[Richard Choi]

I had a great pleasure of playing Bayonne last month, but I am just getting around to organizing my pictures and wanted to share them with everyone here.

As most people are already aware, Bayonne is an engineering marvel built on a former landfill along Hudson River just across Manhattan. They moved over 7 million cubic yards of dredge from local channels (was paid to take the fill) to create one of the most dramatic golf course you will find. The course architect, Eric Bergstol, should be commended for his creativity and vision to create something so interesting out of nothing.

Here is the view you get as you drive up to the clubhouse. The course is almost completely blind to the driver as dunes surround the entire driveway. The dunes are also used extensively throughout the course to isolate each hole on this very tight course (140 acres):



The clubhouse can be seen from almost every hole and is a dominating presence:



Not a bad view from the clubhouse:



Hole 1: Par 4, 351 yards

The first hole sets the tone for what you are about the experience all day. As you can see from the photo, there are fescue covered mounds everywhere and they frame everything you see. On most holes, the landing area is much wider than it looks from the tee (as is the case with this hole). The dunes, while looking quite menacing, keep balls within the hole, and are not so thick so you have a reasonable chances of locating your ball.



A gorgeous punchbowl green on 1st:



Hole 2: Par 4, 424 yards

The jaw-dropping views just keep on coming:



The front nine features quite a few forced carries and are very target golf in nature as you can see here on the approach to the 2nd green:



Hole 3: Par 3, 184 yards

They call this hole “Redan”, but it does not play like one because the course is pretty soft so you don’t get much roll, and…



… the mound covered with thick rough intrudes exactly where you would want to land if this hole was a true redan.



Hole 4: Par 5, 560 yards

One of my favorite features at Bayonne is that fairways are never flat and feature heaving movements. You can see some of that here:



How could you not like a golf course that has a bunker like this?



If you are going for the green in two (which is really not likely), you are going to have to shape it right left to a blind green:



Hole 5: Par 3, 146 yards

The tee shot is to an uphill green which is mostly blind due to this imposing center bunker:



Hole 6: Par 4, 346 yards

A short hole where you drive to one level and hit an approach shot to a green located well below the fairway. Again, very target golf at a course the does not look like one.



More coming soon…

[Rob Rigg]

This is one of those courses where - at least from the photos - it is better to focus on the course than consider the course in its surroundings.

Linksland'ish fairway, rough, topography, flowing out into cranes at a port - yuck. One or the other is fine but when combined it is aesthetically bizarre and kind of overwhelming.

How was it on site? Did it feel that way? Might just be the photos.

[Richard Choi]

Rob, you really don't notice the contrast much as the course has so much eye candy with its dunes, heaving fairways, gorgeous bunkers, and etc. that it kinda sets the same rhythm as its very urban surroundings. Also the surroundings serve as handy aims and enhances the memorability index.

[Richard Choi]

Hole 7: Par 4, 433 yards

The course fans out from the clubhouse, which is the highest point, to the water. Due to this layout, you play a downhill hole followed by an uphill hole quite often like you do here at the 7th:



Did I mention that this course has rolling fairways?



Hole 8: Par 5, 579 yards

This is one of the most intimidating tee shots you have. The left side severely falls away from the fairway and there are bunkers on almost every sightline. The recommended play is over the mound on the right:



There is quite a generous landing area if you take the blind tee shot approach:



Greens don’t come much prettier (or more SLOPED!) than this one:



Hole 9: Par 4, 402 yards

The course is pretty tight and holes are stacked pretty close to one another (which you really don’t notice much due to the dunes). You can see how close the 8th fairway is here:



The greens at Bayonne are heavily contoured and feature a lot of internal movements. You can see some of that here on 9th green:



Hole 10: Par 4, 421 yards

The fairways at Bayonne are quite wide, some 60 to 70 yards wide (but doesn’t look it from the tee) like this one on the 10th:



A smart placement off the tee box are rewarded with a wide open approach to the green:



Hole 11: Par 3, 236 yards

Bergstol loves to play hide and seek with pins and mounds:



Again, the landing area much more generous than it looks:



Hole 12: Par 4, 442 yards

Now we are in the middle of a great stretch of holes at Bayonne. The view can be so distracting…

[Brian Chapin]

Great pictures!  I was surprised to hear you say in describing the "redan-like" hole that the course was soft.  In previous years Bayonne was the brownest and firmest golf course in the area...  The fairway grasses were selected specifically because of their great drought tolerance in anticipation that they would be managed to actually go into a state of dormancy in the summer.  Bon Wolverton was the grow in superintendent and shaped the greens on a sand-pro himself... he did great work there but left nearly a year ago.  Maybe things have changed since his departure.

