GOLF ON CAPE COD COURSE REVIEW
Golfing the Vineyard...
Martha's Vineyard Serves Up A Four Course Feast
By Jeff Blanchard
Photographs by George Peet
 Like
the high-handicapper who’s trying to hit a long drive into
an ocean wind, the biggest challenge facing a reviewer of the
Martha’s Vineyard golf scene is to show some restraint,
to just put a nice, smooth swing on it, and avoid the natural
tendency to sound like a cheerleader.
That just got a lot harder with the recent opening of the Vineyard
Golf Club, an ultra-exclusive, organically maintained course designed
by the world-renowned Donald Steel (who also did Carnegie Abbey
in Rhode Island, and is the only architect to work on St. Andrews
since Harry Colt in 1913).
As for the 100-square-mile Vineyard itself, it has long been regarded
as a safe harbor for the quietly famous, and a world-class magnet
for the sailing set. But golf enthusiasts have had three strong
courses to choose from as well – the Edgartown Golf Club
(1926), a private nine-holer with privileges for residents, the
famous Farm Neck GC (1976) and the nine-hole Mink Meadows GC (1936),
both daily fee courses with memberships.
The new addition catapults Martha’s Vineyard, with its
54 holes, onto a level occupied by neighboring Nantucket, with
its 72. Taken together, it’s crazy how much good golf these
little islands have, an embarrassment of riches if there ever
was.
Before boarding the ferry at Woods Hole for the 45-minute voyage,
we should stop here to consider for a moment how the islands relate
to the region as a whole, the 50 courses that fall inside the
geographic triangle between Sankaty Head on Nantucket, Kittansett
in Marion, and Highland Links in Truro, including Oyster Harbors
and Hyannisport, New Seabury and Eastward Ho!, Pines and Captains,
Woods Hole and Willowbend, Plymouth and Pocasset, Cummaquid and
Cape Cod Country Club.
Toss in some of the newer clubs, such as Cape Cod National in
Brewster, the Bay Club in Mattapoisett and Crosswinds in Plymouth,
and add the cherry on top, which seems to be the destiny of Olde
Sandwich – Ben Crenshaw’s soon-to-open super-private
beauty just up the road from the dynamic Nicklaus-Jones duo at
Pinehills – and BANG, you’re in the middle of a sprawling
golfer’s paradise, never too far from your own little slice
of heaven.
To some, Martha’s Vineyard may seem out of the way, but
it’s really only a short flight or ferry and about three
good shots from a state of splendid isolation. Enough lovebirds
have decided it’s the place for their nuptials to make the
Vineyard No. 2 behind only Las Vegas in terms of wedding business
in America.
It is easy to see why. The Vineyard is a living postcard of a
classic New England fishing port, where the people are hospitable
in the manner of a remote population and practically everything
is pleasing to the eye, beginning with the Cape Cod shoreline
on the other side of the Vineyard Sound, a panorama that begins
with the rolling hummocks of the Elizabeth Islands, flows east
to the bustling harbor with its ferries and lights and buildings
that appear to float on the horizon, and continues on with the
better homes and gardens of Cape Cod.
Having managed to get our car on the ferry, we landed and immediately
set off along the two-lane road between the dock and the Island
Inn, our Oak Bluffs base camp for this 36-hour excursion. The
drive would take us past the harbor and through the village of
gingerbread houses (where the retreat has become an attraction),
over to the friendly local police officer for directions, and
finally to the right road to Farm Neck, which actually abuts the
motel, but takes 15 minutes to reach by car.
If all goes well, we will play every hole on the island before
the Steamship Authority’s last run tomorrow. This will require
many accommodations from our hosts (Thank You!) and the kind of
professional dedication that goes with writing about golf for
a living.
Hello, ball.
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Farm Neck Golf Club
 The
modern equivalent of George Washington Slept Here would have to
be Bill Clinton Played Here, and the place he’s taken his
do-overs (“Billigans” in Clintonspeak) most infamously
is this 29-year-old Cornish and Robinson creation in Oak Bluffs,
just a whiff from the town landfill. Peter Milligan designed the
back nine in 1979.
