High Riser

By Jeff Blanchard

It was 1992 when John Sanford, the international golf course architect, got his first look at the site on which he would design Granite Links Golf Club, straddling the Quincy-Milton border south of Boston, and to this day he can remember his first impression.

“We went right to the top, about where the first tee is now, and all I could think was ‘Holy [expletive],’” recalls Sanford, a globetrotting, plainspoken, dimpled-chin Florida-based talent.

The phrase “elevated tee” hardly begins to tell this story. Stand at the same spot today and you get the full sweep of the Boston skyline, because before Sanford’s vision for a golf course would be realized nine years later, the entire site would be raised by the addition of Big Dig dirt, some 11 million cubic yards of it, one truck at a time, 1,000 times a day for three and a half years, in what has to be the record for Most Labor Intensive Golf Course Ever Built, an integral part of the $15 billion Central Artery/Tunnel Project.

“Originally we were only going to take six million cubic yards of fill,” Sanford said, “but the Big Dig kept asking us to take more, and to the developers that was money, so we ended up going back and raising everything. I think there were more permits involved than for the Big Dig itself.”

And how was it from the point of view of the architect?

“It’s all positive now, but the analogy I make is that it was like running a marathon of high hurdles,” Sanford said. “Being that it was directly connected to the Big Dig, with the funding coming from disposal of that material, it was also connected to the city governments in Quincy and Milton, plus the state of Massachusetts, and ultimately to every regulatory agency known to man.”

The owners, including Quincy developers Charles Geilich and Bill O’Connell, who constructed the Quarry Hills residential complex along with the golf course, received an estimated $110 million for their work in testing and disposing of the excavated material. In exchange for the right to build, the owners agreed to operate the club as a semi-private facility, good news to the golfing public at large.

Along with the monumental earth-moving, Native American burial grounds and ancient work sites also played a large role in the permitting and construction process, and eventually led to the project’s downsizing from 36 to 27 holes, with 50-60 acres taken out of the picture as a gesture to the previous occupants. The final nine is slated for completion this year, with a championship 18 holes already garnering lofty and far-flung recognition in its two years of play, including a Women’s Senior Golf Tour event and a top ranking by the national golf press.

Further complicating matters was the need to work around (read: bury) two municipal landfills and several abandoned quarries, any one of which might have blocked construction elsewhere, but not with the Big Dig as the source of material, financial and political support.

As George Hazelrigg wrote in the January 2005 issue of Landscape Architecture, “The healing of one wounded landscape (in downtown Boston) made possible the healing of another (Quarry Hills)...”

In the process, Granite Links would also redefine what it means to have a thrilling golf experience. Where the common perception of non-golfers holds that the game is a four-hour voyage into a sea of dullness punctuated only by split-second moments of excitement, this course provides a different sort of experience altogether. It doesn’t just come with a view, but actually looks down on metro Boston, north and east over treetops to the entire cityscape of buildings, boats, marinas, bays and estuaries on each side of the famous rainbow-colored gas tank, and south and west by an unbroken vista of conservation lands that culminate at the Blue Hills.

Furthermore, Sanford’s links-like design created a number of high-risk-high-reward situations that can make even the most pedestrian golfer feel like a player. The first hole, begins the roller-coaster ride, and immediately becomes one of the most unforgettable par 5s you will ever play. The drive is straight down the hill toward Boston over a long patch of long rough. The second shot is further down to another island of grass. The third shot is over a creek to a kidney-shaped green surrounded by sand, granite and fescue. It is 513 yards into a prevailing left-to-right wind, and probably the only four-level hole you’ll find in the area.

On the par-four, ninth hole, the risk-reward factor becomes even more evident. The distance from the black tees to the green is given as 310, but if you aren’t willing to lose your ball, you have to play it as a dogleg right to avoid the fescue-lined canyon that gobbles everything short of about 230. On the other hand, if you cut off the corner, your ball will sail over the danger zone and - Presto! - roll to a picture-perfect spot for a soft wedge to a tiny green.

Nothing like making the turn with a birdie in your pocket, the beer cart in your path and the wind at your back. And wind here is a factor. As a prevailing matter it blows like a small-scale Mt. Washington, whipping in off the ocean or up the man-made faces of Granite Links with a ferocity that can make a smoker wish he owned a butane lighter.

Outside of the wind, the only condition that merits a word of caution at this young stage of the club’s life is the immaturity of turf, which can sometimes cost you some yardage, and sometimes save you from rolling into the abyss, but in any event will become less of a factor with each passing day.

The overwhelming sensation upon arrival is disbelief: You just can’t imagine how anyone could have created such a far-away feeling this close to the city and right off a major highway. And it isn’t just the designer who deserves the credit, but also Mother Nature for providing the raw materials, the American taxpayers who will be shelling out for the Big Dig ’till the cows come home, and all the officials, backers, developers, engineers, excavators, geologists, archeologists, truck drivers, laborers, politicians and golfers who had a hand in the creation.

As for the Sanford, the designer whose portfolio includes courses in Egypt and Japan, he harbors only one lingering doubt about the success of the effort.

“I know they’re filling up the tee sheets, but I’m concerned that it’s just too damned hard for the average golfer, which is not something I wanted,” he said of the course, which carries a treacherous 141 slope from the tips. “What you can do is cut the fescue back 30-40 feet in the landing areas so that it’s still a challenge, but not so difficult for the average guy, and it would also help speed up the rounds.”

The numbers are thus:

• $25,000 to join (and rising)

• $80 to play, with cart

• 450 acres of land, of which 78 acres are wet

• A magnificent 43,000-square-foot clubhouse in the middle of the summit, 150 feet above sea level that is home to the Tavern at Quarry Hills as well as a function hall with even more breathtaking views.

• 5,000 square foot average green

• 10 years to build

• Two landfills out of the 70 so far in America that have been converted to golf.

• Four major issues solved before the course could be built: drainage, leakage, gas and settling, which necessitated the construction of 17 sedimentation basins sprinkled around a site that features slate shelves dating to 6,000 years.

“There’s a huge amount of public benefit, besides just the golf for people in the area,” Sanford said. “It was a huge feather in our cap for our firm, but it was also a great reclamation project of a perpetual eyesore, and it makes me proud and happy to have been a part of it.”

Just getting to the club is an experience, but well worth the trip, despite the fact that the ride could take you anywhere from 40 minutes to close to an hour and a half, depending on the fickle traffic patterns that plague the area.

When you arrive at the Furnace Brook Parkway exit off Route 93, you turn off the highway, wind your way up and around the well-marked road to the club and suddenly the whole world is stretched out before you, close enough to enjoy, and yet far enough away so you can just play golf.

As long as you have your head together, and are not the kind of sore sport who gets down on yourself for a few bad shots, the round will please from beginning to end, without a single lull in the landscape or the shot at hand.