to help bring you back from the brink with five of the next six holes par-4s. The back 9 starts with a pair of par-5s sandwiching a par-3. Next, the 172-yard 13th is a blind shot over water with a target flag to aim at for an added challenge. Look, I’m not going to say it’s the best track ever, but if you’re expecting Augusta National conditions, you’ll be very disappointed. Like the city it calls home, Vanny is tough and gritty. The pace of play typically isn’t the best either, but, if anything, it gives you more time to enjoy the surrounding scenery. As Erik Anders Lang says in an episode of Adventures in Golf: “Nobody’s perfect. Why should you want your golf course to be?”
Van Cortlandt Golf Course (Bronx, N.Y.)
Summer used to be my favorite season. I couldn’t wait until the end of the school year when we’d drive down to the Jersey Shore and spend the next two-plus months at our little beach bungalow. There’d be days a shark sighting couldn’t even get me out of the water. I’m obviously exaggerating, but the point is that I was such a water baby. My AIM screen name was even beachbum82486. But as I’ve gotten older and haven't been as fortunate to get to the beach as much (and it seems to be hotter and more humid than ever in the Northeast), summer is slowly falling down my personal rankings. Fall is definitely in season. I know lots of people are excited about football’s annual return, but while you stay glued to a TV for “seven hours of commercial-free football,” I’m frolicking in fall foliage on the golf course. Nothing beats a crisp fall morning surrounded by a cacophony of colour on the course. As I’ve written about in previous columns, it takes real dedication to be a golfer in New York City. But, oh, is the payoff worth it this time of year. I especially felt that on a fall day in the North Bronx playing Van Cortlandt Golf Course. Known as “Vanny” to locals, this track is actually very significant in U.S. golf history. Opened on July 6, 1985, Van Cortlandt is the first public municipal golf course in the county, and has welcomed the likes of Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and The Three Stooges. You want to start on a positive note because you face the No. 1 handicap next, measuring 619 yards from the tips. Any fairway miss and you’re in big trouble with trees galore on both sides of the fairway. I appreciate foliage, but that doesn’t mean I want to be lost in it! An easy par-3 is next
"I know lots of people are excited about football’s annual return, but while you stay glued to a TV for “seven hours of commercial-free football,” I’m frolicking in fall
foliage on the golf course."
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