Pound Ridge
Played Pound Ridge in 2016. In essence, I do the course reviews kind of by my personal ranking with the Top Ones being the top 50-ish, the next ones being the next 50-ish and the Other Ones, next. Of course, I added new courses I’ve played post-2020 to the Top Ones and ditto for the other ones that probably don’t rank as high as the groups in which I do their reviews. Then, I probably have several courses rank above Pound Ridge but played these before the days of cell phone cameras and since I don’t have pictures I didn’t do the reviews. Some of these reviewless but higher ranked courses include: Lookaway in Bucks County, PA, The Boulders in AZ, Stewart Creek in Alberta, and Huntingdon Valley also in PA.
All that is not to say I didn’t like Pound Ridge, I did. All of this is in fact to tell you how much I liked it, A LOT. Generally speaking public-access courses in the Northeast (particularly the NYC, Philly, DC and Boston suburbs) are not the cream of the golfing crop. The only notable exception I can think of is Bethpage but for the most part while there are some good tracks, none flirt with the Top 100. Indeed, in this corridor of the world, all of the best courses are private and in most cases VERY private.
That’s why Pound Ridge was such a pleasant surprise. It does not get the Bethpage acclaim nor any golf magazine ranking love whatsoever. In fact, Pound Ridge doesn’t even make the top 40 best-in-state courses in Golf Digest’s latest NY state rankings. However, I found this to be a beautiful course, in great shape. It’s an intriguing design with awesome elevation changes that’s not cluttered with houses or an office park. It was fun to play but not a push over. I’m guessing we played from the Granite tees which play to about 6,300 yards but to a 142 slope!!! No pushover indeed.
The course is up in Westchester County right on the Connecticut border. We played it in the Fall and as a parkland course, the colorful Fall foliage added to the aesthetic. I say in The Bear’s Club review that I played with Gary Player and we discussed golf course design et al. I was thrilled that he 100% agreed with me that it is not only a shame that so many courses have eliminated the trees from their courses, but it is borderline criminal.
Despite this being a very hard golf course, I played well here shooting an 85 (I’m at this time a 15 index and was probably closer to 17 then) with seven pars and one birdie (on the 17th). I don’t really remember each hole nor the strategy for each to discuss here. There is some water and other schmeggies to carry or avoid but this is not a Dye-abolical affair (see what I did there) like The Kiawah Ocean Course or Sawgrass. In fact, you will see nary a railroad tie here from my memory.
So my college buddy Dave has a friend (maybe two) that is/are golf course ranker(s) for Golf Digest. I would like to play Pound Ridge with those guys to see why they don’t give it the love it deserves.
The signature hole here is the par three 15th hole. You have to carry some serious schmeggies to a very narrow green and a rocky plateau beyond the green. If you look in the scrapbook, on the last page of the 2016 PDF, the highlighted hole is the 15th. It’s actually the number 18 handicap which should tell you all you need to know about the difficulty of the course. Luckily I parred it but my buddy Pete and brother both tripled.
I’m not sure with the photos I took which holes are which so will just post them without a label. I think in my Trump Ferry Links write-up I talk about an all-public trip in NY and included Pound Ridge on that rota. Honestly, even if you have the where-with-all to get onto Winged Foot, Quaker Ridge and some of the other privates up in Westchester, I would add Pound Ridge on the schedule. Unless you’re a snooty golf magazine ranker, you won’t be disappointed.
Golf Scrapbook 