The green at the par 3 7th on the Granite Links Granite course was so firm that a well played shot that landed at middle front rolled past the pin and into the rough behind it, from where par was impossible.

Rock quarry a la Disneyland

Yesterday we explored the history of the unusual Granite Links (see article below) and nine of its 27 holes, the Milton course.   Today we finish our round on the Granite nine.

 

     The Milton nine at Granite links compels you to hit the ball straight and, in a few cases, long.  But straight and long is a liability on the first hole of the Granite course, a bad piece of golf design if ever there was one.  Even with a decent GPS system in our carts, our foursome spent a good 10 minutes on the first tee trying to figure out which of the greens in the distance belonged to our 490-yard par five hole.  "Aim for the bunker that looks like Mickey Mouse," said the starter, who had walked down from his perch after spotting our confusion.  Mickey Mouse was the perfect metaphor for the hole.  "What about the water?" one of our foursome asked, after having a look at the GPS in the cart. "You'd have to be a long hitter to reach it," said the starter.
    No more than 220 yards off the tee, roll included, is not my definition of "long hitter," so it was with confidence I pulled out the driver and hit one straight at Mickey Mouse.  I hit it well, but little did I realize the fairway sloped like one of those 600-yard long par 4 finishing holes at Kapalua Plantation.  Long story short; the ball was nowhere to be found, probably in one of the hazards on either side of the spit of fairway that was no more than eight yards across.  After we gave up, my friend Pete Blais and I agreed on the spot my tee shot must have entered the hazard.  I dropped another ball, took a reading on yardage, and realized I was just 138 yards from the green, meaning my drive had traveled about 350 yards and that, even with a penalty stroke, one still has a good chance of making the green in regulation and a par.  Bizarre.
    The rest of the nine was nowhere as silly, although some repeated designer touches at greenside became annoying after a time.  The greens were very firm, and most were bowl shaped, with slopes toward the centers of the greens defining the front and back edges.  The ridges at the front of most greens ran down hard, making pins on the front third of the greens impossible to get near, even if you landed short and rolled the ball up.  With the greens so hard, figuratively and literally -- no shot made a pitch mark all day -- the slopes made par a possibility only if you were on in regulation or left yourself a chip across the length of the greens.

Fountain of sorrow

    Those quibbles aside, the Granite nine presents some sparkling holes and views, most notably #5, a short dogleg right that features a string of granite rock outcroppings framing the left side of the fairway and a water hazard along the right.  A conservative fairway wood is the play on the 353-yard hole; a slightly pulled tee shot may avoid the rocks but will leave a blind approach over trees that guard the left third of the elevated green.  Anything but an approach that stays on the green is a guaranteed bogey, or worse.  The 6th is another one of the short par 4s at Granite Links that dare you to drive the ball to a narrow strip of fairway, a short wedge distance from the green.  The 7th is a glitzy par 3 over a water hazard to a wide green framed in the back with three round, identically sized bunkers.  With the wind blowing right to left, the proper play seemed a lofted ball toward the right side of the green.  That accomplished, my tee shot landed at the front middle of the green and rolled right past the pin at left rear, and then into the thick rough just short of one of the bunkers.  The severe slope down to the pin made bogey a good score.
    The 8th hole is one of the few where the fairway is elevated and the tee shot is up, not down.  At under 500 yards, the par 5 is not difficult, but it does provide an intimidating contrast to other tee shots during the day.  The round ends on the Granite nine with another one of those short par 4s with lots of bunkering to catch any but the most unerring tee shots.  Actually a play into one of the large bunkers on the left leaves only a wedge shot into a green set way below the fairway, only the flag on the pin visible.  The deep pond that guards the right edge of the narrow green is also hidden from view.  Although you can see it clearly on the GPS, it encroaches more than it appears once you come over the rise and see the results of a blind approach shot.  The fountain at the pond's center will seem like a warm greeting only to those who find their blind approach on dry land.

