Dick Costello, varsity golf coach and head golf professional at Cornell's Robert Trent Jones Golf Course, stands on the first tee last week. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography
Tired of practicing your golf swing in the living room? It's just about time to take it outside.
Cornell's venerable Robert Trent Jones Golf Course, one of New York's most respected, will open for business soon, said Dick Costello, Cornell varsity golf coach and the course's Professional Golfer's Association pro for the past 25 years.
Course membership is open to anyone with an educational affiliation, and there are special membership plans for Cornell students, staff, faculty and retirees.
The benefits of membership are many: a challenging 6,823-foot-long, 18-hole course; preferred tee times; golf leagues; members' tournaments; club storage; handicap tracking, lounge facilities and lockers; and reciprocal access to other golf courses. The course also features a 300-yard driving range, putting and pitching greens, practice bunkers, a pro shop and a snack bar, run by Cornell Dining. Professional golf instruction also is available, in both individual and group lessons.
After a mild winter, the fairways and greens look to be in great shape.
"The course was in very healthy condition when we stopped play in early November," said Costello, "and aside from being wet now, it should return to playing condition after a few days of sun and wind."
The person responsible for preening the course's fairways, greens and 59 sand traps is David Hicks, who has been course superintendent since February 1997. He formerly was superintendent at the English Turn Country Club in New Orleans, the site of the PGA tour's Freeport-McDermott tournament.
"From a golfer's perspective, he has had the greens in what many consider the best and fastest condition they've ever been in," Costello said of Hicks.
And a rule change this year will help keep them that way -- golf shoes with metal spikes will be prohibited on the Cornell course.
"The playing conditions will be better, because the lack of metal-spike holes leaves the putting surfaces more smooth," Costello explained.
During its history, Cornell's course, administered by the Department of Athletics and Physical Education, 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; the Maxfli Championship; and, for the past 19 years, the New York State High School Golf Championship. As well, area organizations such as the YMCA, Challenge Industries, the Special Children's Center and the Rotary Club use the course for special events.
Costello, who received the PGA Teacher of the Year Award for Central New York in 1988, is especially proud of his involvement with the United States Sports Corp.'s Nike Camp, which he directs at Cornell for youngsters 8 to 18 in June and July.
"It's been an overwhelming success, and in customer satisfaction, we have received extremely high ratings," he said.
One major factor giving the Cornell course worldwide appeal is its namesake, Robert Trent Jones Sr., the most well-known name in golf-course design.
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 College of Agriculture, 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 career.
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 Jones' earliest golf-course design, 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.
For information on membership plans, call 257-3661 or visit the golf course on Warren Road, between Forest Home Drive and Hanshaw Road.
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