Shennecossett: Golf Elemental

When you strip away all the the folderol, golf nourishes the soul. Perfect emerald green fairways? Sinful! Carts with GPS? Too much information, not enough cardio! Bunkers built with railroad ties? Put those next to the windmill and clown's mouth, please! Give me good, true greens and hard, fast fairways and I'm happy regardless of the score that goes on my card. Add a layout well-designed by Donald Ross and greens fees suitable for a less-than-millionaire, and you have everything necessary to make life worth living. The place where this perfection comes together? Shennecossett Golf Course in Groton, CT. It's a place for golf the way it's meant to be played.

Shenny is a grand old track (the club was founded in 1898) that plays as much like a links course as any you'll find in this country. It also has no frills. You can ride a cart, but that's a waste of fossil fuels since the course is on gently rolling seaside terrain. It's laid out in an old style, too, where most tee boxes are right next to the previous greens. Fairways are hard so you get plenty of roll, but dotted with shaggy bunkers to keep life interesting. Greens have exciting contours and many are accessible to a bump and run, which adds a welcome option to your game. Like any good links course, Shenny also uses the wind off the water to full advantage.

The course even strips away another of golf's non-essentials, yardage markers on every sprinkler head. In fact, all you'll find at Shenny are red, white, and blue markers in the middle of the fairways for 100, 150, and 200 yards. If you can't estimate a distance accurate enough for your game from those, you're either a PGA pro or (more likely) vastly overrating your own abilities.

One of the marks of a great course in my not-so-humble opinion is the variety of holes in the layout. Shennecossett passes that test with flying colors. I used a different club on each of the one-shotters, for example, since the par threes measure 208 (uphill), 175 (level), 125 (uphill), and 195 (downhill). There's a long five par (565) but two reachable ones (490 and 500). About half of the four pars are over 400 yards, the rest under. All told, the course measures 6562 from the blue tees--with enough fescue rough, fairway bunkering, and inconveniently-placed mounds and swales to keep you on your toes.

The real round-wreckers are the Donald Ross greens. I can personally attest that the turtle-backs on the fourth hole (the first par three you face--208 uphill) and fourteenth hole (an otherwise-benign 418-yard par four) will repel anything except a perfect approach. In fact, I managed to putt off the 14th green and pitched back and forth over the fourth an embarrassing number of times.

The finest stretch of holes at Shennecossett are the three by the sea added in the nineties in a land swap with a nearby Pfizer plant. The world may have gotten more Viagra as a result of the deal, but the real gain was by golfers who get to play the 15th, 16th, and 17th holes along the water.

When you walk the links at Shenny, you're treading in the footsteps of the greatest in the game. Francis Ouimet, Bobby Jones, Tommy Armour, Walter Hagen, and Harry Vardon all played matches there. You can read more about them and the rest of the club's very interesting history on the website.

One final note: Shenny may be the best golf value on the East Coast. Weekend, non-resident (the course is owned by the town) greens fees are only $47--and that's the highest number on the rate card. Talk about golf the way it ought to be!

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.