Winged Foot was not made for television.

For all the splendor and the history at what might be A.W. Tillinghast’s finest work, the West Course is not picturesque in the modern sense.  As it prepares to play host to its sixth U.S. Open since opening in 1923, it is a reminder that there are no oceanside holes like at Pebble Beach.  There isn’t an abundance of blooming azaleas like at Augusta National.  There isn’t even the characteristic brown grass and gray wind and rain — we hope — that define so many weeks of the British Open.

Instead, the joy and wonder of Winged Foot lies in its green complexes, which is very difficult to see if not there in person.  

The whole golf course was recently restored by the superlative Gil Hanse, who rebuilt those beautiful putting surfaces with all their tumbling and dramatic undulation.  (The members also decided to put sub-air systems under every one of the greens, thus giving the USGA no excuse to not to have the playing conditions absolutely perfect, even if that British weather unfortunately rolls into Westchester County in June.)

They are now back to live in all their glory, with big slopes to separate bad shots from good, and good shots from great.  There are little nooks that can hide hole locations, and crannies that can funnel balls towards them.  The greens are so wonderful that in order to properly navigate them, a player has to plan for the second shot with placement of the tee shot.  There are now far fewer trees choking the angles of play, but driving the ball remains paramount — because missing the green in the wrong place spells disaster.

It is exactly what Tillinghast was tasked with when commissioned by a sect of members from the New York Athletic Club in 1921 to build them “a man-sized course.”

“As the various holes came to life, they were of a sturdy breed,” Tillinghast said upon opening in June of 1923.  “The contouring of the greens places a premium on the placement of the drives, but never is there the necessity of facing a prodigious carry of the ‘sink or swim’ sort.  It is only the knowledge that the next shot must be played with rifle accuracy that brings the realization that the drive must be placed.  

“The holes are like men, all rather similar from foot to neck, but with the greens showing the same varying characters as human faces.”

The par-3’s might be where the complexes shine the most, with Tillinghast considering
No. 10 to be the best one-shot hole he ever designed.  With a huge bunker cutting into the front-right of the green, and another mid-way up on the left, the player isn’t left with much margin for error.  The putting surface itself slopes severely from left-to-right, where some three-putts might not seem that bad.

Then there is No. 3, the beast that plays about 220 yards to a green that looks like a crumpled piece of looseleaf.  In the 1959 U.S. Open, Billy Casper intentionally laid up short of the green in all four rounds, made four pars, and won by a shot.

The brutishness doesn’t remain with the par-3’s, though.  Coming down the stretch, No. 15 might be the best par-4 on the course, with a stream cutting off the fairway and forcing a second shot up the hill to a pear-shaped green.  Nos. 16 and 17 are long, difficult doglegs, as is No. 18, where Phil Mickelson blew the 2006 U.S. Open with a wayward drive and foolish course management that led him to declare: “I’m such an idiot.”

Of course, all of that is part of the history and the allure of Winged Foot.  It’s said that Tillinghast had to cut down 7,800 trees and move  7,200 tons of rock, which was then used by the famous architect Clifford C. Wendenhack to build the English Scholastic clubhouse.  Bobby Jones won the U.S. Open there in 1929, while Hale Irwin won “The Massacre at Winged Foot,” the 1974 U.S. Open, with a winning score of 7-over.  

The club is one of the pillars of golf in the United States, and the golf course is one of the best in the world.  It is only proper that it regains its rightful place in the spotlight, even if the brilliance is a little more nuanced than some of its brethren.

TO THE LINKS-(STYLE)!

With a lack of “true links” courses, the NY-Metro market has made itself home to the best of its hypenated, American counterpart.

By BRETT CYRGALIS

Managing Editor

As I walked off the first tee of Lido Golf Club with my bag securely on my shoulder, I smiled.  There was a cold, gray November sky, and the wind was swirling like a sleeping beast.  I was wearing a winter hat over my ears, two long-sleeved shirts under a thick sweater, and a wind jacket.  A pair of long johns under my old corduroys.  Let it blow, I thought.  Let’s have some fun.

My drive off the first tee went right, over near the bunkers and broken seashells.  By the time I got to it, the wind starting pushing.  It shoved me back towards the clubhouse, back towards the warmth of a steaming coffee and a cheese danish, to the hum of the Golf Channel and the scraping of wooden chairs on the tile floor.  The woman behind the counter would welcome me, tell me to wait it out, or just tell me I’m crazy and, with a chuckle, encourage me to come back another day.

