I like to play in June. How about you? (June 2007)

I like to play in June. How about you?

Eight writers on their favorite summertime golf getaways

CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HIGH
By Mark Whitaker


SULLIVAN COUNTY, N.Y. -- When most people think of the Borscht Belt, they envision fast-talking comics entertaining the middle-class Jews who used to flock to the summerresorts in the mountains north of New York City. But my mind goes to the string of venerable public golf courses that still dot the Catskills. I took up golf while vacationing at a little house my family owns in Woodstock, and every summer I try to make a pilgrimage to a few of these classic old tracks.

June is my favorite time to play them, when the long northeastern winter is finally a distant memory but before the hot July and August sun bake their unirrigated fairways brown and hard. So when I can make it up there from my home in Manhattan, I call my friend Joe, the real-estate broker, and he calls his buddy Kevin, the retired teacher, and we take off on the winding roads of Sullivan County to Grossinger's, or Kutshers, or Tarry Brae, or the back way to the Nevele.

With the exception of the brutally long Monster at the old Concord resort (now closed for renovation, though there is limited play on the golf course), none of the designs is quite on a par with the best of the private courses I've played since those early days. But each has some individual holes that are as difficult as the best of them, and as stunning. Last summer at Tarry Brae, for instance, I was once again dazzled by the 495-yard sixth, where after hitting a blind tee shot over a hill, you climb it to look down a steep fairway to a tiny green nestled into a beautiful lake. As much as the golf, I relish the funky incongruity of the surroundings. Where else do you look up from your ball and see Hasidic Jews in tall fur hats and knee-length black-wool coats walking along the roads to the nearby towns, or barefoot Buddhists in flowing robes padding back and forth to the local ashram? And as you swing by the old resorts--some of them shuttered, others well past their prime but still taking guests--you can almost hear the ghost of Henny Youngman: "Did you hear the one about the priest, the rabbi and the scratch golfer .... ?"

GROSSINGER C.C.
****1/2 Big G course, $65-$95
*** nine-hole Vista course, $19-$27
grossingergolf.net, 845-292-9000.

KUTSHERS C.C.
$45-$60; kutshers.com, 800-431-1273.

NEVELE GRANDE RESORT & C.C.
**** $60-$75; nevele.com, 800-647-7000.

TARRY BRAE G.C.
***1/2 $36-$45 (including cart); tarrybrae.com, 845-434-1257.


Mark Whitaker, the former editor of Newsweek magazine, is vice president and editor-in-chief of new ventures at The Washington Post Co.'s Internet Division.

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My in laws' family owns an old farm house in the Catskills. I have scouted the courses that are worthy of play in that area. I may check out the ones that you mentioned as well as Leatherstocking GC and a Donald Ross 9 hole, Rip Van Winkle CC this summer. There is a very nice course in Stamford, NY called Stamford GC. Here are a few pics: