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Island Hills Golf Club: We're not for sale

Mark Herrmann

October 30, 2008

Island Hills Golf Club was used for military parachute training during World War II, so it is not the type of place to get panicky about the sky falling. On the other hand, as a venerable golf club, it does not want to let anyone go around reporting the wrong score.

That is why members took the dramatic step two weeks ago of placing an advertisement in Newsday to say that the club is not for sale. The course in Sayville intends to stay open, as it has been every year since 1927 (except for its hiatus as a paratroopers' landing area).

"We'd go to an outing or we'd hear members from other clubs say, 'You can't go there, they're for sale,' " club president Greg Epilone said. "Members were coming to me and saying, 'Greg, I'm tired of hearing about our club. What is the real deal?' We had numerous membership meetings over the summer. That's what forced us into that ad, to tell the golf community that we're here."

Island Hills members are where they always have been, on Lakeland Avenue just south of Sunrise Highway. They play a course designed by the great architect A.W. Tillinghast, whose credits include Bethpage Black. They putt on smooth, fast greens that always have attracted attention at local pro and youth tournaments. Head pro Paul Glut said that after the American Junior Golf Association Classic was held there in late July, some of the nationally ranked players called and said Island Hills' were the best greens they played all year.

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"That's what we're known for," said Epilone, in the second of two years as head of the members, who own the equity club.

At the moment, Island Hills is looking for members, not a buyer.

A developer made an offer on the 116-acre property, with a plan to build a housing complex and possibly a nine-hole golf layout.

"In our fiduciary responsibility, we brought it to our membership," Epilone said, adding that the offer was rejected, which did not stop the story. "It caused people around the golf industry to spread all sorts of silly rumors. So we wanted to quell those rumors."

What fueled the rumors was the reality of the golf business, which, people in the industry say, is stagnant. Several public courses were built on Long Island in the past 10 years in the expectation that Tiger Woods would inspire a boom in golf the way Dwight Eisenhower and Arnold Palmer did in the 1950s and 1960s. That boom either did not happen or it subsided quickly. As a result, courses are competing with each other to get as big a slice of the same old pie as they can get.

On top of that, private courses are finding that as the earlier generation of members leaves, the next generation is not filling the spots right away.

"I think what's happening with Long Island clubs is what happened to Florida clubs," Epilone said. "With the younger generation, it's more of, 'I've got to take my kids to soccer, I've got to take my kids to baseball.' "

Island Hills has done mailings to potential members, looking to expand on the current base of 205 people. The club is offering non-equity plans at a lower fee. It plays up the fact that the emphasis is on golf, not the trappings. "We don't have that long, rolling driveway," Epilone said.

It is promoting the fact that the club does fit in well with modern weekend family lifestyles. "We have plenty of guys here who go out at 7 and they're done by 10:30," Epilone said, adding that his wife, Debra, took up the game 10 years ago and has since won the club women's championship twice.

He does believe that there always will be a place for golf clubs, especially one that has members who have been regulars for nearly a half-century and a starter who has been on the job for more than 40 years. Island Hills made it through the Great Depression, and is determined to keep going now.

"We have tradition," Epilone said. "We just have to get through these times, like any other business."