Nature’s Calling

Given the perfect setting, designer Rees Jones delivered one of the area’s top public courses in Blackstone National

Lacing on your Footjoys at Blackstone National, you’re ready for the Open. The course designer, Rees Jones, has been dubbed the “U.S. Open Doctor” for his work on The Country Club in Brookline and New York’s Bethpage Black. You expect long, tight driving holes and severe, maddening greens. But at Blackstone, you’re also confronted with a handful of wide, wind-whipped fairways requiring a bump-and-run attack. In a chilly early morning wind, it’s not difficult to imagine: if the U.S. Open and British Open ever decide to unify their titles, they just might do it at Blackstone National Golf Club.

By Nathan Fox

Blackstone National Golf Club, found in Sutton, Mass., was hit with harsh weather conditions during its development in the late 1990s – notably drought – and was met with cool initial reviews. But heading into its fourth full season, the course has matured. The club has already hosted a New England Pro Tour stop, and it is now ranked among the top public courses in the state.

Built on 300 acres of woodlands in the Blackstone River Valley, the course has five sets of tees, ranging from the 5,203-yard reds to the 6,909-yard tips. Thousands of trees crowd the mountainous layout, and there are few elevated greens. The resulting hybrid requires calculation on every shot – big hitters will have their wildest swings punished severely here while shorter, steadier players will find most greens accessible to low, running approaches. Jones designed the course to be playable for average golfers, but it remains a challenge for low handicappers as well. Just ask reigning club champion, Gordon Forsberg, Jr. – or better yet, watch.

Standing beside the 15th fairway, Chris Gaston, Blackstone’s third-year head professional, points out Forsberg working his way up the “killer hill” between the 14th green and 15th tee. Asked to pick a hole on the golf course where you’re most likely to card an eight, Gaston replies, “this one.”

A respectable 4-over-par through 14 holes on his Opening Day round, Forsberg now takes the back tee box of Blackstone’s No. 2 handicapped hole. It’s a 486-yard par 4 dogleg left featuring a 100-foot drop in elevation.

“That’s a little bit of a climb,” says Forsberg of the march to the tee where his round is about to fall apart. “But walking is what I like to do. I don’t smoke, but [after] that walk you’re huffing and puffing when you get to the top.”

The drive on 15 is one of several risk-reward decisions at Blackstone, which seems on every tee to offer a tantalizing aggressive play as well as a safe bailout area. The conservative shot here, played safely down the middle, will leave no less than 225 yards to the green. But Forsberg knows that a high, right-to-left shot can carry the twin fairway bunkers that guard the inside corner of the dogleg, leaving a manageable mid-iron second shot. Forsberg, a 1 or 2 handicap, didn’t become club champion by bailing out.

Nevertheless, Forsberg makes triple bogey the same way everyone else does: One shot at a time. From there, he’ll par out for an Opening Day 79.

*****

Under the headline “Rough in More Ways Than One,” the Boston Globe welcomed Blackstone to the Massachusetts golf scene in July of 2000 with a review emphasizing the course’s then-present challenges over its obvious potential. The walk was too hilly the article said and the cart paths were a “circuitous adventure.” The long distances from tee to green threatened to “take your focus from the game” and “disturb the golfing experience.” Furthermore, the piece claimed there were far too many blind tee shots, and the holes all looked the same.

Most of the criticism is unjustified. North Shore Golf found just one tee shot that could be considered partially blind, and a couple obscured seconds. On those holes, however, the player benefits from black-and-white striped targeting poles at the 150-yard mark. The long walks between holes at Blackstone meander through unspoiled forest, and only enhance the Zen golf experience. However, it is possible from more than one green for a Blackstone newcomer to take a nature hike in an entirely wrong direction. More prominent signage could help, but on most holes the path is clear.

Early difficulties caused consternation for club owner Michael Gordon, who says the upscale public course is dependent upon the average greens fees, of $90 on weekends and $80 on weekdays, including a cart. “Anything less, Gordon says, “and the business model goes upside-down.” He expresses some frustration when recalling the opening of what he calls his “first and last” golf project, but says he has no regrets.

“Three or four years ago I might have said something different,” says Gordon. “I was burned out at the time. Now that all the hard work is yielding some fruit, it’s starting to feel good. At times during the development, it didn’t seem worth it. I’d see fairways just wash away, just disappear.

“When you open you work 75 to 80-hour weeks – opening at 5:30, trying to do maintenance before the first players catch you – it can be a very grinding business. We essentially worked two eight-hour shifts a day for six straight months.”

The hard work finally seems to be paying off. By 2002, The Globe was calling Blackstone one of New England’s “premier public venues,” and the club installed the ParView GPS system, a slick, computerized on-course guide found in the carts that is particularly appealing to casual golfers and first-timers at the winding track. Gaston attributes the ParView system with helping him and his staff keep groups on a target pace of 4 hours, 20 minutes – a healthy clip.

“It’s a difficult golf course and there’s some room between the holes,” admits Gaston. “We try and make it as playable as possible for everyone with our tees and pin placements.” In 2003 the course recorded 28,000 rounds played. (According to the Golf Course Owners Association the national average for rounds played last year was just a little more than 33,000 per course).

On Opening Day 2004, with the temperature not much above 40 – and perhaps a few degrees below – Blackstone, which boasts a spacious practice tee area, had 120 golfers lined up to squeeze in their first round of the year. Over Patriot’s Day weekend the course hosted almost 600 rounds. “The tee sheet’s booked up,” says Gaston.

Gordon, a 10 handicap who played 20 to 25 rounds in 2003, says it looks like things are in the clear. “This year I’ll double that,” he says. “I’m smiling a lot more this year.”

Newcomers will probably smile more at Blackstone if they follow the starter’s recommendation on the proper choice of tees for a given skill level. Rees Jones’ father, Robert Trent Jones, designed California’s revered Spyglass Hill, which is widely accepted as one of the most spectacular and difficult tests in the country with a slope rating of 143. Young Rees toured the Monterey Peninsula gem with his father during its construction, and on the forest holes at Blackstone National the influence is apparent in both beauty – tall pines, wooden bridges connecting a winding layout through steep hills – and in challenge. The forests between holes can be appreciated more if they’re being explored less during the course of play.

But it’s not all forest. At the turn, Blackstone climbs to a plateau above the clubhouse, more exposed to the wind, and shifts gears into British Open mode. “The 10th and 11th remind you of that,” says Forsberg. “Coming in from the road, it looks like a links course.”

Despite Blackstone’s growing success and Gordon’s background in residential real estate, Blackstone National will not, says Gordon, become “a subdivision golf course.” But heavy construction did take place over the winter – the first spring thaw revealed a beaver dam not less than 25 yards in length running alongside the boardwalk cart path between the 13th green and 14th tee, enhancing the woodland swamp hazard to the left of the 13th, a 208-yard par three. Other wildlife spotted early this season included pin wheeling hawks, an enormous cloud of blackbirds “like a Hitchcock movie” in the words of Gaston, and two of Gordon’s five dogs, which roam freely on the property.

Forsberg, whose best round at Blackstone is a 70, a number he has reached twice with three-putts at the diabolical 18th green, calls the golf experience at Blackstone “top-notch” and says he is made to appreciate Blackstone’s “immaculate” conditioning whenever he travels to play other courses. He’s also proud of The National Grill, which greets golfers finishing up their round with a full menu and a ample array of beers to choose from.

Forsberg is in sales; still, he reaches a point in his Blackstone pitch where he seems to think better of it, and stops.

“I don’t want to have so many people invading Sutton,” he says. “The tee sheets will be so full I’ll never get out.”