ONEONTA – Once upon a time, I played on the Norwich High School golf team. My freshman through junior years, we played our matches in the spring until eventually moving to fall golf my senior year where we joined the rest of the Southern Tier Athletic Conference schools.
Those first three years, we played as an independent team against other spring golf teams such as Oxford, Sidney, Afton, and Oneonta. That last team was the only like-sized school we faced in the spring, and we had yearly home and home matches with the Yellowjackets. My last match against Oneonta was in 1984, and that was also the last time I played Oneonta Country Club.
Thirty years later, I returned to OCC as the final part of our summer golf series. After a one-week hiatus, Mike McCormack rejoined us, and Mike invited two other NHS grads – neither of whom played on the golf team with me – Kevin Perez and John Williams.
Three decades is a long time, and I remembered little of the course except the signature hole, the 580-yard 17th hole, that is a continuous dogleg right in the shape of a horseshoe. I also vaguely remembered the 18th hole, one that has two greens options. The more forgiving 18th green is a straight shot from the tee. The other presents an uphill dogleg right with out of bounds to the left of the green, and a lateral hazard to the right the entire length of the hole.
Those holes notwithstanding, my most vivid memory of Oneonta Country Club had nothing to do with any particular hole. And it’s an embarrassing memory, for sure.
Playing spring golf in upstate New York, there isn’t much practice – or actual rounds – before commencing the match season. Before my freshman golf season, my parents bought me a starter set – junior clubs because I was so small. I had played golf for just two years, and had a collection of six or seven mismatched clubs. The junior set – a 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-iron, driver, three-wood, and putter – complemented an old pitching wedge and maybe an eight-iron to round out my set. The mismatched clubs I owned were also 3- 5-, and 7-irons, so I pulled them out of the bag in favor of the shiny new ones.
I don’t have specific recall of when it happened, but I lost one of my clubs about one-third of the way through my match. No, I didn’t actually “lose” the club, and I’ll elucidate on the details in the next paragraph.
After hitting my drive, I pulled my junior 7-iron for my approach to the green. Or, maybe it was a third shot to the hole. Regardless, I took my swing, and at the moment of impact, the clubhead snapped off and flew boomerang style up the fairway. I’m not sure, but I think the clubhead and my ball were neck-and-neck for a while.
In my brief golfing career, the 7-iron had been my favorite club. Now, it was gone and beyond repair. Too, I had to quickly explain to my playing partners that, “no, I didn’t hit a rock or badly mishit the club.” The club wasn’t cheaply made, either, it just wasn’t made for a high school freshman. Upon reflection, I’m sure the outside of the box said something to effect: For ages 7 to 12.
Yes, as a 15-year-old freshman, I was as small as a 12-year-old, and I’m still not much bigger. But I was definitely too strong from elementary school-type golf clubs.
I played Oneonta Country Club six times those first three years of golf team – three times in golf matches, and three times for the 18-hole golf sectionals. I broke 90 just once in those three years of sectionals, and I’m not sure if I shot less than 44 in any of the nine-hole golf matches. Now a well-seasoned adult – just like my playing partners – I aimed to do better.
Last year, Oneonta Country Club marked its 100th year of operation, and produced a commemorative 20-page booklet filled with course history, recollections of players, and black-and-white photos. For most of those 100 years, Oneonta Country Club was a private, members-owned club. In the last three or four years, said head professional Matt Schulte, the course has opened its tees for general play.
“Before me, it was solely private, and it’s still members-owned,” Schulte said. “But we needed to supplement. We started to lose members each year since about 2006 when we had the first big flood.”
Schulte grew up on Oneonta Country Club playing as a junior member and working in the bag room. He later became assistant professional working through high school and college. He moved to Orlando, Fla. after his college graduation where he continued his career as a golf teaching professional before returning home in 2013. “When I returned (last year), the course was the best that I had seen it,” Schulte said. “That was before the floods – the three floods.”
Despite the flood damage to the lower-lying areas last year, the course has few overt signs of damage. The only damage our group saw was to our scorecard. If you’re not fairly straight off the tee at Oneonta Country Club, trouble will find you in a hurry. Most of the fairways are lined with trees, and red stakes – indicative of a hazard – are predominate. Oneonta has ample bunkers, and they are well placed as all of us found the sand at least a couple of times.
“It’s definitely a really nice course,” Williams said, who was making his debut golf appearance in 2014.
The greens are undulating, but extremely puttable, and are on the quicker side for a public facility. Oneonta Country Club is also buoyed by an irrigation system that keeps the fairways lush in even the driest of summers. “All of the feedback we’ve had from outside play has been really good,” Schulte said.
Play by non-members is encouraged, but a non-member or guest of a member is allowed just eight rounds per season. “We look at that (limit of eight rounds) as a preview of the facility,” Schulte said. “We want people to play, and we hope that a person likes the course enough so that it makes sense to become a member.”
For me, our trip to Oneonta served two purposes: One, it was a course we had not reviewed in our previous tour, and two; it was an opportunity to best my previous low scores. It was far from my ideal round – and no one in our group played particularly well – but I did improve on my scores from 30 years ago.
And, I left the course with all of my clubs intact.
More information about Oneonta Country Club and its membership rates are available online at http://www.oneontacountryclub.org/.
Follow Patrick Newell on Twitter @PatrickLNewell