[Ed. This piece appeared 25 years ago in a magazine called TravelGolf Maine founded by a fellow named Park Morrison. It didn’t last long (1998-2001) and, sadly, Park passed away last year, in 2023. I’m including the story here because surely it never made it online — and because it appeared, in print, under a favorite pen name of mine. Another serendipitous fact: When I traveled to Lovell, Maine to “research” the story, the course ranger, found lounging in a cart parked by the first tee at Lake Kezar CC, was none other than Bill Bissett, retired athletic director at Hudson (Mass.) High, one of the schools covered by The Hudson Daily Sun, where I served sports editor from 1989-90.]
By Henry Choi Opinions differ when it comes to appraising so-called schizo layouts, those courses where one nine barely resembles the other. In northern New England — where scads of nines were laid out in the 1920s and ‘30s, only to be expanded many decades later by different architects — the issue is more salient than perhaps anywhere in America. Because there are just so many cases where the nines don’t match, the question remains: Does one decry the stylistic divergence or applaud the diversity?
Two courses in the border regions of Maine and New Hampshire inform the debate. North Conway Country Club and Lake Kezar CC are separated by 20 miles. And yet, the nines on each course feel even further apart, light years in fact, when it comes to style, terrain and vintage. That both tracks remains such good fun tips our fledgling debate toward applause.
This part of New England is remote but hardly underdeveloped. The resort nature of North Conway, N.H., cannot be lost on first-time visitors to its eponymous, semi-private country club, where the 1st tee is set back just 50 yards from a bustling main drag replete with myriad factory outlets, hotels and restaurants. Indeed, the clubhouse at NCCC sits directly beside the Conway Scenic Railway Station, a massive, red-roofed, Victorian-era structure painted a vivid shade of yellow.
It’s quite a sight, but nothing like the vista next door. The 1st at NCCC (the image above) is one of the great opening holes in all of New England, a 418-yard par-4 with long views of Cathedral Rock in the distance and, of more pressing concern, O.B. all along the left side. It takes some real concentration to block it all out and belt one — right over the train tracks! — to a fairway 70 feet (!) below.
Beside the Scenic Saco
Don’t get the wrong idea, however. The remaining golf at North Conway CC isn’t about dramatic elevation changes. At all. After this inaugural plunge, the course plays entirely in the subtly contoured flood plain of the Saco River. It’s scenic — with the river running through it and White Mountains surrounding it — but it’s relatively flat and eminently walkable.
The opening nine here dates to 1928, when Ralph Barton, a protégé of Seth Raynor, reworked a older, rudimentary loop. The charm of these opening holes lies in the subtleties of their small, steeply pitched greens guarded closely by deep bunkers. The 4th is a wonderful short hole, a make-or-break 140-yard pitch to a putting surface that falls away steeply on all sides. Every so often the land here does move with surprising drama. The 354-yard 5th plays right along the river; the back tee calls for a drive across a bend in the Saco to a swaled landing area, which is then crossed by a stream at 240 yards. The green looks harmless enough, until you look over the back side and see the ground fall away steeply some 20 feet.
The second nine at North Conway arrived much later, in the mid-1960s, courtesy of New Hamster-based architect Phil Wogan, and no — the two loops do not go together stylistically. The front side putting surfaces are set mostly at grade, while the bulk of Wogan’s greens are raised up in mid-century mode made fashionable by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. Yet the backside putting surfaces are quite cool and challenging in their own right, especially the saddle job at the par-3 13th — and the epic volcano that sits at the business end of the sublime-but-potentially-cruel, 434-yard, par-4 14th.
