My Thoughts on Middle Island Country Club

I played Middle Island a few times over the summer. There were great deals for 18 holes with a cart. I hadn’t played there in years, and it was mostly as I remembered it. My view may be slanted a bit as I played on two of the hottest days of summer. The starter is a bit of a stickler, which also didn’t help. A plus was it wasn’t crowded, so the pace was ready golf, until the last 2 or 3 holes.

Middle Island has 27 holes, so they at least spread people out. The first round, I played Dogwood and Spruce, the second go Dogwood and Oak. I’ll just give general views of each course. They are all generally in good shape. It was a little dry, but the rounds were mid afternoon after hot days with full sun. My short game was on and I putt well both rounds.

Dogwood, playing off the whites, felt designed perfectly for my level of bogey-ish golfer. The first 2 holes went well enough for getting warmed up. 3 is a good quick birdie opportunity on a short par 3. I pared 3, 4, bogey on 5, par on 6, both rounds. 7 and 8 were a bit of a struggle, I think the heat was getting to me. 8 is the hardest according to the score card. The 9th hole is a lot of fun, a dogleg right, shooting onto an elevated green.

The first round, we went on to Spruce. I scored well here too. It wasn’t overly difficult or long. The most memorable hole was the 6th, worrying about putting a slice through someone’s windshield. It was a fun, though not memorable back nine. The 9th hole is incidentally the 1st hole I ever played, when I got dragged to an outing with the old man, and sat in the cart all day. 22 strokes later I finished the hole. This foray didn’t go much better; I was hot tired and had enough.

Now we come to Oak. The 1st hole is very picturesque. I played through a flock of geese. The 2nd and 3rd I parred both. 4 – 7 was an extremely had stretch. I got an 8 on each of them, the difficulty level just jumped. Watching players in front of us, it looked like they were struggling as much as we were. The 8th hole, I managed to chip in to save par, took it as a win and gave up. Taking a look at 9, the group in front of us, and group in front of them were still on

the fairway, so we called it a day. Looking at it, the fairway sloped from left to right, and looked like a debacle waiting to happen. Overall, I did not enjoy this 9 at all.

I wouldn’t say this is a bad course, I just would prefer to play others. It has a nice ‘old’ feel to it, but isn’t that memorable.