nj public golf

Number 49 (Flanders Valley White)

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I parted ways with my good friend, Ed – who packed it in after the Gold & Red – walked onto the White (Number 49) with two other golfers, and I was on my way. Excited about 36 holes in a day, I took my phone out to snap a picture on the 1st fairway.

Whatever I had going for me on the Red, I couldn’t keep going on the White. Nothing was terrible, but errant tee shots had me working for bogeys, and I made double on the 1st and 4th. Bogeys followed on the 5th, 6th, and 7th. Having made par on the 2nd and I was hoping to at least finish the nine in “bogey golf”, so I needed at least one more.

The weather worsened and the sky absolutely opened up. Luckily, we were just coming off the 7th green, and there was a rain shelter before the 8th tee. As it poured all around us, I went to my bag to find my phone out to check the weather and tweet about my adventure.

No phone.

The main pocket zipper on my golf bag was open, and the phone was nowhere to be found. Between bouts of cursing myself out for being an absent-minded idiot, I tried to think of where it could be on the course while we waited for the rain to subside. Other than taking a picture on the 1st, I couldn’t think of any place else it could be.

Determined to finish the round, we saw an opening in the weather and decided to continue play. I would worry about the phone later. I would par the 8th and bogey the 9th. Bogey golf achieved. The White was finished in +9.

Running back into the clubhouse, I told the staff my missing phone plight and they let me take a cart out. One of my new playing partners even offered to help look, which I thought was incredible. With some good fortune, we were able to find it about 40 yards short of the 1st green, where I had pulled my approach shot. It was drenched and out of battery. Once again, I would need to worry about my phone later.

The Blue was calling me.

Number 49 (Flanders Valley White)

Numbers 47 through 50 (Flanders Valley Golf Course)

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You may be thinking “how does a single course count as four?” I’ll try to explain.

Flanders Valley Golf Course, located n Flanders as its name suggests, was only my second Morris County course after Pinch Brook. It features four 9-hole layouts that fan out something like a peacock’s tail; Gold, Red, Blue, and White. The scorecards treat these as two courses.

The Gold & Red Course would be the outermost “feathers” on the tail. If positioned with your back to the clubhouse, looking out onto the courses, the Gold nine is laid out to the far right, and the Red nine is laid out to the far left. Flanked by the Gold & Red, the Blue & White course is the center of the peacock’s tail, with the 5th tee on the Blue nine being the absolute tip, furthest from the clubhouse.

Sounds like two courses.

Struggling how to count these on my list of public NJ courses for my journey, I kept looking for details in the scorecards. For the Gold & Red, the Red nine is listed as holes 10-18, even on the course map. The same goes for the White nine on the Blue & White.

The Gold & Red list a total yardage of 6,770 from the back tees, and the Blue & White also has a combined yardage, marked as 6,765 from the tips.

Still just two courses. But, then I noticed how they handicapped the holes:

Gold: 2, 8, 3, 1, 6, 7, 4, 5, 9

Red: 4, 5, 2, 6, 9, 3, 1, 8, 7

Hmmm…

Blue: 5, 1, 8, 2, 4, 7, 6, 9, 3

White: 3, 7, 8, 4, 5, 2, 9, 1, 6

Why handicap them separately if these were supposed to be two 18-hole courses?

It made me think of other courses in the state that are only nine holes (e.g. Skyway in Jersey City, Hudson County) as well as some 27-hole layouts (e.g. Neshanic Valley in Branchburg, Somerset County). In these set-ups, all nine-hole layouts are handicapped separately. For 27-hole layouts, even though you can play any combination (i.e. 1-2, 2-3, 3-1), you’ll find them handicapped as individual nine-hole tracks.

That makes Flanders Valley four distinct nine-hole layouts, and four courses on the list.

I’ll touch on some of the differences between the four nines in the following posts when I talk about my rounds, but overall Flanders Valley is a beautiful place. If you play all 36 in a day (as I did) you’ll experience a great variety of holes and be challenged with shot-making decisions. The greens roll exceptionally well for a public course – something I had trouble with – especially on the Gold. If I had to guess, I would say they roll about a foot farther/faster on the stimp than your average public in New Jersey.

Bonus GolfingNJ (and Footgolf) Fact: Flanders Valley also has the distinction on my journey as being the only course where I’ve played footgolf before I’ve played golf. The 18-hole footgolf course is laid out on the White nine.

Numbers 47 through 50 (Flanders Valley Golf Course)

Number 44 (Skyway Golf Course at Lincoln Park West)

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Date Played: 8/8/2016

Opened in June 2015, Skyway Golf Course in Jersey City is easily the youngest course I’ve played, and with its youth comes beauty. Having the distinction of being the only public golf course in Hudson County – a small county of almost entirely urban geography – Skyway is breathtaking.

