Welcome to Maine
Maine isn't just Vacationland. It's the original Vacationland, a state that has attracted wealthy summer residents from as far back as the mid-1800s. When that century turned, golf had become a key ingredient in the leisure habits of those building ocean-front homes in Kennebunkport, Camden and Bar Harbor. Accordingly, a string of stellar coastal courses were built to accommodate these privileged folks "from away" and, happily, many remain accessible to this day. Add to the mix a host of relatively modern, nationally acclaimed tracks - mostly laid out in the state's beautiful, refreshingly untamed interior - and Maine serves up one of the most varied and historic public golf scenes in America.
Cape Arundel Golf Club is a 1927 Walter Travis design that oozes
vintage charm. Chocolate drop mounding. Blind shots. Tiny, impossibly
curvaceous greens. It's all here. The club is semi-private, so don't show up unannounced.
A few miles inland sits The Ledges Golf Club in York, a Brad Booth design that plays over the type of dramatic landscape alluded to in its moniker. Just six seasons old, The Ledges is replete with fun, hallenging golf holes. Old Orchard Beach - the famed boardwalk/carnival midway/beach resort hybrid just south of Portland - can claim responsibility for some of the state's modern-day rep as Vacationland. Fittingly, there's a modern golf course to serve it: Dunegrass Golf Club, laid out by Dan Maples in the pine barrens a mile from shore.
North of Portland, the must-plays run come thick and fast. Brunswick Golf Club has an original nine laid out by Wayne Stiles in 1925, while the other nine came courtesy of Geoffrey Cornish in the 1960s. The loops don't match, per se; they're completely different styles. Further inland, Fox Ridge Golf Club opened in Auburn two years ago and promptly won a huge following of locals and traveling golfers alike. The course was designed atop a remarkable piece of rolling terrain by Lenny Myshrall, a course builder by trade. Another 10 miles to the west is Point Sebago Resort, a Phil Wogan/George Sargent design built along the shores of Sebago Lake, another resort area. You can't walk this course. The 10-year-old routing here is spread over hundreds of acres.
North of the state capital in August, the golf becomes even more
spectacular, if a bit remote. However, to the intrepid go the spoils, and never more that at Sugarloaf Golf Club, the celebrated mountain track in Carrabassett, some 2.5 hours north of Portland. The Loaf is considered the best public course in Maine - if not all of New England - in addition to being the most isolated, difficult and scenic (especially in the fall). This 1986 Robert Trent Jones II design is striking in every way, from its precipitous drops to its four double-dogleg par-5s. The developers of Sunday River Golf Club are hoping to create the same sort of equation in Bethel, further south but still deep in Maine's western mountains. They hired Jones II to design the course and nine holes are scheduled to open in July 2004 (all 18 should be operational in 2005). Sunday River is hoping for the same sort of splash made by the 1999 opening of Belgrade Lakes Golf Club, which sits about 20 minutes northwest of Augusta. This Clive Clark layout is, in a word, marvelous: a lush, refined design with classic character and post-modern touches like vast boulder fields serving as "rough" areas.
Maine's second city, Bangor, is home to the 27-hole Bangor Municipal Golf Course, a Geoffrey Cornish design good enough to host the USGA Public Links Championship in 1978. But the must play here is Penobscot Valley Country Club, a semi-private club in Orono, home to the University of Maine. Penobby was designed by Donald Ross in 1924 and recently refurbished by architect Ron Forse.
Back on the Atlantic, golf has been played beside Rockland's Samoset Resort since the 1880s, but the course which sits there today - dramatically hugging the rocky shores of Penobscot Bay, south of Camden - is relatively modern, and getting more modern every year. Robert Elder designed an entirely new golf course here in 1978, but Maine-based architect Brad Booth has redesigned a host of new holes over the past two years.
It's a different story at Kebo Valley Golf Club, an hour up the coast in the storied resort town of Bar Harbor. No ocean views at Kebo, which dates to 1898 and plays much like it did during the days of hickory shafts. It's also one of the toughest 6,100-yard tracks known to man, thanks to a timeless design from Herbert Leeds. And the course is located almost entirely within Acadia National Park.
Want more? Head north to Aroostook Valley Country Club in Fort Fairfield, which sits right on the Canadian border - indeed,
the clubhouse is in Canada. It's a fine golf course, but be
warned: It's as far from Maine's southern border as New York City.
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