One huge golf story went under-reported recently as LPGA star Morgan Pressel blistered mighty Bayonne Golf Club with a 63, shattering the course record in the process.
Bayonne, the brain child of Eric Bergstrol, developer-turned-course-architect, who built the course directly across the street from the more highly-touted but architecturally inferior Liberty National, came in second in the 2006 Best New Course Awards to the instant classic Ballyneal. Don’t let that fool you however. In most years, Bayonne would have taken home the top prize, it just had the bad luck to be up for consideration in the same year as one of the greatest golf courses in history.
Bayonne is as authentic an Irish links as you can find in the U.S., even though it is completely artificial. He trucked in a staggering 7.5 million cubic yards of sand and built a berm around the entire property, giving it a welcome seclusion. This trick also worked for Doak at his wonderful Texas creation at “The Rawls Course.”
Bergstrol also employed a difficult but equally brilliant trick to shoe-horn the best design into the property: he terraced two fairways and built two tee-boxes with criss-cross drives. He embraced these issues and, as long as nobody hits a player on No. 8 with a drive from the ninth hole, the whole thing works triumphantly. (See Tall Grass Golf Club in Shoreham, N.Y., for another excellent example of terracing to fit a course on a tight site.) Again, excellent green contours complement an ingenious routing that takes full advantage of as many views of the property as possible. You have no idea you are in NYC until you arrive at the 14th tee to see the ocean liners being loaded up with passengers. Like Ireland, the wind is ever-present here except in high summer.
Still, with high fescue and the harbor as hazards, the course is anything but a pushover. That’s what makes Pressel’s round so astounding. She opened with a blistering run of birdies at 2-6, and added another at 8, turning in 29, before carding back-to-back birdies at the short but perilous 15th and 16th, holes that play along the water.
We’ll be hearing from Morgan son about her round, so stay tuned for more details about her thoughts on the course and her day at Bayonne. UNtil then, get out to play it if you can. It’s everything Liberty National claims to be and then some.
