BROOKLYN, NY – There is hope in New York City for a golf course that was once a lost cause. Brooklyn public course Marine Park, under new operators since 2010, has engaged golf architect Stephen Kay to begin renovations to the golf course, and initial reaction from New York City public golfers has been uniformly supportive.
The course used to be a Hell hole. Dismally conditioned, blandly designed, ridiculously overcrowded, and flat-out dull, it was where NOT to play and contended for the dubious honor of worst New York City public golf course. With the dumb bunnies at the New York City Parks Department calling the shots on NYC public golf, (though knowing next to nothing about golf or golf operations and having unrealistic requirements and expectations), many had written Marine Park off as hopeless.
Enter the Giordano family, New York City native Stephen Kay, and new superintendant Don Asinski, and in three years, the golf course has turned around remarkably.
“It looks like a golf course finally!” affirmed Kevin from Plainview, a regular at the course. “Before it was awful, but now it’s come back and it’s getting better every day.”
Kevin is right. The course conditioning was so abysmal, some avoided the course for that reason alone. Still others decried the boring, repetitive penal architecture design, with flat fairways running so closely side by side you were constantly in each others’ way. It looked like the infamous dusty wastes of Horizon Hills, the course Lee Trevino and Ray Floyd made famous in the Last Great Money Match in Golf. But now the creative, colorful Kay has been given free rein to try out some of his strategic design principles to make players think their way around the course.
“We’re taking the original Robert Trent Jones design we’re trying to give it more character and more strategy,” explained Kay. “So the adding of mounding and berms and sand bunkers not only provides some safety as a buffer between holes that were flat and side-by-side, but they pinch in just a little bit also to make golfers play around them.”
They chose this path because the number one asset they have right now is dirt: they are getting gargantuan amounts of cheap dirt, and framing the holes with mounding that tries to look like Bayonne and Bethpage, a good look to copy.
They are also using the mounding to create berms between holes (for safety) and around the ugly boundaries of the property, as Tom Doak did at the Rawls Course at Texas Tech. That is working well. What was once a flat eyesore now has color and texture, and it also has a little more character and strategy.
“We’ve done five holes so far,” said Kay. “And we couldn’t have done any of it without the new super, Donald Asinski. He makes a world of difference.”
Unquestionably. Asinski really turned the fairways around with proper agronomic practices such as proper aeration, fertilizing, and fungicides. The before and after pictures are astounding. What was once utterly awful is now enjoyable. Even with the torrential rains of this year, the course didn’t get damp or too saturated.
Between Kay’s thinking outside the box, Asinski’s talent, and the good old fashioned common sense of the Giordano family, Marine Park is now reclaimed from the scrap heap, and New York City can be proud of it again.
Now is it a links? Absolutely not, and they know that.
“We’re not a links,” said Adam Giordano. “So we’re not going to overstate the case. That being said, Brooklyn is enjoying a resurgence right now, and we’d like to help be a part of it.”
They are a part of it, and golfers are raving about the changes.
“I love it,” beamed Pam from Brooklyn. “We can take pride in the golf course. I hope they keep it up!”
“It’s terrific what they’ve done,” added Tommy from Plainview, Kevin’s brother. “It may go from one of the worst courses in the city to the best,” and he’s right. Once Kay gets finished, they will hopefully reset the bar for the rest of the City courses.
Now Giordano is also right about another thing: they are not a links course and so some of the more zealous fans should ease away from that talking point for several reasons:
First, you can’t play the ground game on a lot of holes because the greens are pushed up – typical Jones, Sr. On holes like 4, 7, 11, and 16 the greens are either guarded by bunkers pinching in at 5 o’clock and 7 o’clock, or swoop uphill, or both, so ground approaches are out for about half the holes. Can you play “one bounce and on” in some places? Yes, to some front pin positions, but let’s remember the difference between how a links looks and how a links plays: At a true links course, you can play the ground game.
“You’re right,” Kay agreed. “At a true links you can bounce it in. But on some holes I plan to widen the entrances, so you’ll have a few more chances to play one bounce and on. After all, in the U.K. they don’t ring the green with bunkers. They guard one side and let you play the ground game from the other.”
As a matter of interest, they could widen the fairways even more than they are right now. There’s plenty of room out there, but there’s about another ten yards to either side of the playing corridors they could still use as well. At a NYC public course, you need to “Keep it movin'” as they say, so let the public golfer have more room to spray the ball without having to chop out of three inch rough. And there are still some dreadfully dull holes, such as the par-3s on the back nine, a clear weakness Kay promises they will address.
All that aside, they have made impressive strides. They had a low bar, but exceeded the modest expectations of the customers, who are really happy to see the course come back and now expectations are growing. It’s possible that when they get through, they will take Marine Park from the worst public golf course in the city to the best. So the biggest piece of advice I have is for the Parks Department: stay away, hands off, let them handle everything. They’re doing really well so far. And if Stephen Kay wants anything at all, you give it to him without question.