Besides the pictures of him smoking big cigars and slouching with
his spikes up in the shotgun seat of an electric cart, the former
president’s affection for Farm Neck brought a lot of attention
to an already beloved place, the quintessential seaside golf course,
links-like but not.
Usually ranked among the top (semi-) public courses in New England,
Farm Neck is strong in every regard, from the well-shaded bag-drop
to the shingled pro shop to the topnotch restaurant (which was
doing a brisk business even with non-golfers) to the well-engineered
range and the practice putting green, whose holes include those
little Dixie cups without flags for your really well-trained flat
sticks.
Any round here has to feature at least a few of those moments
you just want to take home and freeze, both as a result of a well-struck
ball and as a product of the surroundings, with nearly every hole
picture-perfectly framed by trees, water, high grass, gaping bunkers
or any combination thereof.
Soft, wide, rolling fairways and mostly manageable rough contribute
to a fairly benign appearance, and blind shots are few. But most
fairways pinch to an alley at some strategic point, and between
the ocean-whipped winds, the plentiful and well-placed bunkers,
the tidal and the just plain penal waters, Farm Neck can stretch
out and bite you if you aren’t on your game.
Short but challenging, Farm Neck is 6,815 from the gold tees,
and 6,301 from the blue. You could believe if it someone told
you they had their best score there, just not necessarily Clinton,
whose claim to a 79 inspired the line: What’s the best stick
in his bag? The pencil.
 Farm
Neck has an allure among golfers who go expecting to be wowed,
and its challenges keep the low-handicap regulars coming back
for more, knowing it will always have more to give. Even though
it was noon on a clear day in September, the first we saw of a
group ahead came at about 15, and with no one behind we could
play as if the course were ours, which is always nice.
No. 1 is a straightaway par 4 at 378 from the blue tees. With
a decent drive, the approach shot can be run up on the right side
of this typically large, fast, smooth rolling green for a simple
two-putt par.
Now it’s time to wake up and focus, as No. 2 runs like a
sidewalk parallel to the road with a tree-line serving as buffer,
five football fields from the tee in the deep pines to the well-bunkered
green in the far-off distance. A six here isn’t bad from
the rough just beyond the ladies tee.
No. 3 offers a chance to recapture some of that scoring magic,
as it snakes 340 yards toward the salt water and presents a large,
open-fronted green with bunkers behind to catch the runners and
the greedy. With a par there, and a two-putt par on No. 4, a windy
par 3 that reminded me of No. 17 at Hyannisport, it was suddenly
looking like a very nice day, work or no work.
No. 5 is one of those golf holes you look at your scorecard later
on and can’t figure out where all those strokes came from.
It’s only 325 yards, and there isn’t much to it except
for some beautiful bunkering and a tough pin, but of course that’s
why we play the shots...four, five, six, I’m done.
No. 6 is another pretty par 3, a nice place to look around for
your game, which is what I was doing when my gaze was interrupted
by a large animal roaming around at the far edge of No. 7, a buck
so big I thought it was a moose. He went into the woods just about
where my drive landed a minute later, too short and too left to
do anything but lay one up this side of the pond guarding the
green.
No. 8 has it all – length, trees, sand and stuff all the
way down the left side, water and other certain disasters all
the way down the right, which combined with the omni-present sea
breeze can introduce the dreaded hockey stick to your card –
only a double-bogey, but oh, so ugly. It is as tricky a hole as
we have around these parts, from the forced carry over a cranberry
bog at the tee to the long grass that must have gotten that way
by eating golf balls. (Quick reality check: I had no business
playing from the blues there.)
No. 9 is the third par 3 on the side, and my favorite hole…to
look at. Bogey was accomplished thanks to a fluffy lie just over
and left of the green, which is tucked in behind a pond and under
some overhanging trees where a hawk was perched and focused on
what might be happening in the water. The forward slope requires
pinpoint placement, or you can have a downhill putt that runs
like the wind. It’s 175 yards to the middle from the blues,
and a red flag, meaning front, makes for a very testy iron shot.
One of the few par 3 doglegs you will ever see, my notes said
it used to be a par 4, which may have been something someone told
me just to be nice.
