As you approach the 4th green at New York’s Hudson
National Golf Club, you cannot help but feel you have been enveloped in a time
warp. You know you are playing a brand new golf course, but you are suddenly
confronted with old stone ruins, the crippled foundations of a long-ago
building. The golf course has thus far melded seamlessly into the slopes and
rock outcroppings so characteristic of northern Westchester County, conforming
so gracefully, in fact, on near-perfect turf, that you actually start to believe
you’re playing a 75-year-old A.W. Tillinghast design instead of a Tom Fazio
course that opened in June 1996.
Groundbreaking took place on October 5, 1994, and from day
one Fazio and his design team, spearheaded by lead architect Tom Marzolf,
couldn’t help but have a blast—literally. By blasting 100,000 cubic yards of
rock, Fazio and his team rendered a relatively hilly site was easily walkable.
The end result of all the meticulous planning and shrewd
forethought is a first-class club and course that looks like they have been
around forever. Actually, back in the late 1920s, this same property had housed
the Hessian Hills Country Club, a nine-hole course with nine more on the books,
plus a stately wooden clubhouse. In 1932, according to local lore, the clubhouse
suffered a “successful” fire, allowing the owners to recoup insurance proceeds
at the height of the Great Depression. The club closed shortly thereafter.
Today, the remnants of that fire provide the instant
character and identity that every new course craves. The stone foundations and
chimneys from the Hessian Hills clubhouse remain in place, sandwiched between
the 4th green and 5th tee.
If the ruins aren’t the most talked about feature of Hudson
National, the views are. More than half the holes sport spectacular vistas of
the Hudson River. “Inviting” is the word you
think of as you gaze from the elevated 1st tee out over a 486-yard par-4 that
plays into a wide valley of a fairway, nicely framed by another of the course’s
trademarks: gorgeously sculpted bunkers.
Hole two is the first of Hudson National’s superior par 3s, a 211
-yarder with a stark granite outcropping to the right and a handsome white
oak behind the green. Soon you begin to delight at the variety you are
encountering, as the 421-yard 3rd eases downhill, with a pronounced right to
left slope as you approach the green, while the 387-yard 4th climbs gracefully,
until you are practically on top of the enchanting stone ruins to the left.
The back nine blossoms at the 14th, a lovely, option-laden
par 5 that skirts a pond along its right side and features a stone wall directly
behind the green. This sets the table for the 15th, a 434-yarder that many feel
is the best hole on the course. Fifteen boasts a bedrock wall to the right of
the tee box, then doglegs to the right and uphill, up and over a series of cross
bunkers placed on the diagonal.
Finally, though, we arrive at the 16th, a much anticipated m
oment. The tee boxes stairstep higher and higher into a bluff and when you
reach the top shelf, your reward is a 249-yard, downhill par 3 with glorious
views of the Hudson River, lower Westchester, Rockland to the right, the Tappan
Zee bridge, pleasure boats and a large receptive green, open in front and
flanked by bunkers.
In a neighborhood—Westchester County—already loaded with gilt-tinged
properties, the new kid on the block— Hudson National—has every element in place
to shine as brightly as any of the old guard.
Par: 70
Yardage: 6,955
Year founded: 1994
Architect: Tom Fazio
