Middle Island Country Club in New York..

middle island

1. My Thoughts on Middle Island Country Club

I played Middle Island a few times over the summer. There were great deals for 18 holes
with a cart. I hadn’t played there in years, and it was mostly as I remembered it. My view may
be slanted a bit as I played on two of the hottest days of summer. The starter is a bit of a
stickler, which also didn’t help. A plus was it wasn’t crowded, so the pace was ready golf, until
the last 2 or 3 holes.

Middle Island has 27 holes, so they at least spread people out. The first round, I played
Dogwood and Spruce, the second go Dogwood and Oak. I’ll just give general views of each
course. They are all generally in good shape. It was a little dry, but the rounds were mid
afternoon after hot days with full sun. My short game was on and I putt well both rounds.

Dogwood, playing off the whites, felt designed perfectly for my level of bogey-ish golfer. The
first 2 holes went well enough for getting warmed up. 3 is a good quick birdie opportunity on a
short par 3. I pared 3, 4, bogey on 5, par on 6, both rounds. 7 and 8 were a bit of a struggle, I
think the heat was getting to me. 8 is the hardest according to the score card. The 9
th
hole is a
lot of fun, a dogleg right, shooting onto an elevated green.

The first round, we went on to Spruce. I scored well here too. It wasn’t overly difficult or
long. The most memorable hole was the 6
th
, worrying about putting a slice through someone’s
windshield. It was a fun, though not memorable back nine. The 9
th
hole is incidentally the 1
st

hole I ever played, when I got dragged to an outing with the old man, and sat in the cart all day.
22 strokes later I finished the hole. This foray didn’t go much better; I was hot tired and had
enough.

Now we come to Oak. The 1
st
hole is very picturesque. I played through a flock of geese.
The 2
nd
and 3
rd
I parred both. 4 – 7 was an extremely had stretch. I got an 8 on each of them,
the difficulty level just jumped. Watching players in front of us, it looked like they were
struggling as much as we were. The 8
th
hole, I managed to chip in to save par, took it as a win
and gave up. Taking a look at 9, the group in front of us, and group in front of them were still on

2. the fairway, so we called it a day. Looking at it, the fairway sloped from left to right, and looked
like a debacle waiting to happen. Overall, I did not enjoy this 9 at all.

I wouldn’t say this is a bad course, I just would prefer to play others. It has a nice ‘old’ feel to
it, but isn’t that memorable.