Liberty National Golf Course
With the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline as backdrops, the oh-so-private Liberty National Golf Course in Jersey City, NJ, affords spectacular views. As Tiger Woods and the other 124 PGA Tour golfers chasing golf balls around the 7,419-yard layout this week, Golf Channel and CBS will have no end of artsy camera angles of Lady Liberty and NYC at sunrise, sunset, and each hour in between.
That will probably make for great television on your high-def Sony. For a construction cost of $129 million and membership fees in the half-a-million-dollar range, the Bob Kite-/Tom Kite-designed Liberty National better have that something special. Apparently, however, it’s not necessarily the golf course.
Florida in New York. GolfWeek’s architecture critic, Bradley Klein tells the New York Daily News, “It’s a golf course that looks like it came from Florida.” Say no more.
The layout offers a “very dramatic setting,” Klein notes, “but it’s not local, it’s not native. You don’t feel like you’re a part of the immediate environment.”
Sounds like if you’re looking for Miami Beach in New York City, this course is for you. Not so much, necessarily, for The Barclays participants, including Tiger Woods.
Barclays Golf Tournament 2009
The 2009 Golf Fedex Cup kick off the PGA’s playoffs this week with The Barclays Golf Tournament at Liberty National in Jersey City, NJ.
The playoff system known as the FedEx Cup has received some scrutiny in years past as some tour players have not been happy with the format. The format was again revised this year and here is a brief breakdown of the rules.
The playoffs are made up of four tournaments (The Barclays, Deutsche Bank Championship, BMW Championship, and the Tour Championship) with the Barclays starting with the top 125 golfers in the current FedEx Cup Standings. Each week the field will be reduced; to top 100 in week two, to top 70 in week three, and then to the top 30 for the Tour Championship. Points are awarded each week with first place receiving 2500 points. The points will be reset for the Tour Championship with the first place being awarded 2500 points down to 210 for the 30th place golfer, so each player in the 30 man field has a mathematical chance of winning the FedEx Cup at the start of the Tour Championship.
Did you get all of that? Regardless of the points we are in for some great golf over the next month as the grand prize for winning the FedEx Cup is $10 million, so the tour’s best will be giving it their all. Below you can view a profile of the top ten golfers in the current FedEx Cup standings.
Rory McIlroy survives ugly finish to make weekend
AUGUSTA, Ga. — For a while, all was well in Rory’s World. The 19-year-old Belfast sensation–next month we can start calling him a 20-year-old–got his name on the Augusta National leaderboards on Friday when he went to four under for the tournament after an eagle on the 15th hole.
Tiger Wood was playing in front of him, and Rory McIlroy’s mother and father and girlfriend and agents were positioning themselves in discreet places to cheer him on. Then, disaster, Masters-style: a four-putt double bogey on the par-3 16th and a triple on the par-4 18th, after two swipes out of a greenside bunker that you’d never have expected him to find in the first place. (He smashed his drive.)
He seemed like he was having a great time, playing with Anthony Kim and Ryo Ishikawa, and his name looked right at home on the leaderboard. But with scores of 72 and 73, this will likely be a year for learning. Anyway, it’s not all bad. He’ll be the only teenager playing on the weekend.
*Update, Saturday 10:40 a.m.: On Friday evening in the press center, rumors that McIlroy might be disqualified started circulating. According to the Associated Press, officials reviewed his adventures in the bunker at 18 for a possible violation: “His second shot landed in the bunker on the right side, and McIlroy left it there with his third shot. He kicked at the sand in disgust — a no-no according to the rules, which forbid players from testing the surface before hitting any shots in a hazard. That could have disqualified him. But after a review, the rules committee decided no violation had occurred.”
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