BAYONNE, N.J. (AP) -- Bill the caddie stayed positive as our foursome hooked and sliced around the challenging links of Bayonne Golf Club.
"You have to play here three or four times to get a feel of where to hit the ball," he counseled, as if we were contemplating membership at this high-end private course with awesome views of Manhattan.
Not a chance. Initiation fees of $175,000 for locals and $75,000 for national or international members, plus $10,000 annual dues, are far beyond the means of journalists on an outing.
Two months after opening, Bayonne's hilly layout on a peninsula jutting into the Hudson River is all the buzz among New York's well-heeled golfers, along with the new Liberty National Golf Club a couple of miles upriver.
These courses, among the most expensive ever built, took most of a decade to complete in part because of environmental issues involving the reclaimed land. Bayonne is costing $100 million, the club said, Liberty National $150 million, according to Golf Digest.
Minutes from Wall Street by helicopter or speedboat, or a half-hour by car, these clubs cater to high-powered business executives who want quick access to luxury golf, a la renowned, old-line clubs like Winged Foot, Baltusrol and Shinnecock Hills.
"You can arrive for lunch and spend the afternoon golfing with your friends and return to the city well before sundown," says Bayonne's promotional brochure.
With fairways sculpted on mounds of sludge dredged from New York harbor's shipping channels and reaching 7,103 yards from the championship tees, Bayonne is modeled on historic linksland courses of Scotland and Ireland.
From holes as high as 100 feet above the river, the vista takes in the Verrazano Narrows bridge, Brooklyn's waterfront, the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers of lower Manhattan four miles away.
On the perimeters are wetlands, rocky shorelines and traces of the landfill beneath this golfers' Valhalla. One hole overlooks a loading dock for cargo trucks; off in the distance is a vast pier with towering cranes for servicing ocean freighters.
The club's name is faintly ironic. A blue-collar city of 62,000 population, whose most famous son, heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner, was the inspiration for "Rocky," Bayonne doesn't fit the high finance image of this venture.
"We want a diverse membership, not just Wall Streeters," says course designer-developer Eric Bergstol, CEO of Empire Golf Management.
But instead of recruiting Bayonne residents, Bergstol's company is offering them a discount at its other upscale courses in the New York area, under a goodwill arrangement with the city government.
Plans call for a maximum of 500 members -- 250 from the New York area and 250 from outside the region and internationally. More than 200 have already joined, paying initiation fees as refundable bonds, Bergstol said.
Play started on Memorial Day, but members will have to wait until 2008 for the clubhouse with a view over the harbor. The golf shop and locker room are in a temporary building at the base of the man-made hills, which resemble a moonscape from the gravel road into the club.
Bayonne is strictly a walking course on constantly changing elevations. College-age caddies lug clubs and provide yardages with rangefinders. Power carts are only used for short hauls, such as to ferry golfers to the driving range on rocky jetty where practice balls are hit into the Hudson.
Some 7 1/2 million cubic yards of harbor sludge were trucked to the 155-acre site, then sealed with top soil, sand and seed grass to create lush, sloping fairways over seven years, according to Club Secretary Jim Coady. All holes face the water and winds can play havoc with shots.
Many fairways resemble narrow chutes, with heavy rough and other hazards along the banked sides. Dunes create a feeling of isolation. Golfers on adjacent holes usually aren't visible, except from elevated tees.
Bentgrass fairways, thigh-high yellow fescue in the rough, flowering scrubs and treeless terrain recreate the topography of seaside courses in the British Isles. Blind shots on doglegs, sandy waste areas and deep bunkers are among the challenges. Bump-and-run shots are often the best route to the fast, undulating greens.
Holes with quaint names like "Wee Burn," "Highlands" and "Sheep's Bed" reinforce the linksland aura.
How difficult is Bayonne for average golfers? Using member's tees of 6,303 yards, 800 yards under full length, our foursome found it testing on a hot morning.
Wayne got several pars with straight drives, good approaches and solid putting. Damon mastered the 495-yard, par-5 "Church Spire" with two long clouts, a pitch to 5 feet and holing a downhill putt. Joe's tee shots, like mine, often strayed into the rough.
After flubbing chips from the gnarly collars around several greens, I settled for a par 3 on the shortest hole, the 110-yard "Butterfly's Feet." I made enough bogeys to imagine carding a decent score -- in my next life as a Bayonne member.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
