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While there's nothing more important to me than the design of a golf course as a determinant of my enjoyment, I do enjoy golf course ephemera. The choices clubs make about the little implements that guide and accent the playing experience are interesting to me. Some courses and clubs keep it simple and clean, while others seem to pile on the pieces of flair.
The Club at New Seabury seems to have found a tasteful level of indulgence in these sorts of knickknacks. Their two courses use different styles of tee marker, bound by a common theme: boats. It's fitting, since the club spans 1,500 acres along Nantucket Sound on a southeast-facing stretch of Cape Cod. The Ocean Course, whose front nine is one of the most scenic stretches of golf in New England, uses painted cleats, which are metal protrusions used on and around boats for securing rope. I could have used something to tether my golf ball to the course on Wednesday, buffeted as it was by 30 mile per hour winds on the Ocean Course's open front side. The Dunes Course's tee markers are wooden blocks with rope wrapped around them.
Not being much of a boat person myself, I had no idea what a cleat was before my round. Now I do. It's far from a life-changing discovery, but it is a nice, quaint Jeopardy!-clue-type souvenir of a trip to a golf club with a clear sense of place.
