by Jeff Skinner
Living in New York’s Hudson Valley has its advantages. We get to enjoy all of the four seasons, well I enjoy three of them anyway. The Hudson Valley is full of history and a beautiful place to live. Along with that comes the quantity and quality of great golf courses in the area. Westchester County boasts dozens of historic, world class courses. And Long Island, a hot bed of classic courses is close enough to enjoy also.
There was a spell there when it seemed the USGA had setup shop in Metro New York and I was at U.S. Opens on Bethpage, Shinnecock , Winged Foot and Bethpage again all within eight years. The USGA, like myself appreciate the fact that this area is home to so many significant courses.
Living here also puts me under the coverage of the Metropolitan Golf Association, one of the oldest, largest and active local golf organizations. They conduct 19 golf championships, run the handicap system for member clubs and promote the game in a myriad of ways. 
One of the benefits of being a MGA member is their award winning magazine, The Met Golfer. For a local publication it is top notch and includes many well known writers and contributors. One of those is Jimmy Roberts of NBC Sports who writes his Last Word column each issue.
I didn’t realize I had so much in common with Roberts. He loves golf and so do I. He started playing golf at Westchester County Courses and so did I. He wishes he was taller and I do too.
In his latest column he acknowledges that his job has afforded him the chance to play at many of the greatest courses in the world but he is still a public golfer at heart. And enjoys meeting new people on the public courses.
But at the heart of this column Roberts is lamenting the fact that golf is a tough business, particularly for public courses. “Golf is a hard business. Private clubs have their struggles, but they also have assessments, dues increases, and the initiation fees of new members to provide the wherewithal to keep their operations going. Munis and independently run public courses have no such options. They are businesses that depend on what we are often told is a shrinking client base. And good luck in these times convincing municipality to increase funding to anything-let alone a golf course.”
He’s right…running a profitable, public golf course is a huge challenge. Expenses are increasing as revenues are shrinking. There are fewer golfers and even less water. Making ends meet is so tough that for every new golf course that opens ten close their doors. And sometimes I think the large golf organizations like the USGA and the Royal and Ancient lose sight of the fact that the majority of golf played in the world is at public golf courses.
Unlike Roberts and the members of those elite private clubs I play almost all my golf on public courses: munis and independently run courses. And one of my favorites is an old New York State course, James Baird State Park. It’s a nice, walkable layout designed by Robert Trent Jones and struggles each year financially.
State budgets here aren’t very kind to golf courses and the staff at Baird has worked miracles the last few years to keep it in decent shape. Somehow, they won a five year battle with the state to get money to add a retention pond so the entire course could be watered. Anyone who knows Baird knows that come July and August it would become dry as a bone. And brown…and not the new kind of “brown is the new green.” This was the old kind of brown…the brown is dead kind of brown.
So while Pinehurst No.2 showcased the new effort in golf to get players to accept less lush courses and embrace the brown Baird is going towards a new look.
This season it should be greener than ever and that’s a good thing. Play at Baird always fell off because this brown meant dead, bone dry, rock hard fairways. The soil up here isn’t like Pinehurst. No water means cement like ground that had many a golfer breaking their wrists as they tried to play off the runway like turf.
With the new watering system the old course should have a new life this summer. And while the crew at Baird has done wondrous things with limited resources the past years this season should be different at Baird. Players shouldn’t take Baird out of their course rotation as so many have done in the past.
A greener, softer, more playable course should keep golfers on it all season and that should bring in some more cash to this venerable old track. This is a case of, “Green is the new green” and the players at Baird will be thrilled to live it.
So if Jimmy is around this summer and truly wants to get back out there on a muni as he says in his column I offer this invite. Come on up to the Hudson Valley and we’ll play James Baird State Park where brown is gone and green is back. The drinks are on me.
Click here for The Met Golfer and go to page 100 for Roberts’ column.
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