Course knowledge would come in handy on the greens here, but it
is not such an advantage otherwise, not as much as plain old accuracy.
What Cornish and Robinson, and later Milligan, accomplished at
Farm Neck was to design a landscape that enhanced a rolling masterpiece
of a property without making it so difficult that the par-challenged
player can’t also enjoy the view.
The back nine is different than the front, more angles, more difficult,
more interesting. No.’s 10-13 head away from the house in
a series of dogleg rights measuring 376-519-379-343 yards, with
12 being the hardest hole on the course, as attested by a card
full of bogey fives. Challenging as it is, 12 is also full of
fun, even from the right woods, which would have been the right
direction as the crow flies, but not my drive. From there I narrowly
avoided crossing the fairway left into water, but somehow managed
to take the same five as the others, which had to kill them inside.
At 15 the course begins to meander back to the beginning, and
presents the final par 3, an elevated tee shot over water that
makes you want to stop and take a breather, assess the damage
so far, consider the fact that you are winding up your round at
Farm Neck, and try like heck to enjoy the scenery without becoming
distracted. I can hit a golf ball 163 yards, you say to yourself,
and what else matters?
Well, the wind for one thing, the bunkers around the green for
another. Like any good short hole, this one demands absolute focus…or
this is where you bring out the old golfer’s saw about how
you would play this track much better the second time around,
which is a total lie, on the order of: It depends on what you
mean by better.
No.’s 17 and 18 are why we play golf. At 368 yards, 17
is a deceptively difficult hole that favors the golfer who can
drive the ball straight and long enough, but not too long or it
will run beyond the short grass. There is only a peephole of a
lane that would allow for an approach to be rolled onto the green,
otherwise it might as well be an island for all the sand and water
that surrounds the target. Three shots to the fringe and a putt
to the bottom of the cup will further infuriate your playing partners.
No. 18 is similarly designed, with an extra 150 yards in the
middle to make this the perfect finishing hole. At 523 yards,
this par 5 requires at least three shots to get home for all but
the truly talented and long. It bends around to the right midway,
offers plenty of landing space for the second shot, and then beckons
you to flop one over the hidden finger of water that guards the
front 75 percent of the green, which slopes back to front and
a little sideways. It is a gorgeous hole, with limitless views
of the course and horizon beyond, and a perfect place to shake
hands on another round of golf just completed.
Edgartown Golf Club
 We
headed east a few miles to play nine before the sun went down,
and ended up in the happy embrace of the Edgartown Golf Club.
In making the arrangements, the only thing we had been told about
Edgartown was that “it’s like Shinnecock, only nine
holes,” but this came from the resident manager of 16 years,
Mark Hess, so we thought it might be something of a stretch.
Not really. As soon as the course comes into view, so does half
of Martha’s Vineyard and a good chunk of Chappaquiddick,
which can set the heart of a first-time visitor aflutter…you
know the feeling: sweaty palms, feet that can’t stand still…anyone
around here have a cigar? Let’s tee it up!
We were on top of the world, looking down on a creation that was
inspired by St. Andrews after a visit by islander Cornelius S.
Lee, who, in 1926, bought the Capt. Chase Pease Farm from Fred
Sayer and hired a green keeper named Bror Hogland to help design
and build the beginnings of a golf course for an opening the following
summer, according to a club history.
 Ooops.
Someone forgot to tell Lee that part of the reason the farm sold
for $18,000 was a hidden deal between Sayer and a farmer named
Orin Norton, who held a two-year lease to graze his cows on the
land, but settled for a $400 payout after the founders determined
that a fence was too expensive. The place is quaint that way,
fully in touch with its humble roots.
What Edgartown has retained (that Shinnecock Hills has probably
lost forever) is a feeling of comfort that comes from playing
an obscure (relatively speaking) old horse-ploughed links with
no airs about it and few modern intrusions. Yes, there are electric
carts, but, no, cellphones are not allowed on the property “except
for that area behind the locker room.”
