By Simeon Moss
What's green and white and 6,823 feet long? The Robert Trent Jones Golf Course at Cornell.
In its 55th year, the 18-hole course at the edge of campus is widely regarded as one of the best in the state. Course membership is open to anyone with an educational affiliation, and it is home course to the university's golf team.
"It's the best teaching facility in the area," says Dick Costello, varsity golf coach and the course's PGA professional for the past 24 years. Costello points to the course's 300-yard driving range, pitching greens, two practice bunkers and three putting greens, as examples of the facility's range of offerings.
The task of maintaining the course throughout the year falls to Dick Deibert, whose crews tend to its rye-grass fairways, bent-grass and annual-bluegrass greens and its 59 sand traps.
"Crews work seven days a week," says Deibert, who has been course superintendent for 22 years. "Greens have to be mowed every day, and pin placements are changed four or five times a week."
Now, after a cold and wet spring, the course is ready for another season.
During its history, Cornell's course, a program of the athletic department, has been a qualifying site for the national PGA and U.S. Open championships and has hosted the USGA National Juniors Championship; the American Junior Golf Association tour; the New York State Cancer Society Tournament; and, for the past 18 years, the New York State High School Golf Championship.
Professionals who have played the course include Jack Nicklaus and Joey Sindelar, who grew up in nearby Horseheads.
But the most well-known name affiliated with the course may be its namesake, Robert Trent Jones Sr. Jones came to Cornell in 1928 to teach himself the elements of golf-course architecture, because there were no schools then offering that type of instruction. He was accepted by the agriculture college, with special status, and designed an interdisciplinary course of study, which included floriculture, horticulture, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in sketching, journalism and public speaking. Through his education at Cornell, Jones established the foundation from which he built his noted career in golf-course architecture.
In the late 1930s, Jones offered to build a course at Cornell for only the cost of labor and materials -- asking no fee for his services. The result was one of Jones' earliest golf-course designs, which is now the course's back nine, completed in 1941. In the early 1950s, Jones returned to Cornell and offered to build another nine holes to make it a complete 18-hole course, and again he offered his services at no fee. Those nine holes, completed in 1954, are now the course's front nine.
Course membership includes reciprocal access to seven other golf courses, with some restrictions, and members can take advantage of preferred tee times, golf leagues, course tournaments, club storage, handicap tracking and lounge facilities and lockers in Moakley House, which sits behind the 7th tee. Food services, including the snack bar and banquet facilities at Moakley House, now are being run by Cornell Dining.
For information on membership plans, call 257-3661 or visit the course on Warren Road, between Forest Home Drive and Hanshaw Road.