The third green at Lido Golf Club on the south shore of Long Island.

But no.  I was off.  I was looking at about 250 yards into what seemed like a brick wall of air.  I set my bag down, perpendicular to the gusts.  Pulled a two-iron.  Within seconds, the bag hit the ground with a thud and a jangle, the white tattered towel flying in a mad dash back to shelter.  I ran after it, clamped it to the ground with the head of my flat iron, and, again, smiled.  One of these days, huh?

I was still cold and not used to my cumbersome outfit yet, so my attempt at a stinger approach came out fat and low, flailing in the wind like a dead duck.  It settled about 175 yards from the green, and from there I plowed on, checking my ego with the set of new cleats still sitting in my trunk.

In the sight of no one, I played the first 13 holes of Lido in a wind that at times – I swear – got over 50 miles-per-hour.  I hit some shots low and flush, only to see them balloon up in the sky and travel 30 yards.  I hit a 4-wood on the toe that bounded onto the front of the green at the 375-yard third hole.  Throughout it all, I laughed like a child – or like a madman, depending on your point of view.

But when it gets down to it, I don’t think I’m the first one to ever enjoy a day like this.  And it was most enjoyable because of the golf course.

Lido Golf Club is on the south shore of Long Island, near Jones Beach.  It is the descendant of “The Lido,” the famous C.B. MacDonald track that, during its height in the 1920s, was considered by many to be the best (and most difficult) golf course on Earth.  But the current course is on adjacent land and was built by the mind of Robert Trent Jones, Sr. – a very different mind than that of MacDonald’s.  But the spirit, the essence, the overwhelming ethos of the property (because, of course, the property is alive) is that of wonderment.  As it was with The Lido, so it is with the current Lido Golf Club: a place for man to commune with nature and engage the elements.  It’s a place made for toiling, for playing a game that forces you to navigate through the myriad conditions sent to you from on high.

What we speak of is the spirit of links golf.

But no, Lido is not a “links” proper.  It doesn’t abut the Ocean, but instead Reynolds Channel, which opens up into Middle Bay on the inland side of the barrier island, protecting it from the Atlantic.  Its soil, although consistently firm in most areas, isn’t necessarily sandy.  The terrain of the golf course is very flat, with almost no trees, no blind shots and very few rolling hills or nooks and crannies.  Most bunkers are shallow and wide, and you can see them as you play.  The greens are rather small and pushed upwards by fronting bunkers, fitting right in with the green complexes of Trent Jones’ Florida courses.

So, in a culture that is consistently in search of labels and categories, how do we describe the current Lido Golf Club?

We hyphenate it.  Rather than creating a new word – which would be rather silly – we crunch two together to create a phrase that in its very nature ambiguous.

We call courses like this “links-style.”  You can almost never say the word is misused, because in reality, it means very little.  When pressed, its best use is to describe a golf course that has few trees and is flat.  Of course, you can argue that courses with partial forests are still “links-style,” and that courses with some severe elevation changes are  “links-style” as well.  The word is a cover up for many ill-conceived layouts and many uninspiring landscapes.

But there is a lot of good that comes from this worrisome adjective.  When used properly, “links-style” evokes a feeling that is instinctual, guttural, deep inside the subconscious of many a golfer.  It brings about the idea of the original links, the Old Course at St. Andrew’s.  It rarely replicates the majestic picture of the Home of Golf, but it can, at its best, conjure up similar emotions.  Emotions of man in harmony with nature, of man trying not to tame nature, but learn from her and use her power to his advantage, of man reveling in the power and glory of the natural Earth and the joys a simple game of ball-in-hole can bring to ones soul.

The terrain is certainly dramatic at Long Island National.

For everyone lucky enough to play golf in the New York-Metropolitan market, we have an array of great, links-style golf courses to choose from.  (For now, let us leave the quotation marks behind.)  And although there are a handful of historically significant links-style private clubs in this area, when searching for the real heart of the idea you must head to the public courses.

The notion of golf being an exclusive sport for the rich elite is something that is uniquely American.  The reasons for this go deep into sociological theory, and use golf only as a metaphor for American class structure.  But at the home of the game, in Scotland, golf is a sport for the masses.  The townspeople of St. Andrew’s own the old links, a municipal Mesopotamia for a modern global game.  Show up there tomorrow, no matter where you’re from, and with two hundred pounds you have as much right to hit out of Hell Bunker as any descendant of Old Tom Morris.

