Writer Cup Tournament

Annual Writer Cup Allows Fabulous Forsgate To Shine

By Nate Oxman, Staff Writer

It makes perfect sense that a yearly competition pitting golf writers from the greater Philadelphia area against their brethren from the New York metropolitan area be staged right smackdab in the middle of the two cities.

Fortunately for Chris Schiavone, his Metropolitan Golf Group operates Forsgate Country Club, which just so happens to sit pretty darn close to the geographic halfway point between Philly and NYC. So when a friend of Schiavone’s named Frank Quinn (co-founder of the former McDonald’s LPGA Championship) suggested the idea of a Ryder Cup for golf writers, Schiavone knew he had the perfect spot.

In addition to its absolute location an hour away from each city, Forsgate CC, right off exit 8A of the New Jersey Turnpike, features two championship golf courses. That comes in pretty handy when Schiavone and the staff at Forsgate open the doors of their private palace to the public for a tournament or outing, allowing its membership another option to tee it up.

Such is the case each summer when Forsgate hosts the Writer Cup and dozens of golf scribes, with New Jersey writers joining the Philadelphia/PA team, and Connecticut and national writers the New York team, grind it out on the legendary Banks Course while the membership carries on next door at the club’s Palmer Course.

The full-day event, executed with the assistance of public relations and marketing firm On Course Strategies, has been running for 13 years, beginning in the morning with a three-part Individual Skills Competition on Forsgate’s practice facility, where competitors accumulate a score based on their performance on a 100yard closest to the pin contest, a long putt, and a short putt. Competitors get three attempts at each leg, earning 30 points on the closest to the pin contest for hitting the target green, 50 for hitting a smaller target circle within the green and 100 for holing a shot. Similarly, points are awarded for each putt on the practice green. This year’s skills contest was won by veteran sportswriter Hank Gola of the NY/National team.

The talented Forsgate Academy professional staff, spearheaded by Director of Golf Carolyn McKenzie Andrews, followed with a golf clinic and Q & A session on Forsgate’s recentlyrevitalized and expanded practice facility.

The Par-5 Ninth, known as “Plateau,” perched on a hill guarded by several bunkers

Forsgate Country Club – 12th Hole Par 3, known as “Horseshoe”

L-R: Carolyn McKenzie Andrews – Director Of Golf, Tony Perla – Director Of Instruction, Mike Furey – Head Professional, Frank Esposito – Forsgate Staff Member

Andrews has ties to the Philadelphia area. She’s a winner of multiple WGAP championships and the daughter of Ted McKenzie, a Philadelphia Section PGA Hall of Fame member whose decorated career included time as head professional at Waynesborough Country Club and Stonewall.

The clinic also featured new Director of Instruction Tony Perla, who spent time in the Philadelphia Section PGA at the Philadelphia Cricket Club and whose father, like Andrews’, was a longtime Philly area golf professional and member of the section’s Hall of Fame. Joining McKenzie Andrews and Perla were Forsgate staff members Frank Esposito, a former Champions Tour player and member of the New Jersey Section PGA Hall of Fame, Head Professional Mike Furey and Assistant Professional Justin Rohrig.

The main event of the Writer Cup features individual stroke play at 90% handicap with prizes for overall Low Gross and Low Net. The top 12 Net scores and top 5 Gross scores from each team make up the team total to determine a winner. This year that was the PA/NJ team after a total score of 1,259, 26 shots in front of the NY/ National team’s score of 1,285. New York’s George Willis carded a 77 for the low Gross score of the day.

Competitors in this year’s event also included longtime Philadelphia Inquirer writer Joe Juliano and Golf Course Architect Stephen Kay, the consulting architect at Forsgate, whose local work in South Jersey includes Scotland Run, Blue Heron Pines, Harbor Pines and McCullough’s Emerald Golf Links.

“We’re proud that we have such a strong group of the best golf writers who return year after year, and we believe we have a unique golf course to showcase,” said Schiavone, who culminates the Writer Cup each year with a steak and lobster dinner and awards ceremony in Forsgate’s Restaurant 37, one of several excellent dining options on property.

Kay has worked with Forsgate’s superintendent, Don Asinski, to finetune the final creation of Charles “Steamshovel” Banks that dates back to 1931. Banks was an associate of Seth Raynor, who teamed with the great Charles Blair Macdonald to create some of the nation’s most prestigious golf courses including National Golf Links of America and Chicago Golf Club. Like all three did throughout their careers, Banks used a rolling section of Forsgate’s property as the canvas for famous template holes based on ones found on some of golf’s greatest courses overseas.

The result is one of the most eyepopping designs on the East Coast, one buoyed by its incredible quartet of par 3s. In that group is the 17th, a “Biarritz” that features a green stretching 75 yards from front to back, with a swale 6 feet deep in the middle. Each of the Banks Course’s 18 greens have to be seen to be believed and the same can be said for the greenside bunkering, 20 feet from top to bottom in some spots like the purgatory bunker fronting the 18th green on the right side. It all adds up to a golf course, that if it wasn’t part of a Metropolitan Golf Association that includes many of the top courses in the nation in the aforementioned National Golf Links of America, Shinnecock Hills, Fishers Island, Winged Foot, Friars’ Head, etc. would get more of the national recognition it so very much deserves, especially as it celebrates its 90th anniversary this year. TSG

For more information: FORSGATECC.COM