Considering the low-key clubhouse, a Hodgson portable erected
for $1,200 in 1927, it is not hard to imagine a couple of Suffragettes
sneaking around that same corner to the leeside of the locker
room for a furtive smoke and to plot their next move on equal
rights. Incidentally, the Hodgson hasn’t been portable since
the hurricane of 1944, and now features a handsome new porch dubbed
“Lee’s Lookout.”
Connie Lee’s love for the game began as a young player and
eventually led to a 20-year association with the USGA as its secretary.
He started Edgartown when his club in Oak Bluffs decided to go
public, and ended up spending the next 35 years as the linchpin
of an organization that is now fully owned by its 170 members,
with a waiting period for membership pegged at 20 years.
Lee also helped to create an atmosphere of community good works
that goes well beyond the priceless buffer between the town and
the sound, by supporting local boys and girls with jobs, scholarships
and access to the course. Edgartown is hard to join, but most
accommodating when it comes to the island residents who don’t
mind playing off-peak hours, both juniors and adults.
Hess clearly enjoys giving credit to those who came before him
and created this lasting impression on the local scene, and the
legacy that is being passed on, very much a family-style operation.
After making sure we had everything we needed in the way of sustenance
and course knowledge, he walked us to the first tee, and explained
that players finishing the front nine had the right-of-way at
No. 1, which doubles as No. 10, although each has its own green.
The tee box area is in the middle of the hilltop peak overlooking
practically the entire course, and it does triple duty, with the
back half used for the par 3 sixth, going in the other direction.
That was the first hole played in 1927. That part of the tee,
however, does not double as the tee for 15. It has its own box
43 yards closer and to the left, a very different shot to the
same green.
Usually, when you play 18 at a nine-hole course, you’re
basically going around twice, right? Edgartown is different. The
total yardages both come in around 2800, but on a hole-to-hole
basis, there can be a 100-yard difference between the first and
second loop, with different pars, too.
You start out with a downhill drive to a wide fairway framed by
thick rough, tall fescue and, look at that, who knew there was
a pond left of the green?
One mistake that should be avoided here, based on my experience,
is replacing the lost ball with a brand new one; the No. 2 drive
is among the most challenging on the island, with big water left
and big roughage right, and, at 492 yards, ample opportunities
to lose another one here. You wouldn’t think they needed
to introduce water to a course that hugs the shore, but there
it is again – anybody see a splash?
No. 5 reminded us of the knothole drive at Cotuit Highground,
only longer, and blind to the green, just a peek through a mid-air
opening in the trees to a slanted fairway that climbs toward a
flagstick surrounded by deep bunkers. At 268 yards, it is one
of the shortest par 4’s around, but by no means one of the
easiest.
After the par 3 No. 6, the course heads back down toward the saltwater
with the par 4 No. 7 measuring 319 yards, trees right, tall grass
left, and four bunkers guarding the little green, with thick stuff
in back.
Here, in the creeping darkness on the edge of Edgartown, the landscape
architecture of the golf course is at its best in blending with
the natural surroundings, as if they were meant for each other,
the lush green grass hugging the tree-line down a gentle slope
to the tall yellow marsh reeds, the saltwater backdrop interrupted
only by a barrier beach on the horizon.
This is the view from the tee at No. 8, the signature hole, 180
yards (or 285 the second time around) to a green on the water’s
edge, a downhill shot that requires precision and a good feel
for the wind, or else. As ridiculous as it sounds, No. 17 can
play easier than No. 8 despite the extra 105 yards, depending
on the conditions and your own particular swing flaw, if it’s
a tendency to lose the club and thus the ball to the right.
Regardless, it is among the most beautiful settings in golf, and
it could stand alone as a hole that you could play over and over
and over again, without ever getting tired of the vistas and variables,
a microcosm of the Edgartown experience.
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Vineyard Golf Club
 When
the Vineyard Golf Club opened a couple of years ago, the fanfare
came with two refrains – it was designed by Donald Steel,
who had recently completed the much-ballyhooed Carnegie Abbey
in Portsmouth, R.I., a $40 million playground for the golf and
polo crowd, and it was the first course around to use no harmful
chemicals on its turf (a condition of the approval from local
authorities, who were not of a mind to welcome a new source of
water pollution).