“I hope to live to see the day when there are the crowds of municipal courses, as in Scotland, cropping up all over the world,” wrote Alister MacKenzie, a native Scotsman who built the likes of Cypress Point and Augusta National, which have now become two of the most famously private clubs in the world, as well as the long-forgotten Bayside Links in Queens, a municipal course that was forced to close due to the construction of the Long Island Expressway in the 1950s.

“It would help enormously in increasing the health, the virility and the prosperity of nations. . . . There can be no possible reason against and there is every reason in favor of, municipal courses.”

Long Island

Let us start then with the aforementioned Lido Golf Club in Lido Beach, Long Island.  With one side of the square-like property running up to the tame waters of Reynolds Channel, there is a feeling throughout the Lido property that evokes the real linksland.  For about nine holes, you can spot the body of water in the distance, and Nos. 5 and 13 play directly alongside a bulkhead.  The piece of property, as it is with most links-styles, is dead flat, and there is little nuance from tee to green.  But because of this topography (or lack thereof) the wind whips off the channel in angry spurts.  Across Lido Boulevard, a few blocks south, is a beautiful beach the runs up to the Atlantic Ocean.  This proximity only makes for the weather to be more variable – and ultimately makes the already interesting layout even more so.  Stretching to 6,913 yards, this is no pushover even without the wind.

There was a very famous hole at MacDonald’s original Lido that was the epitome of risk-reward.  The fourth hole back then (now on a piece of vacant land adjacent to the current site) was a 510-yard par-5 with two options off the tee: either you could play on a direct line to the green onto a small island fairway that sat in the middle of what MacDonald dubbed “the lagoon,” or you could play safe and go left, to another island fairway, this one a lot larger and curving back to the right in the direction of the green.  From either fairway, you had to carry water again on the second shot to reach to green.

Well, Trent Jones did his best to recreate a masterpiece – and did so by building No. 16 on the current course.  Loved by some and despised by others, this 487-yard par-5 plays to an island fairway shaped like a “Y” with the green straight away up the narrow right arm.  No matter your opinion on the hole, it makes for some interesting golf shots and some thought provoking discussions.  It is clear that the hole – as well as the golf course as a whole – would not fit in with any conception of true links golf.  But links-style?  Throw the bag on the shoulder and enjoy.

The rolling terrain that makes up the roller coaster ride at Long Island National.

A little farther east on Long Island sits a tribute to American golf course ambiguity, Long Island National.  Built by Robert Trent Jones, Jr., this delight opened in 1999 to rave reviews.  Being in Riverhead, at the spot before Long Island splits into the north and south forks, puts the golf course in close range of some of the heavy hitters of American golf.  But the extreme exclusiveness of the likes of Shinnecock, National Golf Links, Sebonack, Maidstone, Atlantic, etc., has made this public track a go-to for a multitude of reasons.

First being the quality of golf.  Starting as a 150-acre potato field, the amount of earth moved to create this rollercoaster ride is just unimaginable.  Trent Jones, Jr., obviously had in mind the rolling fairways of real linksland, but by playing God with a bulldozer, he created a landscape that is a lot like looking at linksland through a funhouse mirror.  The dips and swales that envelope every inch of play make for some fun bounces and good strategy, especially off the tee.  A lot of fairways seem to be built up with bumps on one side, while on the other side there is a deep depression – the result of moving earth from one side to the other.  That also creates the need for precision that, if not found, can add up to some big numbers for a course that isn’t that long (6,838, back tees).

With native grasses growing on most of the areas not through the green, as the wind blows it creates that beautiful, wave-like illusion in the amber stalks that make a man happy to be alive.  Although half the course is open and treeless, while the other half winds its way through some tall wooded areas, the positive emotions that a good links-style course creates come burning through on this piece of land.  If it feels contrived, embrace it and play some of the most entertaining golf shots anywhere in the NY-Metro area.