I mentioned how East Orange Golf Course’s downtrodden reputation is juxtaposed against its affluent background, but Skyway is juxtaposition in its purest form. Newborn lush fairways and greens set against aging man-made materials: concrete, asphalt, and steel. The drive up to the diminutive parking lot is on an absolutely beaten and forgotten road, littered with potholes and lined with truck yards and industry to the right. It is the last road you’d imagine leading to a clubhouse. But once you’ve entered and walked onto the course, it is another world.

Being on the course feels like being inside a sci-fi dome. With countless dunes and rolling fairways, almost the entire nine-hole layout is elevated from the topography of the surrounding area. From the tee box on the third hole or from the 5th green, that road to the clubhouse seems like a dried-up asphalt river at the bottom of a valley off in the distance. You have incredible views in multiple directions, with the Manhattan skyline to one side, the remaining marshlands on the inlet from the Hackensack River on the other, and the Pulaski Skyway – for which the course is named – joining the two.

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The approach on the par-5 3rd, with the Freedom Tower in the background

Considering golf an 18-hole event, I was sort of resigned to the fact that I would only be playing nine holes. As I described, all of that resignation went out the window once I was on the course. I could have played three holes and been grateful to have been there.

Whether it was inspiration from the splendor of the course, or if it was just that I was “on”, I enjoyed a great round of nine holes. I carded nothing higher than bogey, and finished +5 on the day. It was hard-earned by scrambling most of the round. I only hit three of the nine greens in regulation, but my short game carried me. On the 5th, I hit a soft-landing sand wedge from 40 yards that ran eight feet to the pin and lipped out after going 450 degrees around the cup and stopping just an inch outside. On the 7th, I hit the pin once again and lipped 180 degrees around it, stopping at 2.5 feet. I finished with only 9.2 feet of putts made.

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My 3rd shot on the par-4 5th. How does that not go in?!

Having been in Jersey City for work for the day, there was definitely the excitement of playing a round of golf after a day at the office. But being on the first tee at Skyway was something beyond that. I experienced a deep appreciation for everything they accomplished in designing and building the course, and I felt like I was truly somewhere special, which is what golf courses should feel like.

The word “infant” comes from the Latin for “unable to speak” or “speechless”. If you are a golfer within 30 miles of Jersey City on the New Jersey side, you must play this infant course. Unable to speak for itself, it may just leave you speechless.

Number 44 (Skyway Golf Course at Lincoln Park West)

Number 38 (Pinch Brook) (… and numbers 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44)

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I told you that you’d be joining me in the middle of my story, and it has progressed without my updating you. So, I figured I’d at least catch you up to the present. Since my last post, I’ve played six new NJ public courses (new to me, that is). Those courses are:

Pinch Brook

The 38th course mentioned in my last post was Pinch Brook Golf Club (Florham Park, Morris County). The signature hole at Pinch Brook is the 16th, which is a medium-length par 3 from a slightly elevated tee. The hole plays over water and is a tough shot if you don’t hit your wedge or iron squarely. I hit six greens in regulation that day, and luckily this was one of them.

While the 16th may be the signature hole, I’d say the signature feature is actually the body of water between the 5th and 6th holes. The starter was kind enough to give us a quick overview of the course at the start of our round, and he mentioned that the water is actually in the shape of the state of New Jersey! Personally, it reminded me of my mission and I almost treated it as kismet for the day.

Unfortunately, kismet only took me so far, and I wasn’t able to really get anything going. I was grateful to be grouped with a couple who play the course often, but I failed to take advantage of their local knowledge. I fared poorly throughout the round, and finished up at +19. I’m finding that to be just about average for when I play a course for the first time, but with nine par 3s and par being 65, I left a bit disappointed in myself. Averaging 1.1 holes at triple bogey (or worse) per round for the year, I carded three this round.

Pinch Brook was the fifth course I’ve played in Morris County. Overall, the course is beautiful. It’s incredibly well maintained for an executive course, but the greens fees reflect that, costing as much as most regulation public courses in New Jersey. Price aside, it’s absolutely worth a look if you haven’t played it.

Number 38 (Pinch Brook) (… and numbers 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44)

Golf: How far have you driven?

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A number of things have happened since my last post:

  • I have played four more courses for the first time, bringing my total to 38 (20.5%).
  • The weather in New Jersey has gotten significantly warmer.
  • I have moved home base for my golfing operations… which is to say I’ve moved altogether.