[Ed. This piece from 1998 was assigned and purchased by, but to my knowledge never appeared in, Downeast Magazine. At that time, the U.S. was opening 400 new golf facilities every year. Maine golf development was equally madcap. When I moved to New Gloucester that same year, only Fairlawn GC and Poland Spring existed nearby. In 2-3 years, Fox Ridge in Auburn (pictured above), Spring Meadow in Gray, and Toddy Brook in North Yarmouth had all opened for play. Heady times, as the story below relates. The correction arrived in 2008, when the U.S. golf course stock began to suffer a net loss of some 150 golf facilities each year. Since 2008, 11 Maine tracks have shuttered, including a favorite of mine, Sable Oaks GC in South Portland. I eulogize her here.]
By Hal Phillips Maine Golf Development is booming, and it’s not clear exactly why. Developers of water parks don’t venture into the amusement industry because they’re particularly enamored of sharing flume boats shaped like giant logs. Nor do hoteliers invest in that business because they “have a thing” for walking down antiseptic hallways looking for ice machines. It’s understood these business decisions are calculated — based on demographics, market niches, the potential for profit and perhaps a paucity of existing competitors. Romantic notions or pure avocation don’t enter into these commercial equations.
Golf is a different animal. It’s an arena where the line between work and play has always been blurred. While “business” conducted on the golf course remains a genteel hybrid of recreation and vocation, data gatherers at the National Golf Foundation (NGF) — the industry’s research and information organization based in Jupiter, Fla. — are continually amazed at the scads of starry-eyed golf devotees who fund/build their own facilities because it’s always been their dream. “It’s sort of like, What do I want to do when I grow up?” said Barry Frank, a vice president at NGF. “Unfortunately, a great number of shirts have been lost in this process.”
Even so, new golf construction continues to boom nationally and Maine’s dreamers have proved no less fanciful in their ambitions. An astounding number of golf course projects, many spearheaded by first-time golf developers, are now underway here in Vacationland. A dozen new 18-hole layouts have just opened or remain in some phase of construction while another 10 facilities are adding nine. When Point Sebago Golf and Beach Resort opened for play in 1996, it was Maine’s first new 18-hole course since 1988. This sort of inactivity won’t characterize the next eight years.
“As a former banker, I know golf construction in Maine has lagged in past years, especially compared with national growth patterns,” said Arnold Roy, a Turner resident whose development syndicate, Fox Ridge Partners, will soon break ground on an 18-hole course in Harmon’s Corner, on Auburn’s south side. “We know there’s another golf course going in 15 miles down the road in Gray, but in the last 20 years there have been no new golf holes built within 20 miles of our site. And the interest in golfing has never been higher, as far as I can tell.”
Farms Give Way to Fairways
Following another national trend, Fox Ridge will be laid out on former farm land — so will the Gray course [Spring Meadows], a project developed by the owners of Cole Farms Restaurant on a fallow parcel directly across the street. Agricultural pursuits have also given way to golf down in Berwick; father and son Tim and Tom Flynn obviously believe their 160-acre parcel will prove more fertile when Outlook Farm Golf Club opens for play there next summer.
“I think what we’re seeing is pent-up demand,” said Brian Silva, the course architect who designed Outlook Farm. “Maine has been underdeveloped, in terms of golf for some time now. And the state certainly has its share of farmland which has seen better, more productive days.”
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine (April 27, 2019) — Golf course closures typically elicit howls of indignation and despair, as locals countenance their stark, newly diminished reality. Still, it’s fair to wonder exactly how the public golfing population here in Southern Maine processed the news, received here late in January, that Sable Oaks Golf Club would not reopen this spring. The land will instead be marketed to housing developers.
I loved Sable Oaks. Consider this my own, contrarian howl of indignation.
However, most of the Maine golfers I know never cared much for Sable Oaks. Too penal, they said. Too often the course took driver out of their hands, they howled, on account of wetlands too often cutting across fairways in constricting fashion. For walkers, hilly Sable Oaks was a death march. It was an extraordinarily demanding 6,300 yards. In every sense.
Still, I must protest. It’s bad manners to speak ill of the dead, and I’m here today not merely to praise Sable Oaks but to defend her — for perhaps the last time.
