Nothing like it

From template holes to pricey resorts adding similar amenities, the upper echelons of the industry frequently transfer proven and safe ideas between divergent locations.

Consider the current short course movement. Compact courses are being designed, constructed and branded to fit themes and dimensions on existing properties. Owners and operators are then banking on receiving carryover play from the “big course.” Somebody in Oregon or North Carolina builds first. Somebody in Florida, Wisconsin or California follows with a similar concept.

The Hickory Course at Hamilton Farm at Hamilton Farm Golf Club in Gladstone, New Jersey, represents an anomaly in the high-end short course sector. For 21 years, it has surprisingly yet to attract a follower.

The private club sliced within one of the world’s private club meccas —the area encircling New York City simply known as “The Met” — might boast the biggest 18-hole short course in America. The par-3 puncher plays 3,080 yards from the back tees with four holes of 200 yards or longer, including the punishing 229-yard 17th.

The Hickory Course at Hamilton Farm opened in 2001, the same year as the regulation Highlands Course. Dana Fry and Dr. Michael Hurdzan designed both courses. Fry, a bold golf development thinker and now a partner in Fry/Straka Global Golf Design, still hasn’t seen anything like the Hickory Course in his jet-setting journeys.

“It’s not the typical par-3 where they are just all flip wedges,” says Fry, whose firm returned to Hamilton Farm last fall for a bunker renovation. “You’re hitting 3 wood to lob wedge. You’re really hitting every club in the bag and it simulates the type of shots that you have on the golf course, where you have to hit high cuts and draws, and some where you can roll it on and some where you can’t. It’s a real, real test of golf.

“There’s awesome par-3 courses now at places like Sand Valley and Bandon Dunes — and we did a really nice one at Shelter Harbor — but there’s nothing like the par-3 course at Hamilton Farm.”

The golf shots aren’t the only big aspect of the Hickory Course. Hamilton Farm director of grounds Jason Harrison and his team are maintaining a par-3 course that traverses 130 wooded acres within a 730-acre property. The scale of the Hickory Course fascinated Harrison when he accepted the Hamilton Farm job in 2015 after stints maintaining Golden Age golf courses, including Worcester Country Club and Philadelphia-area stalwarts Merion Golf Club and Huntington Valley Country Club.

“Our par-3 course is the acreage of a normal, 18-hole golf course. Now, I’m including the woods in that,” says Harrison during a July tour of the Hamilton Farm property. “But I worked at Merion for a number of years and one of the courses at Merion is just over 100 acres.”

Different eras, pars and footprints. Same giant expectations.

The Hickory Course is maintained like an elite Northeast private layout. The daily Hickory Course crew includes around 10 employees preparing four acres of greens, three acres of approaches and surrounds, and two acres of tees for daily member and guest play beginning at 7:30 a.m. The philosophies mirror those on the Highlands Course. “We do everything here as if it’s a championship golf course,” Harrison says.

The regimen includes daily course setup and bunker rakes, regular mows and rolls, calculated fertility and spray programs, and diligent topdressing and other cultural practices. Playing surfaces on both Hamilton Farm courses are maintained to thwart an unwelcomed weed from overtaking bentgrass. “From an agronomic perspective,” Harrison says, “we are Poa killers. Everything we do is to give bentgrass a competitive advantage. We have very little Poa on the golf courses.”

Native areas are critical to the Hamilton Farm aesthetic. The hilly site, secluded in an area where mansions and horse owners are the norm, served as the country estate of the Brady family from 1911 until 1978. The family enjoyed horses of nearly every kind and the United States Equestrian Team Olympic Training Center and Headquarters border the club. The land’s grazing days were numbered decades ago, but the two courses possess 85 acres of native areas, according to Harrison. Twenty of those acres mesh with the woods, hillsides and wetlands to give the Hickory Course a soothing palette.

Patrick Critchley, who grew up 20 minutes from Hamilton Farm, is the assistant superintendent responsible for monitoring everything from the native areas to cultural practices on the Hickory Course. He never played — or even visited — the course until interviewing for his current position last year. Leading the maintenance of a par-3 course without a peer attracted Critchley to his current job, making the Hickory Course one of the few short courses capable of attracting members and employees.

“I haven’t seen anything like this,” Critchley says. “I always tell people, imagine a really high-end par-3 hole, but 18 of them. The holes are actual legit par 3s course that you would see in a magazine. And every hole is like that.”

By the time Critchley landed in central New Jersey last October, a bunker renovation on the Hickory Course had commenced. A bunker renovation on a par-3 course? Again, this isn’t like other short course stories. The work left the Hickory Course with 34 bunkers with modest, yet detailed, grass faces contrasting the original fingers and high sand flashes. “We really wanted to make more ‘old-school’ looking bunkers,” Fry says.

Recent infrastructure upgrades on the Hickory Course also involved renovating 3.2 miles of cart paths. Instead of just toting a Sunday bag with a few wedges, a putter and a trio of balls, golfers likely require at least a dozen clubs to handle the Hickory Course, thus the need for cart paths. Steep falloffs, dense woods, ponds, and wetlands surround and front multiple holes, making the potential for multiple lost balls another abnormal par-3 course occurrence. Coincidentally, the only hole without a bunker is the 17th, which plays 250 yards from the back tee.

Memorable holes and distinctive features dot the course. The first hole is near the stately Brady mansion and plays over a valley, the eighth plays along a ridgeline with a “Sugar Shack” and horse jumps from the land’s agrarian past bordering the green, and the 10th and 18th leap over ponds and wetlands. Producing conditions to match the challenge and intricacies of the layout drive Harrison, Critchley, and the Hamilton Farm team.

“We want to be the best par-3 course in America,” Critchley says. “That’s our goal. We don’t want to settle for anything less than the best. The bunker renovation gave us a good step forward and there’s still work to be done.”

The Hickory Course, according to Fry, originated because Hamilton Farm lacked the suitable land for two regulation courses, but the site possessed enough land for a par-3 course. Despite the vast acreage, Hamilton Farm was one of the toughest projects of Fry’s career because of rocky, hilly, tree-covered land, an abundance of wetlands, and a rigid permitting process. Twenty-three years after breaking ground, a similar par-3 course hasn’t been attempted.

“They make really aesthetically beautiful par-3 courses that are really fun to play nowadays,” Fry says. “But I’m surprised nobody has really ever built a par-3 course like this where you can work on your game and not just your wedge game.”