“They run the gamut, top executives to high school,” said course operations manager Alex Head of the clientele. He has been there seven years.
The Wheeler Black Course dates to 1932 and the Red Course, a Works Progress Administration effort, was built in 1934. Both public courses are owned by the city of Bridgeport and take advantage of the glacier-scoured southern Connecticut landscape that contributes hugely to the sports regional appeal. Less blessed duffers can putter around Las Vegas and Miami and pretend to be part of golf”™s traditions; the sport”™s history and disposition are rooted in this region”™s dales and ridges of bluegrass and white oak and in its civic-minded ways.
“The courses were perhaps neglected in the 1990s, but now we”™re very excited about all the improvements,” said Head. Remedies include a new irrigation system for the entire 36-hole acreage, completed in the last two years, which “really helped with the rough and the fairways”; remade cart paths that were completed last year; and all new bunkers on the Black Course, also completed last year.
Fairfield County boasts 12 public and semi-public (like the Westport Longshore Golf Club) golf facilities, including the E. Gaynor Brennan, H. Smith Richardson, Ridgefield, Sunset Hill, Whitney Farms, Griffith E. Harris, Oak Hills Park, Richter Park, Tashua Hills and Sterling Farms venues.
For the cost of a couple of BLTs at a private course”™s halfway hut ”“ $20 for a resident who wants to walk; $35 with a cart ”“ golfers can enjoy what county resident and author John Feinstein termed “a good walk spoiled” at Wheeler. The Black and Red courses”™ highest rates are for out-of-towners: $39 to walk and $54 to use a cart.
D. Fairchild Wheeler began selling seasonal passes this month. Last year”™s passes will expire May 1. Head said a pass makes sense if a golfer plans to play more than 35 rounds in a year. Assisting in that goal, the courses only close for weather; if it”™s a nice day in January or February, the tees await. (The courses all have Web sites for site-specific information, with, for example, the Griffith E. Harris site part of the larger town of Greenwich site.)
Westchester County, N.Y., bills itself as the home to golf in America, dating to the so-called Apple Tree Gang who gathered in Yonkers in 1888 to try out a newfangled set of Scottish sticks.
Those same Yonkers hills that attracted the first golfers (who would go on to found St. Andrew”™s, the nation”™s oldest golf club) remain very popular with golfers. The Sprain Lake Golf Course south of Jackson Avenue witnessed 51,000 rounds last year and is already bustling this year. The lake-hugging course is between the north- and southbound lanes of the Sprain Brook Parkway, likely constituting the world”™s most beautiful (and widest) median strip.
“We had 200 golfers opening day, March 18,” said starter Mario Iannelli, who has been at Sprain Lake since 1989. That number reached 226 Sunday, March 22.
“We treat our customers like it”™s their own golf club,” said Sprain Lake PGA pro Tom Avezzano. “On a business level, the golfers are always customers. We offer a lot of customer service and our customers love coming here.”
Besides Sprain Lake, Westchester”™s public courses are Saxon Woods in Scarsdale, Mohansic in Yorktown Heights, Maple Moor in White Plains, Hudson Hills in Ossining and Dunwoodie in Yonkers. Tee times and reservations for all the courses are available at (914) 995-GOLF or at westchestergov.com/parks/golf. Greens fees run from $18 (for juniors and seniors with a county parks pass during the week) to $39 for nonresident-pass holders on weekends and holidays.
