I revisited Copake Country Club yesterday, a classic short layout -– just 6,200 yards from the tips -– beside a lake in New York State 20 minutes from the Massachusetts state line. It cost me all of $27 to play, cart included, courtesy of one of those online tee-time consolidators.
As I wrote a few years ago, Copake is a hidden gem in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. It is a 1½ hour drive from my Connecticut home, and I don’t mind the trip at all, especially since the Blackberry River Bakery in Canaan, CT, halfway to the golf course, serves a killer breakfast. Although I haven’t tested the kitchen at Copake Country Club beyond a tasty, made-to-order hot dog, the Copake restaurant is well reviewed and typically crowded at lunchtime.
The lawnmowers at Copake Country Club provide the fairways with a major league baseball field effect. This is the par 4 10th which plays from an elevated tee beside the clubhouse uphill to a smallish green fronted by a bunker about 30 yards before the putting surface.
Copake is not a golf community. Indeed the only homes on the course are a few above and right of the 10th fairway and those beside the 17th and 18th holes along a road that separates the golf course from Lake Copake, a mostly summer playground for folks from New York City and elsewhere. A round of golf at Copake and courses like it remind me that a planned development is not the only way for serious golfers to live and play out their days pleasurably. And you can save plenty of money by separating the golf from the real estate. You likely will not pay homeowner association dues, and private and semi-private clubs are begging for members these days; and the more remotely located the golf club -– Copake qualifies as remotely located – the lower the prices generally for both golf fees and real estate (see below). At Copake, for example, a single membership that provides golf any day of the week runs just $1,450 for the abbreviated season, generally from April to early November. A couple’s membership is $2,000. (Senior single is $1,250 and senior couple $1,800, for ages 60 and older.) Weekday golf is a great bargain; for example, a senior single will pay just $950 for the season if willing to play Monday through Friday only. Cart membership is just $650 for the entire season.
The golf course, which was designed by Devereux Emmet in 1935, changes elevation multiple times and is surrounded by mountains as well as the placid Lake Copake. Turf on fairways and greens is excellent, and putting on beautifully tended bent grass greens after a weekend listening to headache-inducing complaints about poa annua and fescue greens at the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay was a blessed relief; so too were greens that actually held shots a day after substantial rains in the area.
The bunkers at Copake are probably much like architect Devereaux Emmet designed them in 1935.
From the tips, the golf course measures just over 6,200 yards, with a rating of 70.3 and a slope of 131. That comparatively lofty slope rating is a consequence of some blind shots, fairly lengthy par 3s (two of them almost blind shots) and greens that are very difficult to read (and medium fast). For the first timer at Copake, bunkers that appear to be fronting greens actually turn out to be as much as 50 yards short of the putting surfaces. And the back edges of the bunkers at Copake are fringed with tall fescue grass; a ball in the sand is preferable.
Homes around Lake Copake and within a short drive of the golf course are mostly modest, set up more for seasonal living than year round. Prices start in the high $100s for square footage under 1,000. Of course, for folks who winter in some warm place like Florida, a summer cottage mere minutes from a classic, wonderfully managed and manicured golf course that costs little to play might be just the ticket.
Lake Copake is in view, if not in play, from the finishing holes.
