Baiting Hollow
FROM A DISTANCE Beyond the evergreens at the base of a hill at Baiting Hollow is a site that will eventually resemble the clubhouse rendered above.
THE topmost tee at the Baiting Hollow Club is on a plateau 280 feet above sea level and looks out over tiers of grassy hills, flanked by groups of tall trees and, far in the distance of the meandering 138-acre course, a construction site where the steel skeleton of a two-story building is rising.
The structure will be a clubhouse, a key part of a plan by the owners, Stanley Pine and Barry Beil, to make the club more family-friendly and versatile, in response to a steep decline in the kind of men’s marathon golf weekends that used to be such clubs’ bread and butter.
Mr. Pine and Mr. Beil aren’t the only ones trying this approach. Several clubs across the Island have pursued major clubhouse renovations in recent years.
Though the dwindling number of male golfers on weekends is said to have been partially offset by an overall increase in women players, neither group is spending the long stretches of time that golfers traditionally did in decades past. The days of the full 18-hole round, it seems, have become fewer and further between.
“Culturally, we’re seeing that time has become more of an issue for the weekend golfer,” said Charles Robson, executive director of the Metropolitan Professional Golfers Association.
“Everybody is trying to adjust to address the time issue, whether it means nine-hole rounds, evening golf, or speed slots at some golf courses.” (With speed slots, groups are limited to parties of two in the early morning on weekends, so golfers can finish a round more quickly.)
Mr. Pine and Mr. Beil have put millions into the 42-year-old golf course at Baiting Hollow Club, refurbishing the greens, updating the irrigation system, and building an $8 million 25,000-square-foot clubhouse.
The new space will encourage lounging, with a restaurant, bar and grill, indoor and outdoor fireplaces, a fitness room, men’s and women’s locker rooms and lounge areas, and an outdoor patio looking over what will become the first tee when the holes are reordered. (The owners also want to erect 30 expensive homes in the future on 52 acres next to the course, along with a driving range.)
Many clubs have also added gyms and personal trainers, and more seating and lounge areas in the restaurants and bars for families to spend time together after playing golf. “I would call that a fairly recent trend,” Mr. Robson said, recalling four clubs that have added such amenities in the last five years.
There are 117 golf courses on Long Island, according to a list posted on the Web site of Long Island Golf News. Nationally, the number of people who play at least eight times a year fell to 15 million in 2006, from 17.7 million in 2000, according to the National Golf Foundation.
Some golf club owners and players on Long Island make note of women’s increasing interest in the game. “Our female membership has grown four or five times in the last six years,” said Mr. Pine, who along with Mr. Beil owns the Hampton Hills Golf and Country Club in the town of Southampton in addition to the Baiting Hollow club.
But on the Island, that strength on the East End — the site of Baiting Hollow, Hampton Hills and others — is not being matched in Nassau County and western Suffolk, according to Jackie Handel, the president of the Nassau Women’s Golf Association, a 34-year-old group with a membership of 29 golf clubs and 450 individual women.
“We used to have over 600 members,” Ms. Handel said. “Now, there aren’t that many young women coming in.”
Younger women have jobs, she said, and as with many male golfers who have families, “the only time they really can play is on weekends. They’re not going to put the effort and time into golf when they have a lot of other responsibilities.”
Therefore, she said, many women “don’t become serious golfers until they aren’t working and the children are grown.”
A corollary to that phenomenon is that many occasional players don’t spend the money to become club members. Annual fees can range from $5,000 to more than $25,000, and exclusive private clubs at the high end require new members to make a one-time equity payment, sometimes well over $300,000.
In the last decade, nonmember-type courses have proliferated on the Island, seeking to capture occasional players, according to Jay Mottola, the executive director of the Metropolitan Golfers Association.
“Some courses built to fill that niche did well in the beginning,” Mr. Mottola said, “but now there are too many and they are competing for golfers. We went from an undersupply of quality public courses on Long Island, to having an oversupply.”
Nowadays, Ms. Handel said, clubs across the Island have taken to luring nongolfers. Some have tennis courts where players can buy a membership for less than a golf membership; many, she said, have swimming pools, or offer spa-like services, including massage and men’s haircuts.
According to Mr. Mottola, clubs also rent out their spaces to nonmembers for weddings, parties or other catered events.
Although the men’s-club aura of the golf course is still very much the norm in Nassau, Ms. Handel said, the reality of declining numbers of serious golfers is transforming that into an anachronism.
Recalling a period in the 1970s when she and her husband were members of a golf club in Woodmere, she said: “When I first got married and had children, there were very stringent rules about kids younger than 12 eating in the dining room or swimming in the adult pool. Those things have changed; they’ve made the clubs more family-oriented.”