Though it has been rainier than usual this summer, there have been ample opportunities to enjoy the variety of golf courses offered in Northern Kentucky. The River City News takes a look at some:
Twin Oaks (Covington)
Twin Oaks Golf Course was built in 1926 and was the first 18-hole golf course in Northern Kentucky. The course was built by Harvey Meyers and his family owned it for decades before selling it to the Vaughn Family. Twin Oaks is now owned by Rosemary Swingos and her husband and they have maintained the course for over 30 years.
“It started out as a prestige golf course, to being run down, and now we think we have it in pretty good shape,” Swingos said. “I can’t find it for a fact, but I was told that Eisenhower played golf here while he was President.”
Golf legends Ben Hogan and Walter Hagen also played in Latonia when the PGA Tour came to Twin Oaks during that time. The course record was set when Charlie Neiman shot a 62 some time in the 1970’s.
The course has changed over the years, so there was a low score when the course was in one condition and another one in more recent times.
“We have over the years redesigned the golf course, so there are holes that are different now than they were previously. That’s why there are two ways to look at that low score,” Swingos said. “When we bought the golf course 38 years ago it was in an era when there were no sand traps, they were all overgrown with grass. So we built lots of lakes, and put all sand traps back, put cart paths in. Then we built this clubhouse too which was another major investment.”
The old clubhouse was built during World War II and lasted until the flood of 1997 which damaged it beyond repair. The only thing that remains of the old clubhouse is the stone chimney that stands today in the parking lot of the new clubhouse.
The new clubhouse was opened the following year and is used as a reception and banquet hall as well. Hosting weddings, political speeches and other formal gatherings accounts for roughly a third of Twin Oaks’ business.
“We have a wedding almost every Saturday night,” Swingo said.
Twin Oaks is open year-round, though in the winter months, the golf business slows to the point where the golf course only keeps a handful of employees on hand to service the cold-weather golfers.
“If there is a nice day above 40 degrees, we have golfers,” Director of Golf Operations Domanic Catacora said. “The chef puts out complimentary soup and all the regulars come down. If the greens aren’t frozen and there is not snow on the ground, and it’s a decent day with sunshine, we will get golfers.”
Keeping up a golf course is more work than many may suspect.
“People think green grass just grows, but that is simply not so. It’s tremendously difficult to keep up with the golf course. The chemical bills, the fertilizer bills, the equipment, is all to be accounted for.”
In the summer time, Twin Oaks staffs up to about 50 employees. Among those are the golf superintendent and the mechanic whom Swingo called vital to the business.
“That’s a big question that people that have wedding receptions want to know, if everything is done in-house, and that’s one thing that Rosemary likes to oversee all aspects of it. We have in-house mechanics, groundskeepers, chef, cooks, servers, all that stuff is under her supervision,” Catacora said. “We have a lot of longterm employees too.”
Keeping all the services to the golf course and banquet hall allows Twin Oaks to control its quality and consistency to what it offers its customers. Catacora has been with Twin Oaks for over 20 years.
The course hosts over 60 big golf outings a year and 500 league players on a weekly basis.
One of the regular events that Twin Oaks has enjoyed putting on is called the Senior Scramble that is held every other Wednesday. The most recent scramble saw 144 seniors come to the links to play a round. Typically the players at the event also enjoy soup for lunch and a nice dinner afterward in the clubhouse.
There is also an occasional offering of night golf on Friday nights that begins at 9 p.m. Night golf is played with glow-in-the-dark golf balls, fairway markers, flag sticks and holes.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Bill made it so that companies can no longer write off golf outings on their taxes which Swingo says had a major negative impact to the golf industry.
“Now we’re a lot more dependent on charitable golf outings. There has to be a charity involved or else the government gets involved,” she said. Twin Oaks also hosts its own charitable tournaments on a regular basis and also offers the course for the use of local high school golf teams.
Catacora said he was recently speaking with the man who runs the LaRosa’s Golf Outing and asked him why it is no longer an event.
“He said that once that bill came into effect, and not being able to write it off just became too big of an expense for the business,” he said.
Also, the amount of time a round takes has strained today’s golf courses because people have less time to spare on the game.
“If a round of golf takes four hours, you get here a half hour early, you stick around with the guys afterward and have a beverage, you’re looking at six hours. It’s become a big factor. That’s why the United States Golf Association is pushing for people to play nine holes.
Devou Golf Course (Covinton)
The course was built in the 1920’s and was originally only nine holes. The expanded 18-hole course was opened in 1995. The course record at Devou is 60, shot by Alex Volpenhein while still in high school at Covington Catholic. He earned the low score in the Devou Club Championship in 2004. Volpenhein went on to play at the University of Kentucky.
The biggest event this year at Devou Golf Course is the World’s Largest Golf Outing which is a fundraiser for the Wounded Warrior Foundation to provide for Military Veterans in need. Last year, Billy Casper Golf Courses, which manages Devou, was able to raise over $900,000 in the outing. This year’s outing is scheduled to take place on Monday, August 3.
Devou Golf Course also hosts fundraisers for Ludlow Youth Football and St. Augustine Youth Basketball as well as a host of other organizational efforts. There is also a senior league at the golf course that has been there for over 25 years.
