Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By David Nathan, Special to The Chronicle
The 112-year old Glens Falls Country Club (GFCC), has roared out of obscurity and taken its place among national elite golf courses, thanks to recognition by Golf Magazine and famed golf architect and writer Tom Doak and others.
When Doak, playing the Round Pond links at the suggestion of a friend several years ago, finished his 18 hole round, his first question to then GFCC pro Tom Haggerty was: “Why didn’t I know about this course before?”
Since then, the influential Doak has sung the course’s praises in his multi-volume series, “Confidential Guide to Golf Courses.”
In the last few years, the golfer’s bible, Golf Magazine, joined the chorus and has consistently rated Glens Falls in the top 15 courses among nearly 900 in New York State, and even ranked it on occasion among the top 100 of 1,500 courses around the country.
“Stumbling across a ‘hidden gem’ has been progressively more difficult,” said Golf Magazine a couple of years ago, adding that several early holes “are as good a series of (golf architect Donald) Ross holes as you’ll find. The excitement doesn’t let up.”
The excitement has not let up at the club itself after all the plaudits.
Current head pro Benton Sullivan says: “We’re not so hidden a gem any more.” The high rating has influenced some golfers from outside of the area to join the club, and a whopping total of 40 golf course “raters” from publications other than Golf Magazine came to play GFCC last year, Sullivan pointed out.
The Scottish born Donald Ross was one of the first great golf architects, designing as many as 400 golf courses in the United States during the first half of the last century.
What makes Glens Falls stand out among all the fine courses around the country?
Doak lauds the way Ross used great “routing” — a term describing how he designed what Doak calls “a real cool piece of property” — at the site between Bay Road and Route 9 in Queensbury.
He notes that the course to this day sticks with what some would call a minimalist approach by Ross more than 100 years ago. Instead of trying to move a lot of dirt and reshape the land, Ross took advantage of a natural sharp ridge on the site to design five holes running across both front and back nines that feature stylish hills and valleys.
For a non-golfer this may seem to be in the weeds, but Doak also points to the typical Donald Ross approach with the so-called “volcanic”design of the par 3 ninth hole.
“You just don’t hit a (routine, easy) 7 iron,” he said. The golfer’s shot, if it misses the green, easily falls many feet down the hill, he added.
What Doak especially seems to appreciate is the fact that, with only a few changes, the course remains just as the master designer, Ross, laid it out.
Because of safety concerns, the club did redesign one hole (#16) to eliminate the need for a shot across busy Round Pond Road in 1984 and it also expanded its final (18th) green in 1976.
But that was pretty much it, except for very minor tweaking.
This dedication to the original layout of the course is in sharp contrast to many other top courses which regularly host major pro tournaments and make frequent course renovations.
Another leading architect, Ian Andrew, who actually consults with GFCC, is equally enthusiastic about the course, saying that “the original Ross design is fantastic.” He rates the layout as among the top three of the 400 Ross courses and emphasizes vistas that not only include nearby West Mountain but the distant Green Mountains of Vermont.
GFCC has been under the public radar for many decades, but the fact is that it HAS had an illustrious history:
For 11 years, from 1929, the club hosted a major “stop” on the national pro golf tour, the Glens Falls Open.
It drew famous players such as Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, and the club’s first — and long-lasting — pro Ben Lord, an outstanding performer himself.
Surprisingly, none of these legendary figures won any of the tournaments, but they occasionally made waves of different sorts.
For example, Snead hit a very out-of-character bad shot in one tournament on one par 5 hole (16) that struck an old barn still standing, well into the rough. He reportedly angrily shouted “get rid of that barn.” The club did, many years later.
And Hogan is said to have slept in his car in the parking lot before the beginning of the tournament one year, and came into the locker room at dawn to ask a junior high school student shining golf shoes if he would accompany him to the driving range to “shag” (pick up) balls after his shots.
The teenager told the story to this reporter 50 years later and said that Hogan was so precise with his long iron shots that he only had to move one foot one way — or one foot another — to reach the balls.
A tribute to the club — and its head golf professionals — is the fact that there have only been 6 pros in the 110 years since Ben Lord came in 1915.
The two with greatest longevity: Lord, with 40 years, and Haggerty 42 years (plus 8 years as an assistant) before retiring in 2022 with the second-longest longevity among U.S. pros. He was succeeded by former college player Sullivan.
The club hosted the New York State Amateur Golf Championship in 1962, with two of the best 20th century state golfers — Bill Tryon and Don Allen — facing off in an exciting extra hole match won by Tryon.
A few years before, two Glens Falls club members who later became national tour pros and golf school owners, Roland Stanford and Charles “Chick” Evans, met in the club championship. Evans won.
In the early days, the course was played by New York State Governor Charles Evans Hughes (who also was a Republican presidential candidate and and Justice and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court), according to North Country historian Maury Thompson.
Much later, so did Lucille Ball.
And Hall of Fame Golfer Betsy Rawls played an exhibition with Glens Falls member Gail Purdy (later Brophy), the NY State Amateur Champion, in 1972.
The article’s author David Nathan is a Glens Falls native who lives now in Bethesda, Maryland. Last November 12 he wrote a front-page article in The Chronicle about New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs 1924 role in founding and supporting Temple Beth El. The Jewish congregation in Glens Falls celebrated its 100th anniversary last year.
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