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Underratedness is powerful currency in golf. Copake Country Club in upstate New York has it in spades.
Laid out in 1921 by noted northeastern architect Devereux Emmet, Copake offers one of the best affordable throwback golf experiences one can have more than a century after the fact. A restoration effort of exquisitely light touch was carried out in the late 2000s by architects Mark Fine and Scott Witter, and the touched-up fairway corridors, flat-bottomed bunkers and semi-squared-off greens have continued to be respected by ownership two decades after the work was undertaken. One conspicuously absent feature: fairway irrigation. If it's dry, Copake plays firm and bouncy, with only occasional hand-watering to quench the turf's thirst. With pre-cart green fees topping out at $65, it is one of the best values in American golf.
Copake has several lovable holes, including three genuinely drivable par 4s. The third of them, number 13, remains my favorite hole on the course for its simplicity. There are no bunkers; just a small, circular, subtly contoured green surrounded by a generous collar of fairway-length grass, 275 yards distant and 75 feet downhill. The obvious trouble - woods to the right, a hillside to the left, bushes long - sits at a perfect remove from the main action. Even a modestly ambitious golfer stands on the tee salivating about an eagle or an easy birdie.
But there is one small, hairy problem. At about five o'clock on the putting surface sits a random bit of nastiness: an island of deliberately unshaven rough entirely surrounded by fairway. It sits right in a spot where a good-but-slightly-bailed-out tee shot will often end up, unnoticed by the new visitor or careless returner until it's too late. Even the sternest U.S. Open setups would find this length of grass uncouth as the norm.
I have seen "grass bunkers" before - scooped-out forms that could have been filled with sand but which the architect or latter-day superintendent instead chose to leave green. I like grass bunkers. But I love Copake's more sinister answer: an otherwise flat patch of turf deliberately left unkempt as a middle-finger to a few unlucky souls per day. Whether this feature dates back to Emmet's day or is a more recent invention is immaterial. It fits in perfectly with the place's throwback feel and is one of many reasons to return whenever possible.
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