hen you walk the fairways of George Wright GC in Hyde Park, you can't help but wonder ...
What if this were a private course with a high-six-figures operating budget? How would it rank among the top private courses in the region?
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GEORGE WRIGHT GC
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Hyde Park, MA - 18 holes
617-361-8313
Par 70
| TEES |
YARDS |
RATING |
SLOPE |
| Front |
5,131 |
70.3 |
115 |
| Middle |
6,096 |
68.6 |
123 |
| Back |
6,440 |
69.5 |
126 |
DIRECTIONS: Route 1 south to Washington Street rotary. Go left, toward West Roxbury. Take a right onto Beach Street and follow signs to course.
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Conversely, what if the Massachusetts Golf Association and Bill Flynn didn't seek out a lease nearly 20 years ago? Would this golf course even exist today? Would there be housing lots there instead?
All conjecture aside, this is an emerald oasis in working-class Hyde Park.
Designed by the famed Donald Ross as a WPA project in the 1930s, George Wright was built on a site unfit for a golf course. There was too much ledge, and what wasn't ledge was hill and wetland. If environmentalists had the say 70 years ago that they do today, this golf course never would have been built.
All this amplifies the genius of Ross, who somehow maneuvered 18 holes - with 18 wonderful greens settings - over this difficult piece of land. Sure, it isn't perfect. There are some funky approach shots. The par-4 fifth hole, for example, is nonsensical. You hit to a mountainous fairway, then knock a wood or long iron from a downhill lie to a sunken green.
That's not the only hole that will bedevil you. There are several shots along this course on which even the scratch golfer will feel the pressure.
Before you are through 18 holes at George Wright, you will have hit every club in your bag and every sort of shot.
The MGA and Flynn are no longer involved with the golf course. After their lease with the city of Boston ended, another bidder, Johnson Golf Management Inc. of Weston, won the contract before this season.
Conditions haven't changed for the better with the change in management.
It is still a municipal golf course and typical of a public facility out to lease. It is substandard if you judge it by private course criteria. It isn't even as well maintained as an upscale daily fee course. The tees are small and beat up from too much play. The fairways are sparse. The greens are riddled with ball marks.
George Wright is at the mercy of the elements. The antiquated drainage system needs work, and since there isn't an irrigation system, the course's conditions are fickle. Too much rain and it becomes a swamp. And when there is a drought, the fairways are burned out.
Aside to City Hall: Make some capital improvements. An irrigation system would improve the conditions immensely. It also would pay for itself in time.
Then again, this is one of the best golf buys in the Boston area. Maybe we have become too accustomed to manicured conditions. Maybe it is more courageous to hit shots from hard-pan lies occasionally. It's the way the game was played a century ago.
Although there are plenty of elevation changes, it isn't too difficult a walk. The journeys from green to next tee are short.
There are some terrific holes. The ninth and 10th, both mammoth par-4s, may be the toughest back-to-back holes public golfers will play.
The par-3s are terrific, especially No. 17, where you hit from an elevated tee to a pushed up green that is surrounded by bunkers. The fourth hole is a wonderful par-3 as well. The green is cut into the side of a hill. From the middle tees, it's a 150-yard shot. However, you won't want to play it from there. When we played, the tee was beaten to death. You'll find more grass on the forward or rear tee.
In a way, that's a tribute to the course. It's getting plenty of play. That's a good thing, especially when you realize that we almost lost this course two decades ago.