Sum of the parts

    Course conditions at Granite Links were quite nice, especially for a mid-May day.  This is still early in the season in New England.  In fact I had to remind Pete, my partner and cart chauffeur for the day, that carts could enter the fairways.  "Sorry," said the resident of North Yarmouth, ME, "we can't do that in Maine yet."  The fairways were dry, well mown and very green, and not a single lie needed to be "rolled over."  The putting surfaces were medium to medium fast and quite smooth but a bit inconsistent in terms of speed one green to the next.  Some of the contours were obvious but many were subtle, making judgment on breaks a challenge.
    The ultimate scorecard for any golf course is whether one would return to play it again.  The answer from this corner is "Yes."  Purists will find the course a bit "tricked up," and some online reviews have hammered Granite Links for its quirky layout, some poorly designed holes that seem more about eye appeal than shot values, and the difficulty in figuring where to aim blind tee shots.  We encountered all of that, but in small doses, not enough to diminish the outstanding views, the challenging approach shots and the expansive but puttable greens.  As Pete said in response to my comment about two many blind shots, "If this were Vermont or Maine, we wouldn't be complaining."  
    True.  You don't expect a course just six miles from Boston to have such dramatic ups and downs, literally, but Granite Links occupies the highest ground in Quincy, albeit at just 300 feet.  Everything being relative, Granite Links seemed like up to me.

Granite Links Golf Club, Quincy, MA, 27 holes in three 18-hole combinations. 

Back tees range from 6,735 yards to 6,873 yards, with course ratings of 73.3 to 73.9 and slopes from 137 to 141.  Men's (blue) tees from 6,247 to 6,379 yards, 71.3 to 72.1 and 130 to 134.  Women's tees at 4,980 yards, 68.4 to 70.6 and 118 to 124. 

Green fees, $125 peak.
Phone:  617-689-1900;  Web: http://www.granitelinksgolfclub.com.

Membership plans available. 

The popular Tavern Restaurant, at the highest point in Quincy, has an active bar scene; the views back across the harbor to Boston are especially intoxicating.
Real estate:  Modern apartments for rent across the street from the club start around $1.500 per month.  Housing is out of view from the course, as are the cars and bodies below.

With the Granite Clubhouse and popular Tavern Restaurant (top photo) lurking beyond, as well as a hidden pond (note the fountain), a tee shot on the finishing hole of the Granite nine must stay on the top of the fairway on the right.  A shot from the bunkers at left (bottom photo) will leave a mostly blind shot to the green.

The 5th on the Milton nine at Granite Links is a beautiful short par 4 that dares you to take the short way home between the second and third bunkers.  A well struck shot is rewarded with a wedge to the green.

Golf Review:  Granite Links, Quincy, MA

    "They aren't making any more land."  You hear that adage all the time as a justification by real estate people to buy, buy, buy.  But it is not strictly true.  Across the nation, new land is being created all the time atop former garbage dumps filled to capacity and "capped" to seal the bad stuff and smells below the surface.  Because the landfills contain tons of natural composting material, it is almost impossible not to grow great grass on the reclaimed land for such purposes as housing developments, parks, golf courses or a combination of them all.
    Although many golf courses are in the dumps figuratively, others appear to be doing well.  For example, New Jersey's Liberty National Golf Club on New York Harbor features knockout views of the Statue of Liberty and New York City's entire West Side.  Its initiation fee of $500,000 and planned multi-million dollar homes ensure that only a wealthy few will be aiming their shots toward Lady Liberty's torch.  A few miles south of the Jersey City club, in Bayonne, NJ, the Bayonne Golf Club was built for an eye-popping $130 million, also on a landfill.  Bayonne, long the butt of comedians' jokes for its déclassé shabbiness, now can claim a private golf club with member fees of $200,000.  Who's laughing now?
    On Wednesday, I played another course built atop a pile of gunk, Granite Links in Quincy, MA, just six miles from the center of Boston and available for play to anyone willing to pony up $125 green fees.  Is it worth it?  The answer is yes, unless you deduct a lot for a few wacky holes on an otherwise interesting and often dramatic layout.

