Eating Disorders: Lakewood Country Club

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Lakewood Country Club

Lakewood, New Jersey was golf’s first popular “off season” gathering place. Before the turn of the century, visitors to Lakewood had their choice of two outstanding “resort” courses whose season lasted from October 1^st through the following June 1^st. The semi-annual meetings held there were the oldest on the M.G.A. calendar, and the quality of the fields they attracted was second only to the National Amateur.The first of the area’s courses belonged to the Golf Club of Lakewood, which was organized in October 1894, and incorporated in 1898. Prominent among the founders were Jasper Lynch and Robert Bage Kerr. The golf course actually preceded the club, coming into existence in the fall of 1893 on a site about one mile from the railroad station. Champion Willie Dunn designed the nine-hole course, and his first visit to the site is part of the legend. For it was on that occasion that Dunn and his scarlet golfing jacket had their famous encounter with a bull in the fields, from which only Dunn escaped unscathed. Nonetheless, Dunn’s course was built, and served the club for nearly five years, although it was never considered a first class layout. The third hole doubtlessly was the most severely criticized. It was a 200-yard “par 3”, with a nasty cop bunker dead center at the 170-yard mark, a difficult carry for most players in the era of the guttie ball. In 1896, the course was lengthened eastward into a large field and became an eighteen-hole course.