Both can be seen as feathers in the cap of the club’s developers,
a triumvirate of successful businessmen from around the country,
but neither fact should overshadow the larger truth: the Vineyard
comes as close to the ideal of a perfect golf club as there is,
anywhere, and immediately must rank at or near the top of the
heap in New England, despite its tender age.
Armed with solid backing and blessed with a pristine forest in
the middle of what feels like nowhere, Steel enlisted his partner
and fellow Scotsman Tom Mackenzie in the effort, and the result
is a truly special place – less a series of 18 holes than
a single story with 18 subplots.
A student of the masters who has lately been considered one of
them, Steel literally wrote the book on links course design. His
treasure here is inland from the saltwater, and so the merits
of the design are accentuated by the fact that there is nothing
else for the eye to see, just the course, surrounded by trees
and a quintessential Vineyard thicket of gnarly scrub. You could
walk the entire property and detect nothing of the outside world
except the skies above, although on some days the roar of the
surf must carry to the clubhouse.
 In
a pure coincidence, this is the second Steel course for head professional
Gene Mulak, who held the same position during the opening of Carnegie
Abbey, built by the eccentric, non-golfing golf developer Peter
deSavery.
Mulak favors the challenge and opportunity of the new to the humdrum
of employment at some of the older clubs he has worked, which
could seem “like Groundhog Day compared to this,”
he said.
In the case of the Vineyard, it’s part start-up and part
science, being one of the few organic golf courses in America,
as opposed to Sweden, where the chemical fertilizers, pesticides
and herbicides used to grow and maintain green grass have been
banned completely.
So, how do they do it at the Vineyard Golf Club? Technology, both
high and low.
For one thing, they use turkey manure. They also work hand-in-glove
with agronomists from the USGA and Cornell University to plant
the right seed for the soil and conditions. It costs more to operate
because of the labor involved, but the results are indistinguishable
from the pro-chemistry set.
You can stand on any one of the big, hard, fast, smooth rolling
greens and look back to a fine-hewn apron – the links approach
– and then to the gently curved flow of the line where green
fairway meets ominously dark green rough, well defined from tee
to green. Towering fescue serves as a golden parachute for the
wayward, short, long and wild, and the maples, oaks and pines
that survived the clearing of the course are usually there for
a reason, but they act more as individuals than a gang.
From the first to the last, the course plays as if it were hosting
a big tournament later in the week (something like a Walker Cup
would be about right), with everything just so, the look and consistency
of the greens-keeping, the iced buckets full of cold drinks, the
big, sturdy flagsticks, no tread marks anywhere – as 95
percent of the players walk. (On that day there were caddies tending
to each of the three or four groups on the course, keeping the
balls in sight and the play moving along. “That’s
Golf Ball over there,” Mulak told of a caddie on the next
fairway. “He used to be with Tom Lehman.”)
From the opening drive to the final putt, the player can concentrate
on golf and nothing but, as that’s all there is, just golf,
nothing else. If you see some open grass wounds around the pushed
up edges of the deep-faced bunkers, that’s where the crows
have been pecking grubs from the soil, Mulak explained. That’s
about the only telltale sign of the course’s eco-friendliness,
that and the break in the flow between 7 and 8, where a “frost
bottom pond” has earned designation as a protected habitat
for a certain moth, and thus as a lateral water hazard that is
circumnavigated by a shuttle service for walking golfers.
Speaking of walking, the other local custom that guests will notice
is their shoes are taken and cleaned before every round in order
to remove the stuff from other courses.
“It’s like one big Petri dish,” said the affable
Mulak, who is as good a golfer as he is a tour guide, and better
than most at both. As we prepared for the round on the patio outside
the brand new clubhouse, an architectural masterwork itself, strong
and handsome yet nothing pretentious, we chatted briefly about
the club’s short history, from the laborious permitting
process to the club today.
“We might have the most spread out membership in New England,”
with golfers flying in to play from 34 states and nine countries,
he said, including some familiar names from Wall Street to Hollywood.
“That’s got to be the funnest thing about working
here, a great membership.”
