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.