Not too far from Long Island National sits another links-style gem, built around the same time in the same vein – but the result being quite different.  Tallgrass Golf Club opened in Shoreham on the north shore of Long Island in 2000, and the understated Gil Hanse design has been on the deserving end of many compliments over the past decade.  Although only going back to 6,587 yards, the course offers ample difficulty by the way of rolling fairways and undulating greens.  With the conditions kept fast and firm, native grasses growing on every bump and mound, and with almost no trees to block the swirling winds, Hanse has created a modern links-style gem accessible to all levels.

One of the great short par-4s at Tallgrass on Long Island.

Among the many, many more links-style courses throughout Long Island, we would be remiss not to mention Montauk Downs Golf Course, all the way out at the eastern most point of the south fork.  This Trent Jones, Jr., track has recently been renovated and, with few trees, rolling hills and a hard wind coming off the Block Island Sound and the Atlantic, this is one of the best rounds in the area.  The same can be said for Timber Point Golf Club in Great River, on the south shore.  A course with a rich history dating back to C.H. Alison’s original 1925 design, the complex now offers 27 holes and features some of the most dramatic, links-style golf in area.  If you have a chance, do not miss the opportunity to play the Blue nine, featuring the original “Gibraltar” hole, Alison’s take on the famous eighth hole at Alister MacKenzie’s Moortown Golf Club in England.

Also, Cherry Creek Golf Links in Riverhead offers two 18-hole courses, the Links and Woods.  The aptly named Links – the original Charles Jurgens’ design that opened the facility in 1996 – has few trees and is fairly open in its playing areas, creating a consistently strong wind.  It wraps up with the only par-6 on Long Island, which is grip-it-and-rip-it, links-style golf at its core.

New Jersey

Although Long Island seems to be the most conducive natural terrain for links-style courses, there are some very fine designs in – of all places – New Jersey.  With some beautiful landscapes and engaging topography, our coverage area of The Garden State – as far northwest as Sussex County and as far southeast as Monmouth – contains some of the most dynamic links-style golf courses in the area.

The lush greatness of Royce Brook East in New Jersey.

Stretching the limits of our bedeviled adjective is Royce Brook Golf Club, in Hillsborough.  Sitting in central Jersey’s Somerset County, about 50 miles southwest from Manhattan, Royce Brook has two distinctly different 18-hole golf courses, the East and West.  Although the West Course is restricted to members only (it is a semi-private facility) and fits the links-style bill a little more comprehensively, the East Course in its own right creates a beautiful setting that unquestionably taps the links ethic.

Designed by noted architect Steve Smyers and opened in 1998, the holes of the East Course weave through the natural surroundings of wild native grasses and wetlands to compile a very unique experience.  It’s unique mostly because these links-style attributes are set in and around a forest.  With tall trees framing holes and coming directly into play often, it might be a stretch to call this course “links-style.”  Some might go so far as to call it “parkland” – another overly used ambiguous golf course adjective.

But because of the serene setting, the East course can lull the golfer into feeling like he or she is on the Carolina shoreline.  The rather large bunkers are mostly shallow and built in traditional finger-shaped designs, normally found on the periphery of the fairways and at corners of doglegs.  The greens are generally well guarded by similar bunkers and chipping areas, making for some challenging approaches and some nifty short-game shots on a course that stretches out to 6,946 yards.  The creativity needed by the golfer to produce different types of shots, tee to green, makes for a round that speaks to the sheepherder in all of us.

And speaking of sheepherders, didn’t they wear kilts?  Like the kilt worn by the bagpipe player standing sentry at Ballyowen Golf Club in Hamburg, up in Sussex County?

The tough par-3 at Ballyowen that utilizes the natural ponds in Sussex County, Northwestern New Jersey.

Yes, it’s true that as the morning dew begins to evaporate and the ground in the foothills of the Kittatiny Mountains starts to warm, a grown man stands on the patio at this gorgeous club and blasts away the dawn mist with traditional Irish chants from a plaid-colored ancient instrument.  The attendants all run around in yellow knickers, white socks and dark blue tams, cheery, ready to say “Top ‘o the morning to ‘ya,” although they all probably grew up pronouncing “you” as “youh-z.”

Dramatic, yes.  But the point is that when you arrive at Ballyowen, it is obvious you are in for a special treat.  This arm of the Crystal Springs Resort (which is home to five terrific golf courses) is as good as it gets concerning American links-style golf, as architect Roger Rulewich pinpointed all that is right with this genre of design.

