(Photo by Golf Guides USA)

For the public-course golfers on Long Island — and those more adventurous in the surrounding Metropolitan Area — there has always been a waterside gem down near Jones Beach that has drawn attention.  The Lido Golf Club produces one of the prettiest walks in the area, with holes playing along and against the winds whipping off Reynolds Channel.  Flat and treeless, it gives off a links-like feel that is uncommon and should be embraced.

But more recently, what has drawn the most attention is its lineage.

The sign out front has the date, “1914,” but that’s a lie.  What exists today opened in 1948, designed by Robert Trent Jones with a mutilated tip of the hat to its predecessor.

That would be the original Lido Resort, which had a golf course that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean in the south up to Reynolds Channel in the north.  It was on land that sits directly west of the current golf course, whose southern border is Lido Boulevard rather than the sandy ocean beach. 

The original course was designed by the father of American architecture, C.B. Macdonald.  He and associate Seth Raynor dredged over 2 million cubic yards of dirt and sand from the channel to build out the marshy areas and create the ideal golf course over the nondescript piece of land.  All their famous template holes were there, from a Biarritz along the beach to a Redan and a Punchbowl.  There was even the first original hole design in the United States from an unknown amateur architect at the time named Dr. Alister MacKenzie.  His drawing was for a tri-option par-4, and it won an open contest in Country Life magazine.  That was 1914, and when the course was completed in 1917, Macdonald had made it the finishing hole.

Famed golf writer Bernard Darwin called the completed project “the finest golf course in the world.”  Claude Harmon Sr. said it was “the greatest golf course—ever.”

But the depression did a number on the resort, and then the Navy took over the course in World War II for training.  It never reopened.

Yet as interest in golf-course architecture increased around the turn of the 21st century, so did interest in The Lido.  It was held up as the best example of what to do with a flat piece of land.  The idea of actually rebuilding The Lido to the exact specs was something that was batted around for a while.  Architect Tom Doak almost built a replica at Bandon Dunes resort in Oregon, but the land was too interesting.  Instead, he and Jim Urbina built Old Macdonald, a homage to Macdonald and his ideas rather than a replication. 

But the idea could only last too long before it was executed.  Now, there are two different replicas being built, so let’s give a quick glance at both projects.  And let’s also be happy that there is something in our area that echoes the history so revered.

Ballyshear in Thailand
When Gil Hanse got the invitation to build a course in Thailand, in a suburb of Bangkok, he looked at the dead flat piece of land and thought about his options.  Soon enough, the idea of recreating The Lido came to mind and the owner of the property was convinced.
What Hanse built is not an exact replica, only because the land itself is quite different.  Far from the sandy soil found on the south shore of Long Island, Hanse had to put in concrete piers under any large mounding to make sure it didn’t collapse on itself.  He kept the same order of holes, but he considers it more of a tribute to The Lido than an honest recreation.  It is set to open in full in the Winter of 2022.

The Lido in Wisconsin
Doak finally was able to rebuild The Lido in earnest when the Keiser family bought land across the street from their famed Sand Valley Resort in rural Wisconsin.  (They also own Bandon Dunes, so they had shared the dream for a long time.)  With a digital rendition of the course created by a computer designer and golf historian out of Chicago named Peter Flory, Doak was able to program his bulldozers to within an inch of the estimated scale.
The work started in the summer of 2021 and almost 13 holes were shaped and grassed by the time the snow came.  The rest was set to be completed in 2022, with a grand opening in the spring of 2023.

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By BRETT CYRGALIS
Brett Cyrgalis is managing editor of golfguidesusa.com and author of "Golf's Holy War" from Simon & Schuster on the battle for the soul of the game in an age of science.

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