Trump Ferry Point - A Preview

I meant to include this in the earlier post, but like many things in my life, my memory isn't what it used to be.  But my last notable golf outing of the year is tomorrow, when the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association will play a preview round at the not-yet-open-for-business Trump Ferry Point.

For those of you unfamiliar with the name, that's the golf course visible from the Whitestone Bridge.  The course has a checkered history already, as it's taken some fourteen years to get it near completion.  As per this Daily News story from last April, it's also gone just a little bit over budget, you know in the sense that that pitch in the movie Major League was just a little bit outside:

The price keeps growing for Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, the course the Parks

Department has spent the past 14 years building at the foot of the Whitestone Bridge in the Bronx. 

The city now expects to spend an astonishing $236 million to complete the Ferry Point project by next spring over a former landfill, according to new figures compiled for the Daily News by the Independent Budget Office. 

That includes $181.4 million for the 190-acre golf course itself, plus another $54.6 million for 30 acres of adjacent new parkland and a waterfront esplanade, the IBO says. The total is more than 10 times the original cost when construction started in August 2000.

Pity that, but at least I'm no longer a New York City taxpayer.  Now that number is in dispute per the excerpt from the same article below and, to the extent it was environmental remediation, might have been necessary for anything to operate on the property:

Parks Department officials dispute the IBO’s figures. They concede construction costs

have escalated the past few years, but they claim the course itself will cost just $127 million. 

“A large fraction of this [construction] cost was from the excavation and removal of municipal solid waste and other environmental remediation that we performed as . . . mandated by new environmental standards,” Parks Department spokesman Arthur Pincus said this week.

OK, but what kind of city uses waterfront property for a landfill?  In  any event, I have complete confidence in our governing class, and I plan to eschew the hazmat suit for a pair of shorts. 

Then, to add insult to injury, there was the seeming sweetheart deal with Trump.  From the same article:

Many consider this a sweetheart deal for Trump. The Donald must spend only $10 million to build a clubhouse, and he will pay no rent to the city for the first five years, Lieberman acknowledged. After that, Trump could end up paying less in annual fees to the city than some hot dog vendors do for their stands. Certainly less annual rent than many existing municipal golf course operators.

Comparing Trump to a hot dog vendor is a stroke of rhetorical brilliance for which I doff my cap.  But what, if anything, do we know about the golf course?

Here's what the comb-over himself has to say on the club's website:

Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point is an 18-hole, Jack Nicklaus Signature Design, links-

style golf course. Sitting at the foot of the Whitestone Bridge in the Bronx, it is designed specifically to take advantage of spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline, East River, and Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges. In addition to the I8-hole course, the facility will also include a clubhouse, snack bar and driving range. It will be the only tournament-quality course in New York City, giving avid golfers a unique and more challenging alternative to our other selection of well-maintained public courses

For The Donald, that's really quite understated.  Mike Dougherty of the Journal News got to play it, and gave it a pretty favorable notice here:

The mix of holes is fantastic. All of the par 3s are different. You get a couple of exciting, short par 4s and some real bears. I'm thinking that No. 16, a toothy 462-yard par 4, has to be the hole most will leave talking about. All of the par 5s are gettable by the single-digit players, but there is risk involved. 

I don't see this place having any trouble generating buzz in the coming months, and the grand-opening should bring a flood of curious players.

Nicklaus continues to carry the design credit for the course, though my understanding is that his involvement ended years ago.   Of course to the extent that he wasn't involved in the final shaping of the greens, that might well be a positive.  But he did show for a ribbon-cutting this year, even though the first paying customer won't arrive until next Spring.

And of course the insufferable purist in me wants to know what they mean by "links-style?"  It's typically impossible to recreate the turf of a proper links, therefore in many cases what's created is a bit of a hybrid that doesn't play quite right, such as most notably The Ocean Course at Kiawah.  But I'll go with am open mind and report back to you soonest.

And in a case of extremely bad timing, meeting my commitment at Ferry Point required me to decline a much-appreciated invite to Maidstone.  Damn, I hate when that happens!