The Anglebrook Golf Club
Location: | Lincolndale, NY |
Year Opened: | 1998 |
Society Delegate: | Matt Sullivan |
Website: | http://www.anglebrookgc.com/ |
The Anglebrook Golf Club, the final design of Robert Trent Jones, Sr., opened in May of 1998, and received national acclaim just a year later, when in its May 1999 issue, Golf Digest, ranked the course 16th best in all of New York state. The course is spread out generously over 240 idyllic acres in northern Westchester County-one of the hotbeds for private golf in America-and is routed around and over 50 acres of environmentally protected areas and wetlands. Anglebrook is a pure golf club in that there are no other amenities and no housing, just golf for golf’s sake, a fitting conclusion for an architect who designed and re-designed over 500 courses in 40 states and 35 countries.
PGA Tour players have raved about the design and the maintenance of Anglebrook over the years, especially the large and undulating bentgrass greens. After over a decade as a member, hockey Hall of Famer Mark Messier says: “If anyone knows of a better conditioned golf course, they need to take me there.”
Design Features: Anglebrook is chock full of golf holes that scream of Jones’ theories of “Hard par, easy bogey,” and “Heroic golf.” Each hole offers a textbook example of RTJ’s signature Risk / Reward options to challenge skilled players while providing a multitude of bailouts for mid-handicappers. Large, well-protected greens with plenty of undulation, amoebae-shaped bunkers, table-top, runway style tees, hallmarks of Jones’ courses, are everywhere.
AGC’s toughest hole, No. 9, is a par-4 tipping out at 455 yards, with the ultimate risk / reward option: a bunker smack-dab in the middle of the fairway. Those who dare to play for the “A” position, take aim at a mere 25 yards of landing area between the left edge of the bunker and the first cut of rough. They’re still left with 190 yards to an elevated green with a spine running through the back quadrant and trouble on either side. No. 13, stretching 602 yards, caps off a five-hole stretch of holes reminiscent of “Amen Corner” is par-5 demands three exacting shots which include a forced carry over environmental area, a fairway that tumbles hard right-to-left and a pond that protects a massive triple-tiered green.