Rob- I totally agree with you... the property doesn't do it for me.  So many of the tees are elevated and you are constantly reminded of the industrial wasteland that surounds you.  Also, the dunes are at such steep slopes that they give a claustrophobic feeling, similar to a course with too many trees.  The whole thing FEELS engineered...  

[Richard Choi]

Hole 13: Par 5, 563 yards

Talk about a ribbon fairway:



Many greens feature tightly mowed roll off areas like here on 13th green. Being short on the approach is definitely punished here:



Hole 14: Par 3, 222 yards

You don’t want to miss the green here. The green has much contour as the Short hole at Old Macdonald (just smaller):



Hole 15: Par 4, 316 yards

My FAVORITE hole at Bayonne and one of the best short par 4’s I have ever played. The tee shot is almost blind as a dune blocks your view and intimidate anyone thinking about driving to the green, which is really not recommended as…



…if you hit your drive short (in direct line to the green) the nasty and vast fairway bunker you see here will eat it up. Also, unless you land on the green, your drive will most likely back up about 50 yards to the bottom of the hill (as you can see from the divot marks). The green is also pretty severely slope from back to front so you really need to control your spin or it will roll off the green as well. It is just a fun hole that is also supermodel drop dead gorgeous.



Hole 16: Par 4, 486 yards

A tough long hole where a good drive to the bottom of the hill is required:



Even if you hit a great drive, you still have this long approach to the green that juts out into the water:



Hole 17: Par 4, 491 yards

Another tough, long hole with a severe right to left dogleg. You can try to cut off as much as you want to the left (though probably not smart):



The approach shot beg for a bump-and-run, but the soft conditions preclude you from trying it:



Hole 18: Par 4, 454 yards

One last drive up the hill to the clubhouse. Just like many other holes at Bayonne, the preferred line is the blind landing zone over the mound:



You don’t see greens with this much movement in modern courses too often:



I really enjoyed the course. I would have loved it if it wasn’t playing so soft. There was virtually no roll off the drives and bump and run was not a recommended play even though so many holes begged for it. It is definitely something completely different than the classic parkland layouts you find in New Jersey. If you get a chance, don’t miss it.

[Will MacEwen]

Rich,

If it was playing firm, how would it compare to Chambers?  Are they similar tests for the average golfer like you or me?

[Matt_Ward]

Richard:

It amazes me that Bayonne is not rated even higher -- both in NJ but also nationally.

For all the PR hype and bomblast you get from the likes of Shadow Creek the success story of Bayonne is linked to BOTH how it is built and what actually came from such efforts.

Yes, the course is squeezed into 140 acres and the only real downside to the facility is that the practice range consists of hitting floater balls into a penned-in area of H20. It's a small point because the manner by which the course was designed nicely provides the isolation from being in such an urban mixture like Hudson County. My father was a Jersey City guy and if he knew that such a layout was in Hudson County he would be in stitches.

Brian C:

Good points -- I have not been to Bayonne this year and you are right in the 3 previous times I played the course the turf was quite firm.  In regards to the "engineered" comment -- give me a break. The place is located in a very URBAN landscape -- just getting the issues of what could be done required plenty of patience and no less the $$ to pull it off.

The elevated tees are not as numerous as one might envision. I don't see that as a handicap and the dunes are only in play for those who happen to be playing military golf -- left / right / left.

[Richard Choi]

If it was playing firm, I would put it just above Wine Valley but a step below Chambers Bay. Chambers offer more options off the tee and on approach shots. Chambers has more variety with its par 4's and better rhythm (Bayonne repeats up/down/up/down too much). And due to its small footprint, Brian is quite correct that you do have a feeling of claustrophobia that sets in.

But I cannot stress enough what a gem this course is when you consider its location.