A Chatham native, the 38-year old Mulak has settled in with his
family at the only residence on the property (not counting the
rooms in the clubhouse), one of only three structures visible
from the course. If the place ever gets busy, it’s in August,
when nearly half of the club’s 6,800 rounds-per-year are
played.
“I like to think I have the best job in the section,”
Mulak said. “I feel very blessed.”
He decided on the club pro route after a promising playing career
that just wasn’t promising enough for him to attempt the
grind. He tells the story of playing in a qualifier for an amateur
national championship alongside a young Justin Leonard. They both
shot 76, which pleased Mulak to no end, but did nothing to satisfy
the eventual Ryder Cup hero and PGA star. “We were walking
off the 18th green, and he turned to me and said, ‘Too bad
we didn’t have our A games out there today.’”
Pause. “If that wasn’t a sign that I ought to be giving
clinics somewhere…”
Oh well. Nowadays the PGA comes to him, in a manner of speaking.
When Scott McCarron was looking to play a tune-up before last
year’s British Open, he went to the Vineyard GC and slapped
it around with Mulak.
Even Mulak’s Taylor-Made prototypes have some PGA in them;
they were built for fellow lefty Mike Weir, who decided he’d
hold off putting them in his bag until after the Masters, which
he won, which is how they ended up in Mulak’s bag instead.
Not that he needs any help. Whatever it was that kept him off
the tour, part of it had to be a lifestyle choice. The guy can
hit a ball 300 yards down the middle in a 25 mile-per-hour wind
while having his picture taken and chatting with his caddie. He
could play with Bam-Bam’s club.
Time after time he was left with putts from 50-50 distance, usually
for birdie. He would ask our caddie, Junior, “Do you see
an edge, Junior?”
Sometimes the caddie didn’t need to say a thing, as Mulak
would see the line himself and assume the responsibility, but
Junior was always right when it mattered.
Reading putts was one of his many skills. A native Jamaican and
4 handicap himself, Junior knew within a few strokes who could
do what with which clubs out there, and he always seemed to station
himself in the right section of the knee-high grass to find my
drives without getting hit by them.
As a veteran caddie, he not only relieved the physical burdens
involved with 18 holes of golf, but also the nervous system, as
he consistently chose just the right words to encourage a good
shot or to flatter the not-so-good with silver linings. “We’ll
find that,” for example, or, “That’s all you
wanted.”
While Junior was focused on keeping us all moving forward, Mulak
was enjoying himself, for both his good play and his guests, and
he took special pleasure in being able to point out a course feature
that had just come into play. That’s how it happened at
“The Pit of Doom,” Mulak’s name for a particularly
penal bunker that wasn’t noticed until it was too late,
thus ending a long drive down the right side down a barely visible
manhole that stole probably 50 yards. Ouch! One of us had to look
away to avoid losing it and appearing the bad host.
Hole after hole, the Vineyard offers golfers a chance to reach
for the stars, and if they hit it, great, and if not, a chance
to try again, from a sheer-faced bunker or a field of fescue,
from thick, heavy rough or a nice clean lie in front.
Every hole is different in its demands, with regular rewards for
length and accuracy, and there is a premium on the soft approach,
preferably below the hole for protection against the three-putt,
as holding the ball on a try from above was only possible when
the cup got involved, or not very often for the non-professionals
among us.
(Incidentally, Clinton played here, too, and mentioned to one
of the members at the turn that he was having a lousy day putting,
but he still carded a front side 39, which was a surprise to some
of the eyewitnesses.)
Putting and prevarications aside, playing the Vineyard is a Zen-like
experience, where the golfer is at one with the surroundings,
just you and the ball and the unimaginably well-groomed turf.
At 7,044 from the championship black tees, with a slope rating
of 142 from there, it is big enough to handle today’s long
hitters, but at 6,643 from the blues, 6,211 from the whites and
5,399 from the reds, it can also be a manageable length for the
rest of us.
Par 72, the course is balanced with two par 3’s and two
par 5’s on each side. The longest par 3 is No. 8, at 218
yards from the blues, with the frost bottom pond to the right,
a jungle left, thick rough short and bunkers on the sides of that
faraway green. The longest par 5 from the way back is the 583-yard
No. 3, where a lot depends on the wind direction and your own
ability to hit the ball on the screws at least twice in a row.