One of the biggest changes the course has made recently was changing the grass on the fairways to zoysia grass. The golf course is in an area within the grass-growing world called the transition zone.
“You go within 25 miles of here and find pretty much every kind of grass that’s been tried on a golf course, pretty much anywhere else in the world. Everybody is searching for the one that grows best in its location. So, we’ve got some challenges with slopes and being able to keep irrigation on some of those slopes and a lot of different soil conditions and zoysia grass seems to be able to handle it well,” said Golf Superintendent Ron Freking.
“It was all done in-house so we didn’t have to go purchase seed or sod and it was a long process, but it has benefited this golf course a ton. Something to be proud of for sure,” said David Peru, General Manager.
Devou is an especially hilly golf course that folks from out of town see as both a challenge and as a thrill. The hills certainly present special challenges in terms of upkeep to the course, but at the same time, the hills, combined with the views of the Cincinnati skyline, provide the aesthetics that are hard to find elsewhere.
“It’s especially the case when you get people from out of town where it’s basically flat, they will play golf here and think it’s just awesome,” Freking said.
The Golf Courses of Kenton County (Independence)
The three courses in Independence that are part of the Golf Courses of Kenton County are Pioneer, The Willows and Fox Run. This massive golf complex was first established with the building of Pioneer Golf Course in 1968. The Willows and Fox Run were added to the original course to complete the three-course complex. Fox Run is consistently rated as one of the most challenging public courses in the state.
A.J. Jolly Golf Course (Alexandria)
The A.J. Jolly Golf Course was opened in 1962 and was designed by William H. Diddel. The public course in Alexandria has 18-holes and is a par 71.
Hickory Sticks (California)
One of the more modern golf course, Hickory Sticks opened up in California, Kentucky in 1998 and continues to be a popular choice for area golfers.
Flagg Springs Golf Course (California)
Another relatively recently built golf course in Campbell County is Flagg Springs which opened in 1997 by a small group of investors interested in the game of golf. Their vision and strong desire transformed the land where the golf course lies from what was originally utilized as a dairy farm into the course today.
Flagg Springs refers to itself as a very challenging golf course that is home to one of the most difficult par 3’s in the Northern Kentucky area, the eleventh hole. It has been home to the Northern Kentucky Men’s Amateur, as well as the Northern Kentucky Junior and Senior Amateur since its origin.
Fort Mitchell Country Club Golf Course (Ft. Mitchell)
The nine-hole golf course at the Fort Mitchell Country Club is a private course for its members, but is the oldest of all the existing golf courses in the area. Built in 1905 by Tom Bendalow, the course took two years to complete. It is a par-70 course with the fairways of holes number one and nine crisscrossing.
History
The first golf course in Northern Kentucky was called the Iverness Golf Club owned by Covington businessman Samuel Bigstaff, but when a fire wiped out the clubhouse in 1913, the nine-hole golf course was closed for good two years later.
NKGA and the Hall-of-Fame
In 1940, the Northern Kentucky Golf Association was founded to promote amateur golf and conduct local tournaments. The NKGA has members listed from several Northern Kentucky counties and hosts the Northern Kentucky Invitational Golf Tournament Scholarship Fund to support the men’s and women’s golf teams at Northern Kentucky University. The NKGA established a Hall-of-Fame to honor local golfers who have “complied with the highest standards of integrity, sportsmanship and good conduct in connection with golf.”
Some notable NKGA Hall-of-Fame players include Ralph “Pete” Stuntebeck who was the youngest golf professional in the United States, as a club pro at the Fort Mitchell Country Club at the age of 18. He was later the head professional at Twin Oaks in 1951 and lasted 26 years there, winning both the Greater Cincinnati Stroke Play and Kentucky State Senior Open championships in 1955.
Gary Herfel was a past champion of the Northern Kentucky Tournament in 1983, a two-time winner of the Mid-Amateur (1986, 1999), a four-time winner of the Senior Amateur (1996, 1997, 1999, and 2002), and a Carran Memorial winner in 1996. Herfel won the Northern Kentucky Invitational Tournaments seven times, was named Player of the Year three times, Senior of the Year six times and is the only player to have won both the Kentucky State Senior Amateur and Open titles.
Some women golfers in the NKGA Hall-of-Fame include Margaret Jones who is a two-time winner of the Northern Kentucky Women’s Championship and a four-time winner of the Kentucky State Women’s Championship between 1962 and 1971. Jones also won the Cincinnati Metropolitan Women’s Tournament three times.
Angie Grubbs was inducted into the NKGA Hall-of-Fame in 2001. As a player, Grubbs won the Northern Kentucky Women’s Amateur Champion five times (1959, 1962, 1966, 1967, and 1970).
Other Standout Local Players
In the past 25 years, two Northern Kentucky golfers have played on the PGA Tour: Ralph Landrum and Steve Flesch. This season at NKU, golfer Clayton Portz made numerous headlines while golfing for his school, earning the Atlantic Sun Player of the Week two weeks in a row in April. Joining the NKU men’s golf team next season will be Newport Central Catholic standout athlete Drew McDonald who will play both golf and basketball for the Norse in his freshman year.
Written by Bryan Burke, associate editor
