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The Courses That Survived: Four Places Worth Making the Drive For

518 Golf HubSeptember 26, 20267 min read
The Courses That Survived: Four Places Worth Making the Drive For

Four Adirondack golf courses built between 1896 and 1925 are still standing and still worth the drive — including a Donald Ross design and a course redesigned with input from Walter Hagen.

Part 2 of a 3-Part Series on North Country Golf History — read Part 1 first if you missed it.

In Part 1 we talked about the big picture. How golf arrived in the Adirondacks on the coattails of the Gilded Age, how 59 courses got built inside the park, and how the North Country ended up being one of the most golf-rich regions in the entire country before most Americans had ever picked up a club.

Most of those courses are gone now. The era that built them faded, the grand hotels closed, and the layouts went with them.

But not all of them.

Four courses from that era are still standing, still playable, and still worth the drive. And when I say worth the drive, I mean it. These aren't novelty stops. They are genuinely good golf courses with real history underneath them. If you live in Upstate New York and you haven't played at least one of them, you're leaving something on the table.

Here's what you need to know about each one.

Cobble Hill Golf Course, Elizabethtown (Est. 1896)

Start here if you want to say you played one of the oldest golf courses in the United States. Because that's what Cobble Hill is.

The course was built in 1896 in the Adirondack hamlet of Elizabethtown, Essex County, and it is owned and operated by the Town of Elizabethtown to this day. According to the town's own records, golf was introduced here in the summer of 1896 by Judge Henry A. Gildersleeve. The first pro on the grounds was a man named Dermont E. Miner, who started from day one and stayed on for years.

Think about what 1896 means for a second. The USGA had only been formed two years earlier. Most people in this country still had no idea what golf was. And there was already a course going in up in Essex County.

Today Cobble Hill is a 9-hole, par 35 course that plays to 3,033 yards. It is fully irrigated, the greens are well maintained, and the views of the Adirondack mountains are exactly what you would hope for. Golf Digest lists the greens fee at $34. You are not going to find a cheaper round with this much history attached to it anywhere in New York State.

If you go, keep expectations in the right place. It is a 9-hole public course in a small Adirondack town. It is not trying to be Bethpage. But that is exactly the point. It has been exactly what it is for over 130 years, and there is something genuinely cool about standing on a piece of ground where golfers have been playing since before the turn of the 20th century.

Whiteface Club and Resort, Lake Placid (Est. 1895/1898)

This one is a little more polished, and the history runs just as deep.

Golf was first played at the Whiteface Inn in Lake Placid around 1895, starting as a 9-hole layout. According to the club's own history and Life in the ADK, the course was formally founded and recognized by the USGA in 1898. So depending on how you count it, this course has been in operation for well over 125 years.

What happened next is what makes Whiteface stand out. In the 1930s, when hotels across the country were struggling through the Depression, the Whiteface Inn's manager Henry Haynes pushed the resort toward hosting national conventions and business meetings to stay afloat. That pivot funded an expansion, and during that period architect John Van Kleek redesigned and expanded the golf course with input from Walter Hagen, the World Champion golfer of that era. The result was a course that Van Kleek and Hagen rebuilt into what the resort calls championship caliber.

Today Whiteface Club and Resort sits at 6,106 yards and plays as an 18-hole course overlooking Lake Placid and the Adirondack Mountains. Golfweek ranked it the 4th best classic course in New York State and 11th overall in the state as of 2014. The greens feature a distinctive cloverleaf design that Van Kleek worked into the layout, and the whole place still carries the feel of a course that was built when people took this stuff seriously.

Guests of the Mirror Lake Inn can access the course at preferred rates. Everyone else is welcome too.

Thendara Golf Club, Old Forge (Est. 1921)

If you know anything about golf architecture, the name Donald Ross means something to you. If you don't, here is what you need to know. Ross designed over 400 courses during his career including Pinehurst No. 2, Seminole Golf Club, and Oakland Hills. He is considered one of the most important figures in the history of golf course design in America.

He built the front nine at Thendara in 1921.

That front nine sits just a half mile south of Old Forge along the Moose River, and according to the NYSGA it is one of the purest walking rounds you will find anywhere in Upstate New York. The greens are classic Ross, meaning they are elevated, contoured, surrounded by his signature bunkering, and significantly harder to two-putt than they look from the fairway. Holes 1, 7, and 9 in particular have been described by golfers who know the course well as borderline diabolical.

The back nine was added in 1956 by architect Russell Bailey. It has a completely different personality from the front, running through the woods with views of the Moose River and requiring more precision off the tee. The two nines feel like separate courses almost, which honestly makes the full 18 more interesting.

Thendara is a semi-private facility and welcomes visitors. The course is a par 72 and 18 holes. Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, and Chi Chi Rodriguez have all played it, according to the club's own records. That list is not bad for a course tucked into the Central Adirondacks outside Old Forge.

If you only make one trip to the North Country for golf this season, make it this one.

Craig Wood Golf Course, Lake Placid (Est. 1925)

The last one on this list is the only one named after a person. And the story of that person is worth saving for Part 3, which is exactly what we're doing.

But the course deserves its own mention here.

Craig Wood Golf Course was designed in 1925 by Seymour Dunn, who was himself a Lake Placid resident and one of the prominent golf architects of that era. It started as a 9-hole layout called the Lake Placid Golf and Country Club and was expanded to 18 holes in 1932. In 1954, the Town of North Elba renamed it in honor of Lake Placid's most celebrated golfer, Craig Wood.

Today the course is owned and operated by the Town of North Elba, which means it is as public as a golf course gets. It plays to 6,554 yards, par 72, with a course rating of 71.2 and a slope of 114. The estimated greens fee with a cart runs around $85, according to GolfLink. The 18th hole is worth mentioning specifically because it requires a precise drive over a ravine followed by an uphill approach to a sloped green with trees closing in on both sides. It is a legitimate finishing hole.

The surrounding High Peaks are visible from multiple points on the course. If you are going to play golf near Lake Placid anyway, there is no real reason not to play here.

The Point of All This

Four courses. All of them over 90 years old. All of them publicly accessible. All of them sitting in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the Northeast.

Part of what we are trying to do at 518 Golf Hub is shine a light on what Upstate New York golf actually has to offer, and the North Country is one of the most underappreciated corners of it. These courses do not show up on national top-100 lists. They do not get written about in Golf Magazine. But they have been here longer than most of the courses that do, and they are worth your time.

Go play them. You can browse every course we've got listed in our directory.

In Part 3 we are telling the full story of Craig Wood. The Lake Placid kid who turned pro, went on to win 21 PGA Tour titles, lost the Masters in the most dramatic fashion possible in 1935, and then came back six years later to win two majors in the same calendar year. It is a genuinely great story and it deserves a post of its own.

Written by a local golfer who went looking for history and couldn't stop reading

Sources

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