The Gillette Ridge Golf Club was dogged by miscalculation and mismanagement from the moment it opened in 2004. The original owners of the Bloomfield, CT, public facility laid out in the middle of a major office park had the bright idea to task the Arnold Palmer design group with building one of the toughest layouts in the area. What they produced was a golf course that wasn't so much tough as it was unfair. The greens, at opening, were rock hard, and the combination of concrete greens and a bunch of forced carries gave the layout a quick reputation for unfriendliness, especially among women and junior golfers. No one would want to learn to play on a course that difficult. I recall following my son and his high school golf team around the course during a competition, and mid 90s was the median score for kids who typically shot in the mid 80s. Fun and the Gillette Ridge golf course were never mentioned in the same breath by anyone who played it.
Gillette Ridge Golf Club in Bloomfield, CT, closed without warning a few weeks ago, although warning signs were there last September when the troubled owners filed for bankruptcy.
        Those who ran the club, especially the latest owners, were also uncreative in the extreme. Thousands of office workers stroll through the grounds at lunchtime every day, and many of them stopped at the club's competently run restaurant for a meal and drink after work. Whenever I played the golf course in good weather, I noted that the restaurant was nearly filled, the patio included. With that kind of captive audience, all wage earners, you would think any marketing program could have reeled in a good number of them to play the course after work and on the weekends (virtually all of them live in the area).
        The club should also have been able to count on the surrounding group of homes that were developed in concert with the opening of the club. With hundreds of residents within an easy stroll of the first tee, one wonders why they could not be engaged to form a core membership in the club. After all, we know that about half of those who live in a golf community do play the game, at least occasionally.
Even after the layout was softened, many golfers found the approaches too severe, such as at the par four 4th hole, with all carry to a small green that tilted hard right to left toward a menacing pond.
        Within a few years of opening, the owners of the club softened the golf course's severe layout somewhat, making the approaches to the greens a little easier and doing what they could to make the greens a bit more receptive. But despite a few wonderful holes –- the almost drivable par 4 10th is one of them –- and unusual landscaping touches, such as the massive sculptures beside the 17th fairway, perceptions of the course had already been cemented. Given a choice between Gillette Ridge and nearby Wintonbury Hills, the Bloomfield municipal course designed by Pete Dye and opened within a couple of years of Gillette Ridge's debut, virtually everyone I know would choose Wintonbury.
        Gillette Ridge closed a few weeks ago after its owners filed for bankruptcy last September. MDM Golf, run by a former golf pro, had been kicked out of two other golf courses it manages for unpaid bills and mismanagement. At the time of the Gillette Ridge closing, MDM owed its creditors well over $6 million.
        I stopped by Gillette Ridge the other day to see if there were any signs of life. One gardener with a weed whacker was attending to the lawns surrounding the parking lot. The course, from the vantage point of the clubhouse patio, was overgrown and the greens I could see appeared to be burned out. The shuttering of Gillette Ridge just as the Connecticut revenue-generating golf season began was sadly ironic for a club whose management never had its timing or organization quite right.
One of the saddest sights for a golfer, a dead green, in this case #18 at Gillette Ridge.

        At age 67, there are not many more athletic achievements ahead for me. But golf handicaps are the great equalizer in terms of competition, and if you have a good day against your own standards, you might win a dollar or two, or even a trophy. But in order to win an event at a gross score, you pretty much need to be playing on a team of good players.
        Yesterday, at Shuttle Meadow Country Club in Berlin, CT, a classic Willie Park layout, our ragtag foursome started well, sagged in the middle of the round, and regained a little momentum by the end. Yet even when my son Tim sunk a 12-foot birdie putt on the last hole we played in the shotgun charity event, we never imagined our -1 score of 70 would get a sniff of even third place in the gross competition.
The 1st hole at Shuttle Meadow Country Club in Berlin, CT
        For sure, we had no chance in the net competition. Our 'D' player had an awful day and only on two holes was he still in play by the time he made it to the green. (In neither case did he contribute to the net score.) Our 'C' player sculled his tee shot on the first hole, a par three, through tall grass and rough and up onto the green, 15 feet short of the hole. From there he made his putt for a birdie 2 and a net 1. That seemed like a good omen...for two more holes, after which we all sprayed our tee shots into the wind on a par 4 named "Bottle" and posted a gross and net 5, a deadly score when you are competing against 26 other foursomes. (After his initial birdie, our 'C' player had said, in jest, "OK, I'm retiring now..." and he pretty much did the rest of the way.) It only got worse on the 18th hole, the tenth one we played, when the pin position at the very back right of a green that rises a good 10 feet from front to back, gave us fits and led to a gross/net bogey 6.
        Tim was our "ringer," a last-minute substitution for a friend who tore a ligament in his thumb three weeks before the event. Tim contributed four birdies against his 1 handicap -– the event was played at 90% of full handicap -- and I pitched in a few pars. Still, the only thing we thought we might win was longest drive; Tim's drive on the 10th hole was 270 into a stiff wind. But at awards time, the announced winner was someone else who, as the emcee shared, "once held the U.S. record for the fastest golf swing." I saw him later and he told me his drive was measured at over 300 yards.
        When they announced third place for team gross at par 71, we knew we were in the money. On a match of cards –- we parred at gross the five toughest holes -- we were announced the winners; our prizes were $100 pro shop credit each. I spent mine on a shirt and hat. I would have been happy with just the recognition.

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        The charity golf event, which is held within a couple of weeks of Fathers Day each year, benefits the Fatherworks program at The Village for Families and Children in Hartford, CT, where I have served as a board member for the last 12 years. In a nutshell, Fatherworks encourages young men who have fathered a child to step up to the responsibility of fatherhood and provides them with the tools to be a supportive, nurturing parent. Each year at dinner after the golf, a father The Village has worked with shares his story about how The Village has helped him define his role in relation to his children and, in so doing, has redefined his role as a man. The stories are both riveting and elevating. Fatherworks is a good cause, and if you get anything of value from this blog, I would be grateful if you considered a small donation to a great cause at The Village for Families and Children. [Click here] Thank you.