And here is the floating driving range:

[Matt_Ward]

Richard:

What you may not have realized during your round there -- is how utterly WINDY the area often is.

People don't associate Jersey golf with wind but Bayonne gets plenty of it by being so close to the open areas of the lower Hudson River and the winds that come unobstructed from the gateway to the Atlantic Ocean.

4-5 club situations can happen there at certain times.

[Keith Phillips]

Richard, thanks for the terrific pictures...some are the best I've seen of Bayonne, aided by the dramatic cloud cover you had when you played.  I am a Bayonne member, and would only add the following (1) as an 'industrial' guy I love the contrast of Manhattan in the background with tugs and cranes in the foreground (2) Bayonne is the firmest/fastest course I have played in NJ this year (including Plainfield, B.Lower, Mountain Ridge and Montclair), but with the hot weather we had this summer there were certainly times they had to soak the course to keep the grass alive (3) Eric did a really amazing job fitting so much into so small a property, with obviously NO natural features to work around...it truly is astounding...I think the strength of the course is the rolling fairways and large, undulating greens, and the challenge the club faces is managing the fescue, which at times and on certain holes can be overly penal...the fairways ARE wide, but a one-yard miss can sometimes be damaging to the card...that said, the fescue is far more manageable than it was 3 or 4 years ago, and the course actually becomes very playable with experience...it can be visually intimidating on the first play.  Matt, the 'long range' is what it is, so that most members head straight to the closer and outstanding 'short range', which allows full shots up to 9 iron, and many interesting chipping/pitching options as a pre-round warmup

[Matt_Ward]

Keith:

The right call was made concerning the water driving range -- too many courses opt in the other direction and have the finest practice facility but then the course is sacrificed in that process.

Just to find out -- how often is the dead back tee at #17 used ? Do many of the low handicap types play it or simply favor the more forward and least angled tee placements on that hole.

Congrats on the fescue front.

[Carl Nichols]

Haven't played the course, so am going only off the pictures, but I like the aesthetics.  Beats putting a crappy course in the same location.

[David Camponi]

Over hyped, fways are to narrow, rough is way to thick and leads to many lost balls, greens are over the top and should be toned down. After the excitement I felt before I got there when I first saw it I thought.....I shaved my genitals for this?

[Keith Phillips]

Matt, I'm a mid-teens handicap so I stride quickly by the back-back tee on 17 - i actually can't remember the blacks being put all the way back there this year, but i may have missed...the vast majority of the time they are probably 40-50 yards up

[Kevin Pallier]

Richard

It looks from the pics that the greens aren't overly bunkered - is that a fair observation ?

[Jeff Martz]

Thank you for the pictures!  Bayonne looks like a ton of fun to play.

I suggest putting up a giant 'green screen' around the entire course and play a video loop of gentle ocean waves at all times.  (The course looks great, ... the cranes and fuel storage tanks, not so much.)

[Richard Choi]

Richard

It looks from the pics that the greens aren't overly bunkered - is that a fair observation ?

Yes, that is correct. I really like the mixed use of bunkers and shaved areas around the green. You really get to test many different shots around the green.

I am not the straightest driver around and I didn't find the fairways overly narrow. And when I did hit it into the mounds I was able to find my balls most of the times. I think I only lost one ball in the dunes. The fact that we had a caddy probably helped as well.

It is really too bad that I played with such soft conditions. I would really love to see what the course is like when it is running firm and fast. Glad to hear that is the norm and not the exception.

[Chris Shaida]

This is one of those courses where - at least from the photos - it is better to focus on the course than consider the course in its surroundings.

Linksland'ish fairway, rough, topography, flowing out into cranes at a port - yuck. One or the other is fine but when combined it is aesthetically bizarre and kind of overwhelming.

How was it on site? Did it feel that way? Might just be the photos.

Rob, well I hope if you have the opportunity to play it at some point you take it and give yourself a chance to challenge the 'yuck'.  I think it has a wonderful and coherent sense of place.  Perhaps it takes a lover of urban spaces (or maybe even more particularly a lover of New York urban spaces!?) to be taken in by the tension between the grassy, windy, brown space and the active, constructed, city spaces around it but in each of my half dozen or so rounds that was something to be enjoyed and not put up with or ignored.  The course seems so confident of its place and willing to 'stand up' to the occasional vista of the working city around it (its NOT actually 'industrial wasteland' one is looking at but a vibrant and active port with a vibrant and active downtown skyscrapers behind  the port (unless of course one thinks of NYC as being a wasteland altogether!) that it is invigorating to be in that place.