Utilizing the dramatic elevation changes, the natural ponds and the ever-rolling hillside, Rulewich carved a golf course that seemed dormant in the land all along.  There are holes that make their way around water hazards, like the 203-yard, par-3 sixth hole.  There, with all carry from tee to green, the design could feel forced.  But because of the way it’s situated, teeing from a small islet in the middle of a pond back to the “mainland,” the hole becomes just a joyous place to hit a golf shot.

Because there are very few trees on the course – mostly on the perimeter of the grounds – the wind whips around this place and drastically changes the way it plays on a daily basis.  Every mound that frames each fairway is covered in tall, native grasses, and the result is a 7,094-yard (back tees) course that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is physically enjoyable.

As there were on Long Island, there are many, many more courses in our coverage area of New Jersey that deserve recognition for being examples of good links-style design.  One of them is Colts Neck Golf Club, in Colts Neck, New Jersey.  Being in Monmouth County, the proximity to the Atlantic coastline encouraged many architects to build in the links-style vein.  Here, Mark Mungeum didn’t force the issue, when in 1999 he built a natural, rolling golf course that is somewhat short (6,250 yards from the back) and open, allowing for some creative golf.  Another good example is Neshanic Valley Golf Course in Neshanic Station, Somerset County.  Dr. Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry came into this 420-acre piece of flat farmland and built a 27-hole complex at championship length and a small, 9-hole track for beginners.  No matter which two nines you pair together on the big course, you will be in for a delightful, open round of golf with some environmental hazards (a Hurdzan/Fry staple) and some native grasses adorning the tops of mounds.

Back at the Lido, I set my bag down (no stand, I had learned) and walked around some six-foot tall reeds the get to the back tee of the thirteenth hole.  To my right was the bulkhead that kept Reynolds Channel from flooding the golf course.  It ran all along the right-hand side of the hole, and, as could be expected, the wind blew hard off the water.

I teed my ball low and aimed at a small island in the distance, the target line being about 30 yards out into the water.  I hit it well and it started on line, but with a bit of hook spin, it started moving left – and kept hooking and hooking.  It ended in the left rough, about 150 yards short of the green and 150 yards left of where I aimed it.

By this time, the sky was getting darker, and the air was getting moist.  A rain was about to fall, and when it came down, it was going to be cold, and heavy.  It didn’t seem like there was much time left in this ride, so I hustled up to my ball, and chunked an 8-iron short of the green.  There, I took a pitching wedge and tried to play a low chip to the flag cut in the middle of the green.  I looked up, bladed it and cringed.  Then, with a loud clank! the ball hit the flagstick and dropped in.  I tossed the club over my head, and as it flipped around, a gust of wind began to move it over my back and I quickly ducked as if avoiding a bomb.  It landed 10 yards behind me in a little damp collection of rocks and shells, and I fell to me knees laughing.

When I got to the fourteenth tee, it was raining, and I never got a sight on my hooked 2-iron.  I walked around looking for it, but then decided to just walk to the fifteenth tee.  More rain, now penetrating my cheap windbreaker and dampening my sweater.  My bones were achy and I struggled to stay vertical as the wind pushed hard against as I teed up on the par-3.  I could hardly see out of my rain-soaked glasses, and the 5-iron I hit felt thin and right, headed towards the water and the reeds.  I never saw it, never looked for it and walked to the sixteenth.

There, at the starting point for one the finest examples of links-style golf anywhere in the New York area, I paused.  Was this a great hole or a contrived one?  Does this design utilize the landscape it was given, or press upon it the ideas of golf courses that are so far away and so foreign in concept?  Is this the modern, American incarnation of Ballybunion, or Carnoustie, or even Prestwick?

And, after wiping the rain from my face and stuffing my barren hands in my pockets, should I hit driver up the right side or 4-wood to the left?

I had to smile, because at this point, what else could you do?  I took out an old ball, teed it up, smacked a driver somewhere up into the cold rain and then turned for the clubhouse.  Where the ball went is really irrelevant to the situation that was at hand.  It was the experience that mattered; the feeling of the rain on your shoulders as you try to get up-and-down, and that same rain that eventually tells you enough is enough, go home.

I’ll never forget that day because in all its chaos, it was peaceful.  The bonding that golf and I did during those couple hours are irreplaceable, and, in this humble man’s opinion, best found on golf courses where the origin of game is never too far off.

Brett Cyrgalis is managing editor of Golf Guides USA and is also a sports writer at the New York Post.