Big Dig to the rescue

    The story behind the 27 holes at Granite Links is as quirky as the layout.  The course was built on the site of a former granite quarry whose stone helped build American cities in the 1800s; indeed, the nation's first commercial railroad started in Qunicy to bring granite from the town's quarries to Boston for construction of the Bunker Hill Monument.  Later, the quarry at Granite Links would serve another purpose, as a major landfill for the garbage of Boston and the surrounding areas.  Eventually, though, like all landfills, the Rail Quarry, as it was known, could contain no more garbage.  Tons of soil and other natural material were needed to "cap" (or seal) the landfill.  
    Fortunately, the largest city construction project in history was just six miles away.  The decades-long and widely criticized $20 billion project, known as the Big Dig, is rerouting city roadways underground to relieve choking congestion and pollution in the city.  Of the project, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank once said it would have been cheaper to raise the entire city than to lower the roads.  One side benefit to the controversial project was that all the Boston blue clay and other deposits gouged from the tunnel needed to be dumped somewhere.  Necessity and creativity merged at the old Rail Quarry in Quincy, just six miles from the city and where developers and town fathers were trying to figure out what to do with the site.  Some 900,000 truckloads of Boston's underground were sent to the quarry.
    Garbage and Big Dig detritus were not the only Boston produce dumped in the quarry.  Over decades, the deep granite pools at the base of the sheer cliffs provided a convenient and out-of-the-way dumping ground for people local mobsters wanted to "disappear." During the construction of the course, engineers discovered dozens of old vehicles at the bottoms of the lakes.  After putting on Granite Links' contoured greens, one online wag wrote, "they must have buried the cars under there."  After trying in vain to get the ball close to pins at Granite Links, the word "murder" does come to mind.

A tomb with a view

    As cemeteries go, the dearly departed could not ask for better eternal views than from Granite Links.  At just 300 feet, the course is the highest point in Quincy, which doesn't sound like much; but everything else, including Boston Harbor, is at around sea level.  From many holes on the swirling, up and down layout, the city skyline spreads before you, visible in all but the foggiest conditions since Boston is a mere 12-minute drive, assuming no traffic (you can never assume that in Boston).  First timers at Granite Links will have trouble finding an aiming line off the tee boxes on the many blind drives, but others have noted they use Boston's famous John Hancock Building as reference point.  
    When the course routing turns away from the city, the views are no less impressive. The 7000-acre Blue Hills Reservation runs along more than half the circumference of the course and provides an uninterrupted expanse of green forestland.  The Reservation, which features more than 100 miles of walking trails, will never be developed.
    The 27 holes by Jupiter, FL-based architect John Sanford, the only Massachusetts course ranked in the top 100 "courses you can play" by Golf Digest magazine, are configured as three 18-hole combinations -- the Quincy and Granite, the Milton and Quincy, and the Granite and Milton (although we played the Milton first, and then the Granite).  At its longest, the Milton/Granite course plays to 6,818 yards, a rating of 73.4 and a slope rating of 141.  Slope ratings on the other combinations are slightly lower, although the course rating on Quincy/Milton is the highest at 73.9.  All the nines at Granite Links play shorter than their yardages because most of the tee boxes are elevated -- some quite so. 

Any way the wind blows...  

    My friend Pete Blais, editor of BoomerGolfNews.com, and I opted for the penultimate "blue" tees at a distance of 6,300.  The #1 tee on the Milton provides great expectations for the day, with a driving area that looks down to a sweeping fairway that tilts and turns toward the green off the right 454 yards in the distance.  It is a fair, if intimidating starter.  Other highlights on the Milton course included two well-designed par 3s; the 2nd forced a left to right shot to avoid the large bunkers guarding the right rear pin.  Our group hit good tee shots but only one stayed pin high, the rest rolling to the rear of the firm green.  The 6th does not warrant as much finesse with a wide opening to most of the green, bracketed by two good-sized bunkers.  But at 188 yards from our tees - and a robust 219 from the rear, it was not pushover either.  The Milton nine played at a slightly lower elevation than the Granite and, for that reason, was protected from some of the blustery winds coming off the harbor.  For that reason, the Granite played a few strokes tougher.
    At just 364 yards, the 5th on Milton reminded me of many short Tom Fazio designed par 4s, with large cloverleaf bunkers screaming, "Go ahead, I dare you to take the short cut."  But with a strong breeze from behind, a few of us took the dare and one lofted one over the farthest left hand bunker to nine-iron range from the fairway.  Behind the green and slightly below a ridge lay our first direct glimpse of the city beyond.  The finishing hole on Milton is the most challenging drive of the nine, with a raised fairway that moves left at the top of a deep grass hill.  The middle of the fairway appears to be reachable from the tee, but in reality, it is foolish on the short par 5 to attempt it.  The proper play is straight out to the right side of the fairway, from where a routine par is quite achievable with a simple third shot into the large green, the entire skyline of Boston covering the vista beyond.

Tomorrow:  The Granite nine at Granite Links

It is tough to keep your head down on the practice green at Granite Links, such are the views of Boston beyond.