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LI GOLFBEAT: History echoes at Friar's Head

Mark Herrmann

August 10, 2008

Judging only from some of the open, emerald fairways, you might think you were in Ireland. Judging from the views that encompass both tall trees and water, you might think you were at Pebble Beach. Judging from the general ambience, as Champions Tour player Loren Roberts recently did, you could say you were in heaven.

Actually, none of the above is true. Friar's Head, the exclusive club that shares Sound Avenue in Baiting Hollow with sod farms and ancestral homes, is not like anyplace else.

"Once you pull off the road, you see the trees and the dunes, and you kind of forget where you are," said Joe Saladino, the Cold Spring Harbor native who advanced to today's 36-hole final of the 106th Met Amateur by beating 15-year-old Cameron Wilson of Connecticut, 2-up, yesterday in a match that went down to the final green.

The Met Amateur is giving all of golfdom a peek at the striking Friar's Head vistas: 200-foot high dunes and the sight of Long Island Sound. A golfer can't help but be inspired.

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"I think it's kind of what you dream golf to be," said Andrew Giuliani, who took Tommy McDonagh three holes into a playoff before falling in his semifinal match.

Judging from the intense golf yesterday, Friar's Head does what an exceptional course is supposed to do. It challenges golfers, but also lets them flourish. Saladino four-putted the steeply sloped seventh green and chipped 35 feet above the cup on the equally steep eighth with the ball ending up 10 feet below. But it also gave him the opportunity to get up and down from a bunker behind the green on 16, and to nearly sink a 108-yard sand wedge on No. 18 to clinch.

"It's fair. It really grabs your attention," said Saladino, who belongs to Huntington Country Club but lives and works in the city.

Giuliani, son of the former mayor and recently of the Duke golf team (who is suing the university for practice facility privileges) put on a huge surge on the back nine, winning four holes in a row to tie McDonagh, a golfer for Penn State.

"Every hole can be had, but every hole can have you," said Ken Bakst, the 1996 Met Amateur champion and 1997 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion who built this course, having hired Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore to design it.

Aside from the praise Friar's Head receives about how it fosters competition, its real signature is that it is so darned pretty. The green on the par-5 14th is carved into a corner of towering dunes, which are themselves covered with trees. The tee on No. 15 is atop that same dune, amid more pines, pointing toward the water.

Bakst was like a proud parent at a successful recital - out on the course, snapping pictures and encouraging the four semifinalists. He was pleased that all four chose to use the club's caddies. Reviving respect for caddies is one reason Friar's Head has no yardage markers, no signs on any hole that say how long the hole is, what par is or even what number hole it is.

Another reason for that plain look is atmosphere. Bakst said the mission is to "sort of be an early 20th-century club." Giuliani did say, "It feels 'classic.'"

The overwhelming majority of golfers will have to take his word for it. Friar's Head is one of the most private of private clubs (there's no sign out front, photographers were not permitted to shoot the stone clubhouse). Kudos to the Metropolitan Golf Association for asking Bakst to open the doors for a few days.

"You want to give something back to the organization you're part of," Bakst said.

The Saladino-McDonagh final, starting at 7:30 a.m. today, is open to the public. You could do worse than stopping in and taking a look.

The Sunday tip

"The best tip I ever heard has to be credited to one of the funniest players that the tour has ever seen, Peter Jacobsen. During a golf telecast, one of the analysts was asking the likes of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player, 'What is the best tip you can give an amateur golfer to make him a better player?' After they gave the list of usual cures, from softening the grip to changing posture, Jacobsen politely looked directly into the camera and said, 'You're just not good enough to get mad.' Temper and frustration ruin more golf shots than any swing flaw. Keep in mind that golf is a game. The only thing getting upset over bad shots will do is cause more bad shots."

- John Hines, PGA head professional, Baiting Hollow Country Club