One week after the U.S. Open comes the second women’s major of the year: the LPGA Championship. After being played for years at mid-Atlantic venues like Bulle Rock Golf Club and DuPont Country Club, the tournament lost McDonald’s as a sponsor at the bottom of the economic downturn. Wegmans, the Rochester, New York grocery store chain that had sponsored an LGPA tour stop in Rochester for many years, stepped in. The LPGA Championship picked up Wegmans as a sponsor, and it shifted venues to the longtime host of Wegmans’ tournament, Locust Hill Country Club, in the Rochester suburb of Pittsford.
The change was a good one for many reasons. Wegmans has been very supportive of the Rochester event for many years, and it is a prominent and popular company in the region. The Rochester tournament has produced many great champions through the years, and the trend continued last year with Cristie Kerr’s 8-shot victory. More importantly, Rochester is a tremendous golf town that has supported at men’s major championships at nearby Oak Hill Country Club, two U.S. Women’s Opens at Country Club of Rochester, and a Nationwide Tour event at Irondequoit Country Club.
All of the Rochester golf courses that have previously hosted a big tournament have one thing in common: they are Donald Ross designs. The legendary Ross laid out six golf courses in the Rochester area and many nationally known layouts, including Pinehurst Number 2, Seminole, Oakland Hills, and Aronimink. Because of Ross, Rochester can claim a very high quality of golf for its size. The problem now is that Rochester’s most visible golf course is Locust Hill, which is neither a worthy major championship venue nor a good representation of Western New York golf.
Seymour Dunn, an architect with no well-known layouts or apparent architectural talent, designed the original course at Locust Hill. Robert Trent Jones later renovated the course, but seemed to make little improvement. Locust Hill suffers from many problems common to mediocre golf courses. The issues start with the routing, which is confusing and sliced in half by a busy suburban road. The golf faces multiple road crossings and several long hikes between tees and greens. As a result, the course lacks flow and jumps from hole to hole without any direction. The course is overpopulated with trees and water features, most of which are artificial. These hazards are used poorly to create holes that are narrow, boring, and entirely devoid of strategic decisions.
Take the 2nd hole, a short par four where the golfer will face a second shot over, I kid you not, a blind, elevated pond. Or try the 4th hole, an uphill par five that features water left and out of bounds right off the tee. The golfer’s only goal is to bash two shots and try to get as close to the green as possible. This theme of boring, one-dimensional golf holes continues throughout the course, from bland short par fours like 12 and 16 to the slogging uphill finishing hole. The golfer is not encouraged to shape the ball at Locust Hill, and he will definitely not be encouraged to think. Although the golf course is meticulously manicured, Locust Hill drains poorly and is perpetually soaked. The combination of boring architecture and unsatisfactory maintenance produces a bland golf course that falls well short of being a legitimate major championship venue.
Locust Hill is most embarrassing because it does not represent the great golf that exists in Western New York. Courses like Oak Hill, Country Club of Rochester, Monroe and little-known Brook Lea are phenomenal Rochester-area layouts that are miles beyond Locust. Moreover, Locust Hill is a poor choice of venue because, in addition to being thoroughly unexciting, it is a private layout. The tournament would be better served at a public venue, where the course would be more accessible to both local and national viewers. Rochester layouts like Ravenwood, Greystone, Deerfield and Bristol Harbour are several notches above Locust Hill in quality, as are Buffalo layouts like Arrowhead, Hickory Stick and Links at Ivy Ridge.
Overall, Locust is a poor representative for golf in Western New York and the LPGA tour. Both can do better than Locust Hill when it comes time to host a major.
