By Sean Fawcett
The British Open returned to the historic, and somewhat infamous, Carnoustie Golf Club in Carnoustie, Scotland, this past July with Tourin, Italy’s Francesco Molinari rising above all the world’s best, and playing partner Tiger Woods, to be 2018’s “Champion Golfer of the Year”, but what does the Jersey Shore’s Greate Bay Country Club have to do with The Open Championship? Well, and as it just so happens, the nearly one-hundred year old Somers Point golf club was drawn up by two-time Open champion, golf ball and club designer, teacher, writer, architect and World Golf Hall of Famer, Willie Park Jr.
Begun by golf course architectural giant, fellow Hall of Famer, and fellow Scot, and Pinehurst No.2 designer, Donald Ross in 1921, the 1887 and 1889 Open champion, Park Jr., son of the first ever British Open champion Willie Park Sr., winner of two British Opens(1860 and 1863), and nephew of 1874 Open champion Mungo Park, from Musselburgh, Scotland, took over Greate Bay’s design, then known as the Ocean City Golf Club, in 1922 until the club first opened in 1923. Park Jr., who died just two years later in 1925, drew up more than one hundred other US golf courses including major venues like Maidstone Golf Club on Long Island, New York and Olympia Fields near Chicago where West Chester, Pennsylvania native, and 2018 United States Ryder Cup Captain, Jim Furyk won his only major title, so far, the 2003 United States Open.
The first of Willie’s many famous golf courses is Sunningdale Golf Club near London, but Park Jr. drew up more than 170 other golf courses in the British Isles, Europe, the United States and Canada. One of the most important Park Jr. landscapes is Weston Golf and Country Club in Toronto, Canada where the great Arnold Palmer won his very first professional tournament, the Canadian Open, in 1955.
And like so many of Park Jr.’s more hallowed designs, Greate Bay C.C. has a rich professional tournament legacy of its very own. The host course for the LPGA’s ShopRite Classic, one of the LPGA Tour’s biggest, and most charitable, Pro-Ams, Greate Bay tested most of the top 100 lady players in the world every May or June from 1988 to 1997. Notable ShopRite LPGA Classic champions at Park’s Greate Bay C.C., once also named The Sands Country Club, include Hall of Famers Annika Sorenstam, Nancy Lopez, Julie Inkster, Betsy King, and champions Dottie Pepper and Michelle McGann.
In addition to his prolific golf course designing and his remarkable, and revered, and celebrated playing career, Park Jr. also authored golf’s very first instructional book by a golfing professional, The Game of Golf. Published in 1896, Park Jr. a prominent putter and putting instructor, Park Jr. later scribed The Art of Putting in 1920. Park Jr. famously said that a man who can putt is a match for anyone, and Greate Bay C.C., naturally, is known, and highly regarded, both near and far for its first class, challenging, but fun-to-putt, greens which Willie, himself, originally conceived almost a century ago.
Park Jr. was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2013 along with Fred Couples and Ken Venturi and fellow Scotsman Colin Montgomerie and former European PGA Tour Commissioner Ken Scholfield.
“Greate Bay and The Open Championship sharing Willie Park Jr. is truly amazing,” said GBCC head P.G.A. Professional John Petronis. “ It’s not only a private country club with a beautiful club house and fabulous golf course rich with South Jersey history, there are a lot of cool stories that includes a lot of famous people starting with Willie Park, Jr., our course designer, and two-time Champion Golfer of the Year, and son of the very first Open winner, who is one of the most influential of all the Scotsmen who brought the game to America.”
