Modern masterpiece Bayonne Golf Club, just a jaunt across the river from Manhattan by their private ferry, is hosting a nine-team NCAA tournament hosted by Rutgers University this weekend.
The tournament is called the New York Harbor Cup, a 54-hole stroke play event running Aug. 29 through Sept. 1 at Bayonne Golf Club in Bayonne, N.J. Rutgers will be one of nine programs in the field, joining Kansas, Nebraska, Little Rock, Marquette, Michigan St., Purdue, South Florida and West Virginia. Each team will send five players, with the four best scores counting toward the team total each round. It marks the first time Bayonne Golf Club has hosted an event of this kind.
Rutgers’ golf press release states, “The event’s signature wrinkle is its transportation: rather than a standard team bus commute, players and staff will be ferried across New York Harbor from the Brookfield Place Terminal in Lower Manhattan directly to Bayonne Golf Club, with teams headquartered at the New York Marriott Downtown for the week.”
Personally, I think the best story is that Eric Bergstol designed the course all by himself, a true UK links in the shadow of Manhattan. As we wrote in Golf Course Trades last week, “Designed and constructed in 2006 and facing every logistical and permitting nightmare, Eric Bergstol defied the odds and designed a legit UK links in the shadow of the Manhattan skyline. And he did it in style! The routing rumbles over having fairway undulations amid fields of fescue, gorse, and juniper. Talk about opulent, players can opt for a ferry fr4om lower Manhattan for transport to the course, h9t floating golf balls at the oceanside practice range, and enjoy lunch in a tower rotunda 200 feet above the fairway floor.
In a quest to equate the nines, much like we saw at Royal Birkdale for this year’s Open Championship, new changes to holes four, six, and nine have made the front nine play harder than when the course opened in 2006. Bergstol’s magnum opus – he has developed non less than 12 courses in the northeast and mid-Atlantic – Bayonne is deserving of even more than the already fervent accolades it has received these last 20 years. That course is a sure fire instant classic anywhere, but across the water from Manhattan? Sheer, unparalleled genius. And Bergstol designed every blade of grass himself.”
“It will be a magnificent week, and I can;t wait for the course to beguile the best college players in America,” said honorary master of ceremonies and friend of JF.com Richard Hurley, and he’s right. Bayonne will shine and win the tournament. Some golfer will survive the weekend nd take home the medal.
