the highly-regarded Links of North Dakota, sited on similarly open terrain. Equally important to Kay\u2019s conception of the Union Vale course, however, was his renovation work, which familiarized him with the light touch of golf architecture\u2019s Golden Age classicists: Tillinghast, Colt, and Ross among them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI often design front nines that emphasize tactics and give the player a chance to find his or her game without a lot of distance pressure,\u201d says Kay.\u00a0 \u201cThe finish asks for distance combined with accuracy.\u201d \u00a0The pitcher Lew Burdette once explained his success by saying, \u201cI live off the hungriness of the hitter.\u201d\u00a0 On the outward nine, insistently aggressive players, hungry for birdies, are likely to be bloodied by rough that just doesn\u2019t quit.\u00a0 The first two holes, a 410-yard par-4 and a 500-yard five, cross a wetlands on the approach, forcing layups off the tee.\u00a0 The course begins to catch its rhythm on the third, a 200-yard par three.\u00a0 A bunker is the best place to be for a miss to the right, which falls away into the chaos of the rough.<\/p>\n

Here as well, for the first time but not the last, the beauty of the surrounding landscape becomes apparent.\u00a0 The rolling hills of Dutchess County spread in all directions, the Hudson Highlands rise in the south, and to the northwest the Catskill Mountains form a rumpled horizon.<\/p>\n

The next three holes exemplify the hunger Burdette talked about.\u00a0 Here begin the risk\/reward holes that pepper the golf course. Dogleg par 4\u2019s all, they run 358, 364, and 334 yards, but less on straight line flight.\u00a0 All three cry for a hammered driver which, hit on line, has every chance to run up very close to the front of the green, or even roll on.\u00a0 To miss, however, is to see the ball vanish into tangles of unplayable rough, a danger most acute on the 4th, which features a dogleg angled a full 90 degrees, or to get wet on the 5th, which requires a long carry over a pond to get close.<\/p>\n

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The 5th Tee. Airmail the Water For a Wedge Home. <\/p><\/div>\n

The observant player is now conversant with the architecture, alert to the fact that position trumps distance and that club selection from the tee has to be considered. \u00a0Will it be the driver?\u00a0 Or the neat one-two of a short wood down the generous fairways and a short iron home?\u00a0 This theme, high risk for high reward, is the leit motif<\/em> of the front nine. \u00a0The ninth, a rolling par-4 of 354 yards to a plateau green, is one of the layout\u2019s most eye-pleasing and subtle holes.\u00a0 A long, angular set of bunkers, running fully across the fairway from short right to long left, is easily carried unless the hole plays into the wind.\u00a0 But a driver down the center drifts left on the roll and leaves a more difficult approach: a half-wedge over a large bunker to a shelved green.<\/p>\n

The smart play, a fairway wood well right, leaves a full club in from a lie level with the putting surface.\u00a0 In fairness, this is knowledge gleaned from experience with the course, or advice from a partner who\u2019s played it before, but it\u2019s a wonderful hole even if it does have a gotcha about it. \u00a0And it whets the appetite for another try at it.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s also another good example of the value Kay and Smith place on position versus length. When the front nine is finished, the driver will have been the clear club of choice on exactly one outbound hole: the straightaway par-5 eighth.\u00a0 And with all the meticulous play required to navigate the side, the hole that leaves the deepest impression is the one with the deepest depression; the par-3 7th.\u00a0 It is a foxy hole, the only one on the golf course that plays truly uphill.\u00a0 That adds a club\u2014or does it?\u00a0 The card yardage is 180, but the hulking bunker, dead center, just doesn\u2019t look that far away.\u00a0 And the green is tough to see up there.\u00a0 Looks like a flag laid against a backdrop of swarming rough.\u00a0 Club choice doubt, a recipe for disaster, has been introduced.<\/p>\n

What Kay has in fact done is site the bunker a good 20 yards short of the green, where it raises visual havoc from the tee while hiding the most memorable green on the golf course.\u00a0 Good-sized (as it turns out), its front left quadrant looks as though the superintendent let the air out of it.\u00a0 Sitting a good five feet below the rest of the putting surface, it turns an otherwise reasonable green into a potential disaster. \u00a0There is no pin position, no landing zone, that takes the fear away.\u00a0 Back right seems best, taking the depression out of the direct line.\u00a0 But all putts from the rear of the green will swing down the broad contour of the green, and to truly take a run at the cup means coming as close to the crest of the pit as a matador does to the horns of the bull.\u00a0 A ball on its way down the steep slope into the depression gathers speed as it goes and flees the green completely.\u00a0 Putting up out of the pit is no less of a problem: not enough oomph and back it comes.\u00a0 Too much and you\u2019re looking at the yawning jaws of the pit once more.<\/p>\n

It is easy enough to gouge a crater into a green.\u00a0 But Kay and Smith simply used an already existing hollow as part of the putting surface, and they pulled it off without creating a circus, only a very lonely feeling for one standing over a putt.<\/p>\n

The tempo changes abruptly on the inbound nine. \u00a0The first four holes, including the final pair of par-3s, are nothing to trifle with, but their tenor is familiar. \u00a0Then the bell lap begins.<\/p>\n

First, a 602-yard dogleg left par 5 with a fairly long forced carry over a wetland on the second shot. \u00a0A good long tee shot — a best of the day type — is a must. \u00a0 A row of bunkers on the far side of the crossing line up the carry shot. \u00a0Accomplish that, and \u00a0a good short iron play to a deep, narrow green protected by a bunker left and large moguls right is all that remains. \u00a0A string of long par-fours follows. \u00a0Fifteen measures 430 yards, passing the club’s signature grain silo as it goes, 16 is near 440, and 17 is the let-up at a slightly uphill 400 yards. \u00a0The 18th, a 590 par-5 that calls for one last long forced carry, finishes the side, the day, and often, the golfer. \u00a0If you like to score, it may not be your cup of tea, but the five-hole run that closes out the course, fraught with beauty, challenge, and peril, is not soon forgotten.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Kay goes easy on you for awhile,\u201d says Phil O\u2019Mara, the driving force behind the creation of the club and its first president. \u00a0\u201cHe likes you to feel good after nine.\u00a0 After 18?\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s another matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clubhouse bar is handsome, decorated with the frosted, cut glass panels redolent of Ireland itself, and as any good grill is, an equal opportunity oasis for the triumphant and the whipped.\u00a0 And it offers compelling evidence that the course\u2019s antecedents are Irish: Guinness on tap, poured slowly, in traditional fashion.\u00a0 It\u2019s a last reminder that on The Links at Union Vale, the race goes to the patient, not the swift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Architect Steven Kay likens a good golf course to a good movie. \u00a0\u201cI like to design holes that absorb golfers… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":18,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1252,1253,1254,1251],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-courses-and-travel","tag-new-york-state-golf","tag-irish-golfing-societies","tag-golf-architect-steven-kay","tag-links-at-union-vale"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2010\/04\/Links-signature.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tgpnolan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}