More than anything else, Steel strives to create a course that
can be played by hacker and whacker alike, providing challenges
but not tricks, forcing long-ball hitters to play with control,
or else, and giving short hitters enough room to maneuver without
having to make too many do-or-die carries. Most of the landing
areas are friendly and visible, and all but one of the greens
may be approached through the front door.
In light of the environmental considerations that went into its
development, the Vineyard GC can be seen as a proto-type for the
club of the future, and it is destined to rank among the very
best as a course design.
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Minks Meadow Golf Club
 As
Alistair Cooke wrote in the foreward to The World Atlas of Golf,
The Great Courses and How They Are Played, “[We] don’t
know much about ‘architecture,’ but we know what’s
good.”
And Mink Meadows is good. Measuring 3,185 yards from the blue
tees, it flows like a big old Cadillac, smooth and wide, with
gradual turning, gentle handling, graceful lines and a great window
of the Cape from the top of the hill between 8 and 9.
After being awed by Farm Neck, charmed by Edgartown and overwhelmed
by the Vineyard Golf Club, the immediate sensation we felt on
arrival at Mink Meadows was one of comfort.
Opened for play in 1936, Mink Meadows was designed by Wayne Stiles,
the eminent Boston landscape designer who turned to golf course
architecture during the boom in new courses that came during the
Roaring Twenties. A few of his other works include Albemarle,
Woodland, Thorny Lea and parts of Tedesco.
Unlike most residential development today, with home sites located
around golf courses, here the course surrounds the homes, although
you wouldn’t know it for all the screening that is provided
by generations of tree-growth. The only real clue that people
live inside the square formed by the course is the access road
that cuts through the middle.
A recent course renovation by Ron Pritchard attests to the commitment
on the part of the management and membership to provide a top-quality
golf experience, both for the regulars who love their course and
for the daily fee players who are happy for the chance to play
an island course on the quick and relatively cheap.
 From
the ancient shade trees that provide a canopy between car and
cart, to the wooden steps leading up to the clubhouse, Mink Meadows
beckons the golfer to enter another era, when the game of golf
meant walking, not riding, and shot-making, not slamming the ball
to the ends of the earth.
An added bonus to a round here might come in the form of a stray
who is looking to fill out a foursome, as in our case, with Fred
Pekari, a retired engineer who winters in Florida, lives on Chappaquiddick,
works part-time as a green keeper at Mink Meadows and drives always
down the middle.
That is why, he explained, they call him Fairway Fred.
“I had never met so many Freds in my life before I moved
here,” he said. “I think this must be where we all
go to die. In any case, we had so many Freds that somewhere along
the line we all got nicknames, and mine became Fairway Fred.”
It makes sense, too, as that’s where he always was, in the
middle and usually longer than the rest of us, which he was nice
to try to fluff off by saying that as a member of the crew here,
he has become familiar with all the hard spots in the landing
areas.
In any event, Fairway Fred Pekari showed us how to play the course
from the first, a 349-yard par 4 from an elevated tee to a wide
fairway that funnels up to a fast, tiny, subtly sloped green.
He did it again at the second, by placing his ball in the perfect
spot around the corner of a dogleg left, with just a little wedge
remaining for his pitch over the bunkers and onto the slightly
larger green than the first.
He slipped a little at the third, pulling one toward the rough
on the left, but recovered nicely and barely missed par. That
was it for Fred’s wildness, however, as he managed to hit
and hold every one of the remaining fairways and dropped only
one hole to our group (when I took a 2 on the par 3 at No. 5.
Nice putt, Shaky!).
Although the final four were played in that blur that comes over
a duffer who has just made his first birdie in weeks, I do remember
a few thoughts from the time:
When you know what you’re doing out there, it sure can look
easy.
Beware the low-handicapper whose home course is Mink Meadows.
I could live here and play nothing else and be happy forever.
Martha’s Vineyard sure has a great collection of golf courses
– and for players at all levels of wealth and ability.
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