Local Flavor

The epitome of golf on the North Shore can be found at the scenic Cape Ann Golf Course

By Rob Bradford

The location branches off from the heart of Essex, resting a mile down Route 133 from the stretch of antique stores, churches and fry-o-later-driven restaurants. But that only adds to golf course’s cache.

Cape Ann Golf Course has always been the escape for the locals. There are the kids maneuvering their 10-speed bikes down the side of the highway while trying to balance a bag full of clubs on their back. Or the clammers, who push aside the equipment from the back of their trucks to find the antique wood drivers that would help pass the time until the tide went out.

Just like the nine-hole course that awaited, the goals for each of the day’s participants aren’t conventional. Scores and scorecards are sometimes nothing more than an after-thought. A much grander priority resided in such challenges as just how close a drive could be placed to the green on the property’s majestic par-5 fourth hole. Or if the roller-coaster green on the seventh was going to elicit less than three putts.

Most don’t remember the days of 1920’s and early ’30’s when the destination was nothing more than a dairy farm; or the fact that the local links may never have come to be if not for a lightning strike on the business’ barn that killed the 85 milk-producing cows that made the whole package viable.

The course known to most of its patrons simply as “Cape Ann” was what it was – a place a golfer could go to experience some of Massachusetts’ finest scenery and fastest fairways.

The postcard images of the Essex River Basin remain, everything else, however, has gone through just a bit of a metamorphosis.

“A lot of people are amazed,” admits the course’s business manager, George Stavros Jr., whose father, George, has helped run the 55-acre property since 1935. “People who haven’t been here in five or 10 years see a big difference.”

Suddenly, the small town of Essex’s once-hidden connection to the sport of golf has been discovered. And, judging by the course’s improvements, Cape Ann GC is welcoming its new 7-iron-toting explorers with open arms.

Gone is Skyway Pizza, the barn fronting the entire establishment on the edge of Route 133, now calling itself White Elephant Antiques. In its place is the course’s very own clubhouse, with a spacious 19th Hole that features a menu that has consistently grown since the new building’s construction in 1989. There are also more golf carts … more people.

But the real changes reside on the land where shots are made and missed. Like it or not locals, your course’s trademark rock-hard fairways are history (and with it approximately 30 yards of top-spin-enhanced roll). The Stavros family know that for some the brown grass of July and August was nice why it lasted, but it also realizes that in their on-going quest to bring future to Cape Ann something needed to be done.
Suddenly, this course isn’t just for locals anymore.

“It has been a slow evolution over the years,” says Stavros Jr. “The business has gone from my father being the superintendent and doing things old school to (brother) Jimmy now using some newer things.”

The enlightenment for the Stavros clan came when it realized that the hard-pan turf many of the regulars relied on wasn’t the acceptable ally many might have thought.

“I remember talking to some customers in 1999 who I hadn’t seen all summer and I asked them where they had been,” remembers Stavros Jr. “They told me that when the place dried out they left. Then I started to think, if these two guys thought that way how many more are there.”

So in came the irrigation, $180,000 worth. George Sr. already had the fore-sight to institute the course’s own water supply by digging a well adjacent to the ninth hole, but now the stakes were being raised. With the prospects of the course pumping almost 100,000 gallons of water a night with the new irrigation, the well was put down to 850 feet and an entirely new way of life had begun for the hosts and their golfers.
“We’re never going to be happy with it,” says Stavros Jr. “There is always something you can do. Look at what they did with Fenway (Park).”

The analogy to the ever-evolving home of the Red Sox is appropriate. Why the Stavros family might have believed the course was capable of more, the usual stream of golfers just assumed the tract – and all its imperfections – was locked in for the duration. But just as the unthinkable became a reality on top of Fenway’s Green Monster with actual seats, Cape Ann also shocked its little corner of the golfing world.

Suddenly, thanks to the irrigation and $175,000 in additional equipment, appeared actual, honest-to-goodness, distinguishable fairways. Gone was the one-size-fits-all cut of grass, and in its place was the a different length greenness all over the course. There was also actual yard markers – 150 and 100 –, additional sand traps and 30 new trees to help separate the unavoidable tight-fit that is much of the layout.

And while the course changed, so did the clientele. There were still the usual Monday through Thursday local leagues, but now on the weekends was a steady flow of city dwellers. The metropolitan types had heard about this ever-improving course with a fourth hole tee-box whose vantage point painted a picture artists and golfers alike could only dream about.

Then came the Junior Golf Qualifier, both in 2000 and 2002, and more adjustments had to be made. The already hair-pulling seventh hole – a 190-yard, par 3 over a tidal pool of a pond — was ratcheted up a notch with an added tee box that extended the yardage past 250. USGA guidelines suggested that anything over 250 be classified as a par 4, but, as Stavros Jr. points out, that is just a “recommendation.” Uniqueness has always been Cape Ann’s biggest partner.

The newness was suddenly putting the former dairy farm on the map. The word was out — the clammers had company.

Yet, change or not, the regulars still come by, seeing if this is the day they can cut that corner on the fourth hole and fly in the face of the new-fangled green fairway. They know the challenge will always be there, just like the course itself.

“There are just so many new faces every year,” says Stavros Jr., who estimates the course’s membership at between 55 and 60. “We like to give everybody a chance to golf, that’s how we became what we are. We have our local people and that is what made us what we are. It’s a local course, and that’s what we will always be.”