Home Stretch

We left Cleveland at 6:15 and headed to the Poconos. We decided to change our plans and after golf drive all the way to NYC same day. This means that we left Portland Oregon on Friday the 21st at 3pm and arrived in NYC on Thursday the 27th after 7 days of driving and 126 holes of golf. The plan was to play 18 more in Brooklyn on Friday but that didn’t go to well. More on that later…

After a six hour drive we arrived in the Poconos and followed signs to Shawnee Inn. It was a much bigger complex than we expected, there were tour buses lined up along the entry and a large group of elderly women boarding one of the buses dressed in matching pink t-shirts. It wasn’t quite the view we expected pulling up to a golf resort but after six hours it was nice to just get out of the car. We were excited to see A.W. Tillinghast’s first ever golf course design.

The Inn’s grand entryway was classic and beautiful at the same time. To it’s left was a balcony and to the left of that was a painted map of Shawnee Inn’s 27 holes. As promised on the website, the map showed 24 of the 27 holes are located on Shawnee Island in the Delaware River. The map also told the story of how Arnold Palmer met his wife on the adjacent balcony. Random, but definitely cool…

The course itself definitely felt more like the New England courses we were used to but was very nice. Tree lined hills provided a beautiful backdrop to most of the holes. The conditions were in every way adequate but not magnificent like our previous day. During the final holes of the back nine I played the best 7 hole stretch of my life going even par over those holes. Perhaps the most memorable hole was a par 3 returning to the mainland. To the right of the tee boxes was a wooden bridge complete with white painted rails.

For the second time in the last six days, after finishing 18 holes we still wanted more golf and continued onto Shawnee’s final nine holes. Great day of golf! I would love to come back to Shawnee for a vacation and for a lot more golf. It was definitely a good value less than 90 minutes from NYC.

After our 27 holes we got right into the car and headed to Brooklyn. We arrived around 9:30pm, ate dinner and set the alarm for 6:30am to golf Brooklyn’s Dyker Beach, one of the worlds busiest courses. As we struggled to wake up and make the drive to Dyker it was sprinkling a little but we didn’t think much of it. The rain picked up a little as we walked into the clubhouse but the Weather Channel kept putting each hour as only a 30% chance of rain so we liked our chances. For the first time in my golfing career I birdied the first hole, hitting a 145-yard 7-iron to within a foot (wow, that happens so rarely it surprised me all over again to write it…). The rain turned a lot heavier as we started the second hole but we tried to continue on. Unfortunately, the rain worsened and we had to head in. Weather Channel still put the chance of rain at 30% for each hour, even the current one where we witnessed torrential downpours, so we lost confidence in the site.

This was a bit of a frustrating end to an amazing cross-country trip. Total tallies include over 3000 miles, 127 holes of golf in 7 days. Wow, I’m tired and need a vacation from my vacation!