The fairways, sad to say, are what keep the Lido Golf Club from being more than an “interesting” golf course, at least for now. The current condition of the fairways does not permit of anything close to summer rules (i.e. play it as it lies), even though I played it in the dead of summer. Mother Nature, not the management of the club, gets the bulk of the blame. If you are not familiar with the geography of Long Island, understand that Lido Beach is just east of the Rockaways, only slightly farther from Breezy Point, communities you should know from headlines in late October 2012, courtesy of Hurricane Sandy. As the two young locals I played with explained, the ocean didn’t rise up to wipe away the Lido clubhouse and drown all the club’s golf carts and deposit salt water across the submerged golf course; the surge came almost entirely from the Reynolds Channel and adjoining bay, well away from the beach.

Hit or MIss:  The par 3 17th at Lido, all carry, is one of three challenging finishing holes.

 

        The overhead photos of the course in the wake of the hurricane are frightful and show more water than grass.  (Click here for web site with photo.) The salt water must have lay on the fairways for days, eating away at the root systems and befouling the turf. Somehow, the golf course was able to reopen in March and, by my reckoning, club management has fought a brave but uphill battle to get Lido playable again. To be blunt, the fairways are a mess, a mix of weeds, patches of scraggly grass interspersed with patches of no grass. The tee boxes are marginally better. But one reason to be optimistic about the future of the golf course is the greens, which are uniformly excellent, if slow even by municipal club standards. Although the greens were grainy, and most of the grain always seemed to be working against the slopes (the ball wouldn’t break the way it looked), they were in outstanding shape considering the savagery of the storm and the amounts of salt water that came barreling across the 120 acres of so of links land. The elevation of the greens that might cause some players at Lido to curse occasionally helped them survive the flooding.

 

Scarred landscape with a nice finish

        If you can get past the lies in the fairway -– don’t even think about playing the ball where it rests –- you can have yourself a fun day at Lido, especially if you haven’t played golf in Scotland for a long time –- or ever. Most holes really did remind me of golf in the Old Sod, where civilization encroaches on in-town courses. Moreover, the three finishing holes could stand up to most finishers anywhere. The 16^th at Lido is its signature hole, unlike any links hole I’ve played and not to everyone’s taste. A short par 5 at just 460 yards, the fairway is composed of two distinct landing areas that form the shape of a ‘Y’ as you look out over the marsh from the tee box. Play to the narrow left prong if you want a safe layup over the marsh on your second shot to an area about 60 to 100 yards short of the green. Play to the right prong about 210 yards if you want a go at the green in two, all carry over the marsh. Both landing areas look like a thimble from the tee box. I chose the alleged safe route, but it didn’t matter when I popped up my drive just over the marsh and then had to play my second with an eight iron to the end of the left part of the ‘Y.’ A well struck four wood for my third shot took me over the marsh to just short of the green from where I failed to get up and down.

The par 5 16th presents two choices, the more progressive of them on the right (see yardage book above) and the more conservative on the left.  Confused?  So was I.

 

        The 17^th is a par three and a full carry of 185 yards over marshland. The hole plays toward the ocean, and if the prevailing winds are heading in off the beach, a 3-wood will often be the right play for many. The wind was not blowing more than 5 mph on the day I played, but the air was heavy and I choked down a little on a 4-wood. (I don’t carry a 5.)  A good swing and green in regulation produced only my second par three of the day.

 

Keep your head down for a few reasons

        The finishing hole, a longish par 4 slight dogleg left between three fairway bunkers and two ovule traps that guard the green’s entrance, is no relief after the 17^th. The hole must have been a sight for sore eyes when the famous “Pink Lady” was mostly all that stood behind the green, a few hundred yards in the distance, and before that eyesore of a net separating the golf course from the football field and middle school and a yawning shed with three open driving bays at the base of the adjacent practice range. (Note: The Pink Lady was turned into condominiums in the 1980s and condemned in the wake of Sandy, which eroded its foundation.) As it is, the 408-yard finishing hole, which also plays into the prevailing winds off the ocean, is all about the bunkers; keep your head down to keep the eyesores out of sight and the drive and approach out of the sand, and your view of your score on the 18^th might be pleasant.

The former clubhouse was destroyed by Sandy, along with all of the club's golf carts, its computers and records and a lot more.  The new clubhouse was built in a matter of months.

 

        Lido had gotten beat up in some reviews, even before the storm, for its slow pace of play, up to 5 ½ hours on the weekend according to some reports. I played on a Wednesday of extreme heat –- it was 100 when I finished the round -- and clocked in at about 4 ½ hours. (I did notice some folks dropped out after nine.) We waited on virtually every shot from tee box and fairway but, in fairness, we were a threesome behind a few foursomes. I started off as a single, which I don’t mind when I am taking lots of photos, but the foursome behind me –- part of a sizable foursome men’s group -- became irritated that there was just a twosome in front of me. I got the hint and quickly joined the two young men in front of me. If you hate slow play, Lido is probably best scheduled for a weekday, and a Tuesday or Wednesday specifically. On the other hand, if you like links golf, live in the New York metro area, and can reconcile that this brave little golf club has a ways to go in terms of turf conditions, then pay the modest green fees, throw your bag on your shoulder and have a nice leisurely walk.

