HARTFORD, Conn. (April 23, 2020) — Let’s first relate the cold hard facts, to contextualize things: Connecticut is a wasteland. I spent four college years there. Pretty much every part of the state exists as a satellite to some larger, more consequential place. It’s the world’s biggest suburb, in other words — and yet there isn’t one cool urban redoubt in all of its 5,567 square miles. For years, you couldn’t buy beer there after 8 p.m. In their relative wisdom, modern CT lawmakers have since upped that to 10 p.m. (Sunday liquor sale bans were lifted in 2012). But it remains the most culturally vanilla corner of New England. More to the point, the Connecticut golf scene is surprisingly poor.
Of the six New England states, I’d rank the Nutmeg State 5th in terms of overall quality per capita (sorry, New Hamster). There are some perfectly fine private clubs. But honestly, not as many as one might think considering the long coastline and all the money that has consistently sloshed around that part of the state. The public golf is fairly abject by any standard.
However, for much of this Pandemic Spring, Connecticut and Rhode Island have been the only places that have even allowed golf in New England. Rhody has effectively banned it for out-of-state folks, insisting on a 14-day quarantine beforehand. It seems the most onerous golf restrictions will be lifted across the region come the month of May, or that’s the word here in Maine. So let me praise Connecticut and the golf there while I have the chance.
My daughter passed her thesis in last Friday at midnight. Her college experience is essentially over. As she has spent the last 6 weeks cooped up in her Philadelphia apartment, we reckoned she’d earned some semi-rural time at home. Because Clara required extraction and, because Connecticut is literally unavoidable when driving from Maine to Philly, I resolved to play golf somewhere on the way down.
Connecticut Golf: Accessibility Always Wins
Because I passed through the Nutmeg State twice, I actually played on the way back, as well. Each round proved delightful — just as I remembered golf to be (!). Monday morning I rolled up to Keney Park Golf Course just north of Hartford in Windsor, right off Interstate-91. The original Devereaux Emmet design there was renovated some 7 years ago, to pretty outstanding effect. I picked up a game with 3 other middle-aged guys. Aside from the lack of handshakes before and afterward, our maintenance of physical distance did not affect at all.
I played on the golf team at Wesleyan University in Middletown. That delivered me around the state to dozens of different courses, back in the day. But I’d never played Keney before. The terrain was superb and the place drained really well. It snowed the day before, apparently, but the ball still bounced/rolled in most places.
Some have taken issue with the historical accuracy/integrity of architect Michael Dusenberry’s work at Keney Park — and the project cost. But this seems to me a pretty churlish response. If there’s a better muni track in the State of Connecticut, I’d like to know where it is. The greens are super fun, their complexes bold and varied, and they rolled beautifully for mid-April.
There are dozens of ways to “rate” a golf course, but here’s one I like, especially for public courses: What’s the worst hole out here? At Keney, it took some real head-scratching. It’s probably the 1st — a perfectly good if short, downhill par-4 that otherwise serves as a welcoming opener. I certainly appreciated it, having been sent straight from the starter shack to the first tee after 4 hours in the car. Every succeeding hole I found strategically engaging.
Off to Philly, then Straight Back
The very next day, after arrive and kipping in Philadelphia, my daughter and I loaded up the car and headed north. It’s quite a feeling to drive over the George Washington Bridge and sail through NYC at lunchtime with such ease. Thanks, Covid!
Soon enough we had arrived in Old Saybrook, just down Route 9 from Middletown. Fenwick Golf Course is a cool place — a summer-community track surrounded by tony, shingle-style homes arrayed about a small peninsula of low-lying land buffeted by Long Island Sound. Just 9 holes, it was the perfect place to play with my daughter in tow.
Connecticut coast proved cold and windy but we welcomed the walk and there are some truly scenic vistas on offer at Fenwick. When it came into view, the Sound was roiling. As for the golf itself: meh. The 4th was a fairly epic, 430-yard, cape-style par-4 where one is obliged to drive it over a salt-water inlet a— and Sequassen Avenue. The 2nd is a cute par-3. The card indicated there was a back tee stretching the hole to 200 yards, but we couldn’t find it. In all, a lovely spot but nothing too-too special.
The greens were uniformly small, round and tilted back toward play with very little internal contour. It reminded me of Abenackie, another antique summer-colony 9 south of Portland, Maine, though the terrain there in Biddeford Pool is superior.
But this is to quibble. It was the perfect way to break up an 8-hour drive, during a pandemic. Invigorated, we jumped back in the car, stopped at Popeye’s in New London — spicy chicken sandwich: believe the hype — and headed north.
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