The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-10-14
100000 IN GOLF LINKS.
THIS, roo. INCLUDES ONLY NEW
YORK'S rs HOLE COURSES.
with the Years Additions There Are Thirty.
sIx Of Trhem-MAny o Hole Courses Alss
An Average Member nip % ESQ
Tho triumphant Progress % Golf.

An Average emb nip OS o
Tho Triumphant PrSErew Of Golf.
There are now thirty-six golf courses
Of eighteen holes each in or near New York
city. The total acreage used FOR the game
and the money value Of the buildings and
land assume figures that are a revelation
70 ~non-golfers.
At an average Of $500 yards in playing
length, the courses stretched out would
give a linear measurement OF ies, 800 yards,
a grand links on which tho player might
tee UP at New York, and, after lOtting over
Philadelphia, hole out at a distance Of ii6
miles from the starting place. KnolGwood,
laid out in 1893, Is the shortest OF this cluster
Of links Having q playing length Of $500
yards; but all save one Of the others are
$500 yards or more in length, while Deal
and Garden City are close to $500 yards
long.
The average area is 30 acres at the lowestA
Indeed it ia almost impossible TO squeeze
an eighteen hole course into such admitted
territory. The average area is IOOacres.
The value Of the land and buildings OF
these ~thiyty-six clubs b placed at s4,Ooo,Ooo.
The ssSssl-ts Is below rather than above
the actual vPlue. On the Crescent Athletic
Club course at Ray Ridge there is a 200 foot
plot on the Shore road used as a putting
green for which $4,000 has been refused,
while the course, which Ia held on lease and
has been cut INTO by city streets, is valued
at more than $500 900 for building lots.
The estimate does not include the clubs
own property, which Is worth at least $780,
900.
The Ardsiey Clubs holdings could not be
bought for $500. 900, and q half dozen clubs
hold property worth AZ much. To come
from estimates to facts, a syndicate Of the
Deal Golf Club members bought mo acre
OF the course last summer at 81 900 an acre
in order to have a free hand In enlarging
the clubhouse at a cost Of $4,000 more.
The clubs referred to are within the dis
trict, az it is termed. OF the Metropolitan
Golf Association. Six Of the eighteen hole
links are controlled by clubs not in its
membership, which consists Of sixty clubs.
The clubs having only nine hole courses in
the district have not been regarded in these
calculations. p
A conservative estimate OF the number OF
active members in each Of the thirty-six
! clubs is $50. Golf is no longer the one
sport at these clubs, which have now many
aims, but the game brought each into
being, and with a single exception not an
eighteen hole course has ever been aban-
doned about New York. The exception is
in the case Of the Newark Golf Club. whose
property was bought for a railroad freight
yard last fall.
Several clubs having nine hole links AVE
lost their grounds. and others are having
trouble to protect their holdings from the
builders and spectators, for the neighbor-
hood clubs in laying out courses on leased
ground, or on plots obtained at a nominal
rental, were careless as to what the future
had in store. There Is no agent to enhance
the value Of a barren tract Of land more
quickly than golf. and the small clcNshave
repaid in beautifying and making desirable
their lands all concessions made to them In
slight rentals.
A club meditating an eighteen hole course
must first Of all protect itself for the con-
templated investment by securing a proper
title to the property, either by purchase, or
a satisfactory lease with renewal clauses.
Whenever a small club goes under-the
disappearanoes are few and only caused
by the seizure OF their land-the nearest
eighteen hole course is the gamer by some
new players.
The clubs having eighteen hole links
about New fork may be said to be on Easy
street. Nearly all have waiting lists, their
clubhouses are social centres, their links
nave old turf and are now being made to
resemble famous British links by undu-
lating green's and new hazards, and how
ever remote they are from town the men,
bers are building villas near the green, a
Andrew Carnegie has done at st. Andrews,
and dozens are doing elsewhere.
The happy lot Of the golf clubs and.the
prominence the game has attained about
New York, not to speak now Of the many
clubs throu ghout the country. must make
the little band who first started driving
and putting here, on the fields near the
old apple tree at Yonkers in 1888, feel like
throwing bouquets at themselves. They
formed the St.. Andrews Golf Club and
John Reid, until about 1901 its president;
W. R. IDnis, Walter f. Hodgman, John c.
Ten Eyck, Harry o. Talmadge and many
more are still in the game at times.
Their young sters in most cases are now
winning the cups. The Reds ave done
much in the game, for John, Jr., when at
Yale, staSted intercollegiate golf. while
Archie Reid is a champion possibility.
The st. Andrews pioneers owe to a
nine hole course and clubhouse on the out
skirts OF Y6nkers, On the Sawmill River
road. in 1904, the year American competitive
golf began TO seethe and boil over. But
they did not have an eighteen hole course
until the next remove, in 1897. to the present
links at Chauncey, In Weetohester county.
The first club in the Metropolitan Golf
Association district to have an eighteen
hole course, with a perfectly appointed
clubhouse, was the Shinnecock Hills Golf
Club. 1t began play on It in 1895. and in
1893 H. j.. Whigham won the amateur
championship there, the first OF these con-
tests to have a widely representative entry.
Twice enlarged since. the Shinnecock Hills
links ON the sand dunes is still the scene
each season Of an open tournament OF ma
tional consequence.
In more than one case, from 1893 to 1893.
the clubs first secured their land and then
transformed il for golf by main force. Huge
trees were laid low. rocks blasted away.
swamps filed up and sterile fields sodded
With fresh turf. Time was an object and
gangs worked by day n night. while
no one cared about the cost in the hunger
to get the land ready for goling.