To many who follow the PGA Tour, Robert Trent Jones Golf Club is synonymous with The President’s Cup. During the first 11 years of The President’s Cup’ s existence this biennial event was held at RTJGC four times, including the inaugural event in 1994.
For those not familiar with The President’s Cup, it is an event with great similarities to the Ryder Cup matches between the United States and Europe.
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This fall one of the guys I play golf with in Richmond arranged the use of his in-laws house in Virginia Beach for a weekend so that a group of us could go down and play a few of days to play golf. A couple of guys going on the trip spend summers at Virginia Beach and are members at Princess Anne Country Club so we decided that the best plan would be to play there since it would be the easiest and most convenient. We arrived Friday afternoon and dropped our stuff off at the house before heading over to the course to tee it up.
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Opened for play in 1926, Rolling Green Golf Club came into existence when a group of members at Springhaven Country Club decided to create a club that was dedicated expressly to the playing of golf and would not feature any of the frills associated with a traditional “country club”. Design and construction of the course began in 1925 by the renowned Philadelphia firm Flynn & Toomey. By this time golf course architect William Flynn had developed quite a resume of golf courses and was widely considered to be one of the best course designers of the day. The club was an instant success and the membership roster was completely filled in less than a year after the club opened!
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Location: Rye, NY Architect: Walter Travis Year: 1922 August 17, 2012 The West Course at Westchester Country Club is best known for hosting an annual PGA Tour event between the years of 1967 and 2007. When the event, now known as The Barclays, became part of the season ending FedEx Cup playoffs the powers that be decided the location would be a rotating one. 2007 was the last year that Westchester Country Club hosted the tournament and as far as I know there are no plans in the immediate future for the event to return. As I mentioned in
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In 2009 I started a little tournament with three of my friends that we call the Fred Ridley Cup. It’s pretty ridiculous how seriously we take it, but there’s a trophy and a lot of bragging rights at stake so no one really wants to lose. In 2009 through 2011 we held the 72 hole Ryder Cup inspired tournament at my club in Virginia, but in 2012 we decided to take the show on the road and visit Westchester Country Club in Rye, NY. My very good friend Jay, who I have often mentioned on this site is a member there and would be our host.
Westchester Country Club was the vision of John McEntee Bowman. Mr. Bowman was a Canadian who came to New York as a 17 year old kid and used his entrepreneurial skills to become wildly successful in the hotel business. As the founding president of the Biltmore hotel group, one of the largest and most luxurious hotel chains in the world at the beginning of the 20th century, Mr. Bowman intended for Westchester Country Club to be his flagship hotel project.
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Most of the time when I play golf in Richmond I play at the club where I belong. I am of the mindset that I should play there as often as possible since I’m already paying for it. Fortunately, the courses at my club are pretty good and I really like playing them so there’s not many other places I would rather play. That said, there is a new course that opened in 2009 that I had been hearing good things about and that I wanted to check out. The Club at Viniterra in New Kent, Virginia had been getting rave reviews from all of my friends who had been there recently.
One of my long time friends is a relatively new to golf and decided to join Viniterra at the beginning of the 2012 season.
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As I stated back in my comments about Arcadia Bluffs, northern Michigan can be very rural in some places. Once you get outside of Traverse City there isn’t much development. This point was driven home when I was texting one night with my college roommate who now lives in Michigan. I mentioned that we were in Grayling having dinner and he said “Oh you’re probably eating at Spike’s Keg O Nails.” When I asked him how he knew that the response was “Its the only place to eat in Grayling!!!”
The next morning we were loaded into the car and on the road early in order to make our 7:30am tee time. Fortunately, we only had about a 15 minute drive to get to Forest Dunes from our hotel. Once again the rustic nature of northern Michigan was driven home by our GPS navigation system.
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The genesis of the Kingsley Club goes back to 1998 when one of the founders stumbled across a real estate ad in the classified section of the Traverse City newspaper. This gentleman made a visit to the 320 acre site and found a wonderful piece of property that would be perfectly suited for a golf course. He introduced the idea to a long time friend and three days later the two men purchased the land for the Kingsley Club. The two co-founders hired long time head professional from Crystal Downs, Fred Muller, as a consultant and Mike DeVries as the architect and before 1998 was over construction had begun. Three years later in the spring of 2001 the course was completed and ready for play.
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In keeping with the spirit of my Journal post last Monday I’m going to write about a special round of golf with a good friend that occurred in the least likely of places. A few weeks ago I made yet another trip to Chicago and was fortunate enough to be hosted by my buddy Steve, his wife Wendy and their three children during my stay. Steve lives in a suburban town on the north shore of Chicago called Winnetka which is located just 30 minutes by car from O’Hare Airport. I took the first flight out of Richmond on a Friday morning and reached their house by 10am where I promptly set up my mobile office on the patio and proceeded to grind out a few hours of work with the Chicago sun warming my shoulders.
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My family vacation kicked off with a round of golf at Sea Pines Resort’s Ocean Course. Not to be confused with Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course, Sea Pines Ocean Course is about two and a half hours south on Hilton Head Island and is one of the sister courses to Sea Pines Harbour Town Golf Links where the RBC Heritage is held the week after The Masters each year. From 2003 through 2007 I went to Hilton Head Island every November with a couple of friends for a little golf getaway. On one of those trips we had played Sea Pines’ Ocean Course but it had been so long ago that I didn’t really remember much about the course and I was anxious to give it another look.
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