Long Island Golf News Volume III Spring 2003
  The distinction between public and private
courses has been blurred a bit in recent years. No one would ever confuse Maidstone
with a public course and no one would ever confuse Eisenhower
with a private course ( although at one time when it was Salisbury two
of its courses were indeed private ). But how about the ostensibly public course
that offers a limited membership of reserved tee times. Walk-ons
are permitted but they can be made to feel like second class citizens.
The business model of these new clubs has often been described as a
country club membership for a day. The courses are privately run, often
in beautiful condition and all sorts of services are available, from bag
drop off to club cleaning. So are they public, semi public, semi private
or private? I would answer public. I guess that makes me a purist
but if anyone can play there at some point without being a member or a
guest of a member than I would say they are public. Have a different opinion? Write to us at Editor
and we will publish your view.
American Diabetes Association's 14th Annual Golf Outing The American Diabetes Association will be holding its 14th annual golf outing to raise funds for diabetes research. This year's event will be held at the Colonial Springs Golf Course in Farmingdale on June 9. For further info. May 22nd marks this year's kickoff for the 31st annual Babe Zaharias Memorial Tournaments , sponsored by the American Cancer Society. Outings will take place at more than 60 private and public courses across Long Island. Monies are raised for both Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer. It is hard to find an event more worthy of anyone’s time or money. In this, the year of Annika’s Sorenstam’s lonely and heroic quest to play with the boys, the Babe Zaharias tournaments are especially poignant. The winners of the Babe golf events move on to the Big Babe Championship in September, hoping to win so they may qualify for the American Cancer Society National Golf Championship in October at the PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Babe Zaharias Memorial Tournaments
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There will be no Long Island golfers at this year's US Open. The fabulous six who competed at the June 3rd Sectional Qualifier in Purchase, NY, failed in their bid to make it to the Open. Qualifying for the US Open is one of the most difficult and demanding quests in all of golf. It is truly an "Open" tournament and there are many, many great golfers vying for a few select spots. 72 Players at Sectional Vying for 4 Spots The Four Who Qualified
Long Island's Six
The 2002 New York State Open Champion, Mark Brown, has gotten the 2003 season off to a rousing start with a win at the Mastercard Long Island PGA Championship. Mark won this demanding match play tournament by qualifying with a 72 and winning 5 matches en- route to his victory. Mark began the championship match with birdies on 6 of the first 12 holes and went on to defeat runner-up Craig Thomas 4 up with 3 holes to go at the Fresh Meadow Country Club. Mark is the Head Professional at Tam O'Shanter and if his assistant teaching professional , RJ Ziats had prevailed in his morning semi final match it would have been an all Tam O'Shanter final.
Mark being congratulated by runner-up Craig Thomas
Mark enjoying the winning moment with wife Debbie Long Island Golf News Interviewed Mark Brown just before the start of this season. Mark Brown Interview Eisenhower Red Named as Site for Long Island Classic The 2003 Long Island Classic will be played at the Red Course in Nassau County's Eisenhower Park. This Senior PGA event will be held from August 11 through August 17. Held at The Meadowbrook since its inception in 1987 and originally sponsored by Northville Industries and then by Cablevision's Lightpath , this premier senior event had been searching for a new home and sponsor. Although KeySpan, Northville and Lightpath are still sponsors, the search continues for a principal sponsor. Lightpath had the contract with Meadowbrook and when Lightpath opted to discontinue in its role as title sponsor the search for a new site began.
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Cheryl Brayman and Karen Reed shot 148 over 2 days at Gardners Bay to edge out the 149s shot by Paula Moskwik/Amy Lane and Eileen Moriarty/Jean Schob to win the WCCGA Annual 36 Hole Partner's Better Ball Championship held May 27 and 28.
How many golf courses are there on Long
Island? The guy waiting overnight in his car at
Bethpage might answer "NOT ENOUGH", while the fellow
fortunate enough to have a membership at the Garden City Golf Club might
answer "WHO CARES" and a friend of mine from Brooklyn
actually said this - "TOO MANY" ( he is the sort of
urbanite who sees open space and dreams of paving it over ). It does seem like a fairly straightforward
question though. After all, you can't confuse a golf course with
anything else, they tend to be rather permanent fixtures on our
landscape and given their limited number you don't need computing power
for the task of counting. In order to answer the question one needs
to define 2 main variables. 1)What is the geographic entity that we
call Long Island? 2)What constitutes a golf course? Although Brooklyn and Queens can
make claim to being geographically part of this island, I can't bring
myself to include them. We all know that the "island" begins
at the western border of Nassau. So for my count I include only Nassau
and Suffolk. What is a golf course? I define it as at
least nine holes and more than a pitch and putt. Executive par 3s count
but just barely. I also count a facility with several layouts as one
course. For example, Bethpage counts as one not five. So for those of
you who like to be technical, you might say I am counting golf course
facilities and not courses. So how many courses are there at this
moment? Allowing for the recent demise of Poxabogue ( a very
modest public course on the east end which I haven't found the heart to
take out of my course list yet ) and including the very
newest of courses I can say for complete certainty and without
hesitation there are exactly 113 golf courses on Long Island ( I think
). If I missed any please drop me a line at Editor
and let me know. I won't give you a prize but I will give you public
credit here at Long Island Golf News ( with your permissions ).
Note: You can find my complete list under my all courses section.
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