All the things people hated about Sable Oaks recommended the course, to me, when I moved to Portland in 1992. I was 28 years old and a pretty good player back then — breaking 80 at Sable, something I managed only three times in 30 years, really meant something.
I didn’t carry a driver for much of the ‘90s, relying instead on a 1-iron and a persimmon Ping 2-wood. Walking 18 holes at Sable with a bag on my back was certainly a workout and a half; the hike from 17 green to 18 tee in particular was a heart-stopper. But I was young in the early ’90s! A round at Sable meant I need not go to the gym.
Sable Oaks: A Great Walk, Rarely Spoiled
And what a taxing-but-comely walk it was. Designed by architect Brian Silva — who laid out the once-private, now semi-private Falmouth Country Club at exactly the same time — Sable Oaks made for golf in an undeniably gorgeous secluded setting. The dramatic terrain was uniformly lush, with gargantuan specimen trees framing the greens and colorful wetlands everywhere one turned.
Okay. Those wetlands required forced carries on four of the first five holes. Come Fall, however, those wetland went technicolor — something we noticed because Silva brought them into play SO many times.
Yes, Sable Oaks was located directly in the Portland Jetport flight path — but the forested environs otherwise muffled the sound from nearby I-95 (!).
I arrived in Portland that March of 1992 to take a new job: editor-in-chief at Golf Course News, a national business journal published by Yarmouth-based United Publications. When I stumbled upon Sable Oaks that spring, I was honestly blown away. The greens were inventive and fun — always in superb shape, too, something Sable could boast to its dying day. Opened in 1989, the place seemed pretty brand new. The overall conditioning, the contour/detail around those greens, the bunkering throughout seemed way too nice for a public course — especially one that charged just $20.
Sable had been conceived and built as a private golf/residential community. A late-80s recession obliged it to open and operate as a public course. Ownership would change several times through the years. The housing and other commercial elements? Never built. An oversupply of competing courses meant Sable would never do more than survive. National trends didn’t help matters: The U.S. course stock has suffered an annual net loss of some 150 properties each year since 2008. Ironically, Greater Portland’s red-hot housing market today — and Sable’s prime location on a wooded hillock right across I-95 from the Maine Mall — made the closure decision, from current owners, Delray, Fla.-based Ocean Properties Hotels Resorts & Affiliates, something of a no-brainer.
Why was Sable Reviled? It’s complicated
Curiously, though, none of this existential chaos accounts for Sable Oaks’ poor reputation among Greater Portland golfers. Did it get a bad rap? Or was it simply too hard to enjoy? Are Southern Maine golfers a bunch of pussies? Is course difficulty something they want to observe on television but avoid for ourselves?
The answers are complicated. I can tell you this much, having spent 30 years in the golf business rating courses and writing about course-design issues: Difficult tracks are, more often than not, successfully marketed on account of their resistance to scoring, not in spite of it. Throughout the 1990s, Portland-area golfers eagerly drove 2-plus hours for the pleasure of losing 10 golf balls and shooting 117 at Sugarloaf GC, where river crossings are celebrated.
The Woodlands in Falmouth, another track that debuted about the same time as Sable and Falmouth CC, is a much harder golf course than Sable Oaks, in my view. And yet, to this day, it has succeeded in attracting private club members in this market.
What’s more, Sable Oaks was not a long course. It played only 6,300 yards from the tips. Indeed, the choosing of one’s tees at Sable was key to maximizing the fun and strategy Silva created there. Too often, in my view, Sable-haters didn’t manage this aspect particularly well for themselves.
Here’s what I mean: There were only three par-5s at Sable Oaks. Two of them, nos. 5 and 14, played directly alongside each other, in the old-world routing tradition. Both featured the same riparian corridor cutting across the fairways some 220-240 yards from their respective greens. So yes, driver on both holes was risky. But if you cozied up to that wetland, both greens were eminently reachable in two strokes. In the course design trade, they call this risk/reward. Architecture Nerds swoon over this stuff. At Sable, they turned up their noses.
