Vijay Singh surveys Liberty National Golf Course during The Barclays (Photo: AP)
With the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline as backdrops, the oh-so-private Liberty National Golf Course in Jersey City, NJ, affords spectacular views. As Tiger Woods and the other 124 PGA Tour golfers chasing golf balls around the 7,419-yard layout this week, Golf Channel and CBS will have no end of artsy camera angles of Lady Liberty and NYC at sunrise, sunset, and each hour in between.
That will probably make for great television on your high-def Sony. For a construction cost of $129 million and membership fees in the half-a-million-dollar range, the Bob Kite-/Tom Kite-designed Liberty National better have that something special. Apparently, however, it’s not necessarily the golf course.
Florida in New York. GolfWeek’s architecture critic, Bradley Klein tells the New York Daily News, “It’s a golf course that looks like it came from Florida.” Say no more.
The layout offers a “very dramatic setting,” Klein notes, “but it’s not local, it’s not native. You don’t feel like you’re a part of the immediate environment.”
Sounds like if you’re looking for Miami Beach in New York City, this course is for you. Not so much, necessarily, for The Barclays participants, including Tiger Woods.
Woods tells the Daily News he finds the course, “interesting,” but not necessarily in a good way. Vijay Singh says the course “will grow on people.” Like a wart?
One shot at a time. Singh is defending champ at The Barclays, which Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, NJ, hosted in 2008. He suggests golfers get over themselves and play “one shot at a time.
“You go out there and start criticizing the golf course, then you might as well not show up,” Singh tells the Daily News. That’s good advice for Singh’s opponents on the tour as well as any Boston golfer on any New England golf course.
The mounded greens of Liberty National and wind off the water may not be to Woods’ liking. But he committed to competing this week and he and the other millionaire golfers will have to suck it up and make the best of competing for a purse of $7.5 million on a gimmicky golf course.
You can watch The Barclays live on TV later or on the Web now. Check out Barclays golf tournament 2009 for details.
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Like a wart - love that!
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