*

        Lido Golf Club, Long Beach, NY.  Designed by Robert Trent Jones, 1948.  Par 72 from all tees.  Gold Tees:  6,913 yards, Rating 73.4, Slope 127.  Blue:  6,522/71.7/122.  White:  6,125/69.8/121.  Red:  5,291/68.8/115.  Web site:  www.lidogolf.com.  Tel:  (516) 889-8181.

        True links golf is hard to come by in the U.S., especially near urban areas like New York. With few exceptions, golf courses built on sandy soil near an ocean and within commuting distance of a big city were converted into real estate or public beaches long ago. Or, in the case of the early 20^th Century masterpiece Lido Golf Club in Long Beach, NY, on the south shore of Long Island, into a crowded town beach and middle school.

        The Lido club’s genes are as impressive as those of the most iconic American golf courses. Charles Blair Macdonald, he of Yale Golf Club, National Golf Links and Greenbrier White Course fame, designed the original Lido course in 1914, assisted by Seth Raynor, with some of the holes within sand wedge distance of the ocean. Shortly after it opened, famous golf writer Bernard Darwin described Lido as “the finest golf course in the world.” (Mind you, Shinnecock Hills and the National Golf Links were already open for play.) Macdonald described the making of the course for a news article at the time, and it was preserved in Golf Illustrated magazine. (Click here to access a copy.)

When you cast your eye in certain directions at Lido Golf Club, you might think you are on a links course separated from the rest of the world.  Seconds later (below), reality sets in.

 

A Pink Lady rises from the beach

        A New York state senator named Reynolds envisioned a “paradise” country club resort on the Lido beach and acquired 186 acres adjacent to the golf course in the late 1920s. The centerpiece of Reynolds’ paradise was a huge bubble gum colored Moorish-style hotel, which became known as The Pink Lady, but the hotel was about all the senator was able to complete before the Great Depression dashed his grander plans and may

have contributed to his early death in 1931. Eventually, the hotel fell into receivership and was used by the U.S. Navy as a “discharge center” in World War II. In 1962, a new owner sold 175 acres of the resort’s property to members of the Lido Golf Club who, later, sold most of that land to the towns of Hempstead and Long Beach. (The municipalities used the land for the aforementioned public beach and school.) Robert Trent Jones was commissioned to build a new layout a quarter mile inland from the ocean and on the Reynolds Channel where the current layout opened in 1948.

        Lido has come a long way, but it has a long way to go. The golf course could be among the finest on the east coast if it weren’t for such pesky idiosyncrasies as civilization and Mother Nature. The adjacent middle school, for example, and a football field used by Long Beach High School line the 9th hole, necessitating the use of an obnoxious four-story high net to catch sliced drives. (It saved me a penalty stroke when I uncorked a wild drive, but still…) Along the southern boundary of the course is a fence that protects errant golf balls from Lido Boulevard and the modest row houses along the thoroughfare; the homes are barely an eighth of a mile from the beach, but you never see the ocean from the almost perfectly flat layout. As you make your way out toward the Reynolds Channel, which is punctuated beautifully by fingers of bright green marshland, smokestacks and other signs of commerce line the horizon. The pleasure boats that bob along the bay form a kind of odd counterpoint to the belching smokestacks and make you appreciate, even more, what the ocean views from the original Macdonald 18 must have been like.

The view to the famous Pink Lady would have been uninterrupted when it was first built in 1929.  The present day Lido Golf Club was not opened until 1948, but we like to think that the protective netting and practice range bays would not have been around to obstruct the views then, either.

 

Links golf on a budget

        If it were possible to somehow silhouette out some of the visually unappealing adjacencies, Lido would be one of the finest layouts east of the Mississippi, given that it is the product of arguably the most skilled of all the Jones boy golf architects. From what one can tell today, Jones honored the idea of links golf by imposing bunkers only where it made perfect sense and not mimicking too much the round shapes and sod faces of traps on the classic Scottish layouts. The course is unfussy, the way a true links course should be, but certainly with potential for odd bounces and alternative shot choices, especially if the wind is blowing. It is hard to know what, if any, effects the intervening 65 years has had on the bunkering around Lido, but there are few penal high lips to contend with; and the sand –- my local playing partners told me much of it is from the Atlantic beach about 600 yards away –- quite yielding to a wedge.

        I would not describe Lido Beach as a difficult golf course –- rating 71.7 and slope 122 from the blue tees at 6,522 yards –- because many of the fairways are adjacent and generous to pulled or sliced shots and, in typical links fashion, you have the prerogative –- sometimes it feels like an obligation –- to roll the ball up to the smallest of the elevated greens (more about the greens below). Of course, like any links turf, a well struck tee shot will bound down the fairway an extra 20 to 30 yards on all but the soggiest days.  But a par 5 and a par 3 among the finishing holes may have you reaching for one club, and then another, before you settle on your final choice.  More about that in the next part of the story.

Next: Great past, but what about Lido’s future?