From the back tees, on both holes (especially 14), it was frankly difficult for mere mortals to even reach the hazard with driver… But most guys played the middle tees and complained about not being able to hit driver. Pick your poison, I say.
Fourteen was a striking-if-peculiar hole. Its peninsular green, buttressed by a stone retaining wall and surrounded by those colorful wetlands, proved a demanding target. Going for that green in two shots was very risky – even a pitching wedge approach to that putting surface was difficult… It was also pretty thrilling.
Legitimate Issues at 12 and 15
The two holes at Sable Oaks that stood out to me for being legitimately overtaxing were the par-4s at 12 and 15. Yet, again, both got bad raps in my view.
Twelve was a monster measuring some 460 yards and requiring an accurate drive up and onto a plateau, followed by an approach playing all the way back down to sea level. There was internal out of bounds all along the right side, where the par-5 2nd hole played, in the same direction. Internal OB is never ideal, but without it, folks would have played down the 2nd — a clear safety issue.
Yet 12 remained a classic half-par hole, the likes of which design legend Donald Ross created routinely. The Nerds praise him for such things still today. The key is convincing one’s self the hole is a par 4.5, meaning 4 would indeed be great but 5 is just fine. The adjoining 2nd hole played about the same yardage with the same expectations. The simple fact that it was listed on the scorecard as a par-5 elicited very few complaints.
On a course that played to par 70 where all three par-5s were reachable in two shots, the difficulty of no. 12, and the ease of no. 2, have always seemed reasonable to me. Off-setting even. To its lasting aesthetic credit, No. 12 was also a stunningly beautiful, topographically gripping golf hole.
The 15th was another outwardly difficult hole that just required a bit of imagination. What made this par-4 so hard was the landing area — or rather, the lack of one. Nothing to defend here: Silva was clearly obliged to get from point A to point B along the northern boundary of the property. Yhe massive wetland at left, and the steep slope at right, made the landing area on 15 almost ribbon-like.
But the green at 15 — and the contours/bunkering right and left — were superbly rendered. Solution? We often played the 15th as a drivable par-4 — from the women’s tee high on the right slope. The hole still played tight but the prospect of eagle or an easy 7-iron/wedge par changed our outlook and expectation, two factors over which we golfers enjoy total control.
Family Matters
That June of 1992, my brother and father came north from Massachusetts to play our annual Father’s Day match. I took them to Sable; they were similarly struck and smitten. We moved our annual game around from year to year, but they were always more than happy to revisit Sable Oaks. I was all too happy to oblige.
In 1997, I left Golf Course News (today known as Golf Course Industry magazine). I started a media company, a family. We moved from Portland out to New Gloucester. My father passed away, in 2011. My brother and I maintained the Father’s Day golf tradition. We didn’t always play Sable but often enough we did. Matthew lives in coastal New Hamster. Sable remained reasonably equidistant from our respective homes.
Some 5 or 6
years ago, however, I noticed a change.
So, I’m a better golfer than my brother. Always have been. He would cop to this, if asked. If we play 10 rounds together, I’ll beat him 7-8 times. Yet somewhere in the middle of the second Obama administration, the competitive worm turned in a specific way: We came to realize that he was building an anomalously successful record, against me — at Sable Oaks specifically. We both remarked on it. Then I treated him to a subsequent birthday round there, and he beat me again.
I could have just as easily avoided playing my brother ever again at Sable Oaks. But that would’ve been churlish. And I loved the golf course! So we kept going back. And I’m glad we did, because now it’s gone.
When I read this winter of Sable Oaks’ imminent demise, I sent my brother a link to the Portland Press-Herald story. “Sorry, dude,” I texted him. His reply was swift and brief:
“Noooooooo!!!”
One of my final strokes on the 15th green at Sable Oaks GC.
