Liberty National
I talk about WOW factor in ranking courses where I’ve played and Liberty National delivers New York-style! When the caddie uses the Statue of Liberty to tell you where to aim, you know this is going to be different than any course you will ever play. Liberty embraces its backdrop. The clubhouse is modern. The course itself has a more modern links feel. Contrast this to Bayonne down the street, where Bayonne has an old world feel, Liberty is new world. I’ll contrast the two in my Bayonne write-up but regardless of what flavor you like, these are two Top 100 golf courses.
We played Liberty as part of a company golf outing in 2015. This was definitely a treat. With its proximity to Manhattan (a short ferry or private boat/helicopter ride away), Liberty is home to some billionaire hedge fund guys, pro athletes, and other super rich guys who scoff at the $300K plus initiation. Hosting the President’s Cup here a couple years back helped bring the course to the world.
Liberty gets no love from the golf magazines top 100 rankings. This doesn’t surprise me at all. The course shuns traditional golf for something more vibrant and more modern and the rankers who are all traditionalists thus shun Liberty National. It means nothing to the rankers that the cart paths themselves cost millions of dollars, they would simply say who needs them.
Just like how Fazio transformed rough North Vegas desert into an oasis, Cupp and Kite transformed this old superfund site (old photo below from GolfWorld) into an escape from New York while ensuring you’re never too far away by presenting panoramic views of the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan from various tee boxes throughout the course. I’ll spoil the tease and tell you I rank this slightly above Bayonne simply because it has more spectacular views. Both are so different and if you have the kind of connections to play these back-to-back, it would make for an interesting comparison of two styles.
The course? It’s a great first hole here, a dogleg right with a creek running along the right-hand side. A great opener. The ninth hole is one of my favorites here with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop. One of the great halfway houses in golf greets you at the turn. Seventeen again uses the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop and the 18th above definitely ranks in my top finishing holes in golf.
If you do play Liberty, my recommendation is to stay in NYC – the Holland is a stone’s throw away if you’re driving or ubering in. Of course, I make this recommendation not being in NYC for a year and hoping it survived despite the great efforts by DiBlasio and Cuomo to destroy it. As you’ll be in lower Manhattan, il Mulino in Tribeca (if it reopens listed closed as of January 2021) and American Cut (also in Tribeca and also listed as temporarily closed) are my favorites and don’t sell the Capital Grille or Delmonico’s in downtown short either. If you’re hell bent on staying in Jersey City, Porto Leggero is great for Italian and is right up the road in downtown Jersey City which has a nice little downtown area and a nice Hyatt overlooking the Hudson and Manhattan to stay.
Golf Scrapbook 