Looking back on this quest and reflecting on my recent move, I realized this is the fourth location from which I’ve ventured to new golf courses. Raised in Bergen County, I moved to Middlesex County with my wife-to-be in 2006, then to Somerset County in 2009, and we now call Mercer County home. With all of the moves and different home bases in mind, and knowing that I still had a long way to go in terms of New Jersey courses left to play, I wanted to get a sense of how far I’ve already gone. How far have I actually driven to play these courses?

Gathering the data told me some noteworthy things about my golf timeline.

  • While I first picked up a set of golf clubs sometime in the late 1990s, I didn’t play a regulation-length course in New Jersey until 8/13/2005.
  • Between 2005 and 2010, I only played seven different NJ courses. That’s an average of about 259 days between each new course.
  • After a hiatus from 2010 to 2013, I’ve played 31 additional courses. That’s an average of about 36 days between each new course.
  • I found out about my golf quest on 10/15/2015. Since then, I have played 11 new courses, an average of about 18 days between each new course.
  • To date, the furthest I’ve driven to a golf course (one-way) is 63.3 miles.

Taking a look at each course already checked off my list and factoring in when I first played them and where I had lived at the time, I was able to calculate that I have driven a total of 1,942.4 miles (round trip). To put that in context, here are the distances to different golf landmarks across the country from my current location in NJ:

How far have you driven?

Golf: How far have you driven?

In Medias Res

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The Latin phrase in medias res means “in/into the middle/midst of things”. That is how my story begins for you. When used as a literary technique, it’s sometimes meant to be in the middle of some critical plot action, like a battle in war. While I can’t say my story promises such action, you join it in the middle nonetheless.

In my first entry, I mentioned that I was excited about the idea of playing over 100 different golf courses in New Jersey. What I didn’t mention is that it’s also exciting because it means I will travel to areas of the state that I may not have otherwise visited, or even planned to visit. As a lifelong New Jersey resident, this was an endearing prospect. Prior to taking on this journey, the only time I got to new areas of the state in the last four years was on “nap drives”, trying to get my reluctant-to-nap daughters to fall asleep in the car. I used a lot of these drives to find new golf courses and wondered if I’d ever play them. Now I had a reason to.

One of the interesting things about this goal of playing all public courses in a state is that, by pure chance, I happened to be born in a state where this is actually probable, or at least achievable in a lifetime (while raising a family and working a full-time job). When I first considered it, I thought that – apart from other geographically small states like Rhode Island, Connecticut, or Delaware – there must not be many states where someone could take this on. States like California and Texas make the task unlikely with their geographic size and abundance of golf courses, but what about Alaska? It turns out Alaska only has eight regulation-length, 18-hole courses. That makes the 49th state possible, so what about the 50th state? Hawaii is probably likely as well, seeing as it’s only a few small islands. And if Alaska only has a few courses because of the cold climate, what about states that are mostly desert, like Nevada, Arizona, or New Mexico? I suppose as long as you’re willing to make the drives all over those larger states, they would make for accomplishable goals as well.

With the knowledge that “The Goldilocks Zone” for entirely playable states was larger than I initially thought, I focused again on my home state. New Jersey has 21 counties and – by my count – 350 golf courses, 185 of which are public. Coming by these numbers was more difficult than I thought it would be, and I’ve learned that between some courses closing and others being difficult to find, the number is definitely subject to change.

So, how far “in the middle of things” are we exactly? As of the time of writing, I have played 34 of the 185 public courses in New Jersey. That means we’re roughly 18% of the way through my journey. It also means that Kermit was off by a few courses (37, to be precise).

In Medias Res

A man named Kermit

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On October 15, 2015, I was enjoying a round of golf at Hyatt Hills Golf Complex (Clark, NJ) with a friend from work. As we walked to our second shots on the par-4 15th – which is the 6th on this 9-hole course – the pair behind us hit their tee shots. Typically, you’d expect players to wait until we’ve hit our second and we’re on our way to the green, but they were apparently in a hurry. They walked up and asked if they could join. We obliged.

The pair introduced themselves as Andrew and Kermit. Over the course of the closing four holes, we would learn that they work in Manhattan, and they were actually getting a round in before heading to work later that afternoon. I was immediately jealous. In addition to normal golf pleasantries, Kermit shared something that would set me on a journey.

“My wife and I figured out that there are 148 public courses in New Jersey,” he said, “and our goal is to play them all. No timeline.” Right then, I knew I too had a new goal in life. I had always enjoyed playing courses for the first time, but the prospect of playing over 100 of them was overwhelmingly exciting. Where should I start? How would I find all these courses?

This blog will chronicle my journey to play all public courses in New Jersey. It will also serve as a log of how I develop as a golfer. I can tell you that there will be plenty of statistics, the occasional strong opinion, and hopefully, some engaging stories.

I may even run into a man named Kermit again.

A man named Kermit