The first time I went there it reminded me of a park in Kyoto (I don't remember the name) but it's actually rather small (one or two city blocks square) that is rather exquisitely 'routed (you are intended to start in one place and follow the path in the prescribed manner around the park) that mostly presents you with small, nearby tableaus but on a few occasions gives you a view of the buildings and city around it as though it mostly made sense to be-here-now it occasionally also made sense to see the over-there-then.

In any case, different tastes and all that but it would be a shame if you didn't give it at least one chance...

[Patrick_Mucci]

Richard Choi,

Thanks for the great pictures.

Too bad that the huge, majestic American flag wasn't flying on the day you were there.

I've often said that you could stand someone in a specific direction on the golf course and ask them where they were and they wouldn't come close to guessing.

Bayonne is a modern marvel of the golf world.

[Rob Rigg]

Chris,

I would welcome the opportunity to play Bayonne - I was suggesting that the contrast between the "links" flavor of the course and the surroundings in many of the photos was startling.

I think that Bayonne, the course, has a bit of a Chambers Bay feeling from the photos - linksy but a bit of a manufactured vibe which will fade over time. I don't have an issue with that at all. It looks like fun golf.

Chambers Bay is sitting on the Puget Sound and the scenery around the course make the course seem much more natural - at least IMO.

The scenery around Bayonne - again, based on the photos - is so stark in contrast that it makes me wonder how such a course could exist in such a location.

It's basically a mind F - something you would never expect to see. Rich's photos were so good that everything from the course to the background popped more than I had ever noticed before in photos of this course.

As an engineering feat it looks like Bayonne is a home run - while narrow, it looks like a ton of fun to play especially when it is firm and fast.

Based on the various photo threads of Bayonne and Liberty National - Bayonne looks like a course I would rather play 10 out of 10 times.

[Jeff Spittel]

Over hyped, fways are to narrow, rough is way to thick and leads to many lost balls, greens are over the top and should be toned down. After the excitement I felt before I got there when I first saw it I thought.....I shaved my genitals for this?

David, I am a wild driver of the golf ball and I missed one fairway all day from the tips. The course has some of the widest fairways I've ever seen and the fescue is quite managable. Not sure which course you were playing.

[Jin Kim]

Over hyped, fways are to narrow, rough is way to thick and leads to many lost balls, greens are over the top and should be toned down. After the excitement I felt before I got there when I first saw it I thought.....I shaved my genitals for this?

David, I am a wild driver of the golf ball and I missed one fairway all day from the tips. The course has some of the widest fairways I've ever seen and the fescue is quite managable. Not sure which course you were playing.

Agreed; the fairways are extremely generous in terms of width. Greens are the best part of the course and love the wild contours that are on many of them;  fescue can get nasty in June but thins out by the fall.

[Bruce Katona]

Playing the correct set of tees in key.   Drives were not so much the issue, but having the correct club on the approcah shot was key.  I did miss on a few of the longer approach shots very badly.

Next go round I'd play up a bit short and try a chip and a putt for my par.  No real feal of closeness, IMHO.

[Matt_Ward]

Keith:

The 17th at Bayonne -- when played from the tips is one of the toughest par-4 holes one can play -- especially with a southwest wind coming in on the player.

David C:

Narrow?

I don't see that as an issue because Eric Bergstol smartly made a few of the landing areas appear to be narrower than they actually are. You need to specify the holes in question and I'd be happy to discuss. In regards to the fescue it appears it has been handled as Keith indicated. When did you play there ?

Greens over-the-top ? Again, which holes and if that's the case then going to Old Macdonald will not be at the top of your play list given the savage nature of a few at the Bandon facility.

You need to outline in a bit more detail your expectations because getting Bayonne created in such a difficult setting and given all the red tape and the like - the final outcome is indeed very special and worthwhile. Again, everyone has opinions but I'd appreciate a bit more flesh to the bones you initially offered.

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