Sunken Meadow State Park Golf Course, Kings Park, NY

A Perfect In Between Step

We played the Sunken Meadow Blue Course on a beautiful brisk autumn day with the leaves still turning and the sun warming things so a light sweater was all that was needed. Every where we looked was like looking at a picture post card, which will mean something to those who remember what picture post cards are. And it is probably those who do who will appreciate the Sunken Meadow Blue, and perhaps the Red and Green as well, but we have not played them in a number of years, so we can not include them from first hand experience at this juncture.

These three 9-hole courses are all ones that the big hitters tend to ignore and that the rank beginners are apt to put off until they get more into their game. But, we can promise you that the Blue is just enough of a test for the rest of us who are working on controlling our woods and irons to where we can keep landing our shots on the short grass. There is no water with which to deal, but the fairways, though not severely narrow as many courses of this vintage may be, are well enough defined as to make the Blue some what punishing to those would risk being caviler about where they hit since the Blue is often left with its rough just deep enough to punish you for straying from the centerline, if you believe that there is a centerline.

And, in keeping with a piece of sage advice that warns us to “Be careful for what you wish because you may get it”, the Sunken Meadow Blue has not merely strategically positioned bunkers but a certain number of them are augmented by what might be called “challenging terrain” that will make most any golfer wish they were back there in the trap instead of having successfully cleared it.

Here, on the Sunken Meadow Blue, is where you can really make your chip shots and putting really count. The greens are set in the land and tweaked in every-which-way so as to make the minute details and the overall topography required reading for every putt you will face. There are no “gimmies” on these greens designed in 1922 by Alfred H. Tull. Even tiny putts will try to fool you and cost you dearly.

Here, right between the executive nines and the grand courses with 7,000 plus yards and all kinds of rivers to cross and mountains to climb comes the Sunken Meadow Blue, to provide golfers on the ascending or descending side of their golfing careers who can succeed on it to know the tremendous satisfaction from having trudged along some wonderful golfing pathways that have provided delightful rounds of golf to Long Island New York golfers and their out of state guests for nearly 85 years. It is nice to know that on the Sunken Meadow Blue there is still time.