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Golf on Cape Cod Course ReviewMink Meadows Golf Course
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Photography by George Peet
As Alistair Cooke wrote in the foreward to The World Atlas of Golf, The Great Courses and How They Are Played, “[We] don’t know much about ‘architecture,’ but we know what’s good.”
And Mink Meadows is good. Measuring 3,185 yards from the blue tees, it flows like a big old Cadillac, smooth and wide, with gradual turning, gentle handling, graceful lines and a great window of the Cape from the top of the hill between 8 and 9.
After being awed by Farm Neck, charmed by Edgartown and overwhelmed by the Vineyard Golf Club, the immediate sensation we felt on arrival at Mink Meadows was one of comfort.
Opened for play in 1936, Mink Meadows was designed by Wayne Stiles, the eminent Boston landscape designer who turned to golf course architecture during the boom in new courses that came during the Roaring Twenties. A few of his other works include Albemarle, Woodland, Thorny Lea and parts of Tedesco.
Unlike most residential development today, with home sites located around golf courses, here the course surrounds the homes, although you wouldn’t know it for all the screening that is provided by generations of tree-growth. The only real clue that people live inside the square formed by the course is the access road that cuts through the middle.
A recent course renovation by Ron Pritchard attests to the commitment on the part of the management and membership to provide a top-quality golf experience, both for the regulars who love their course and for the daily fee players who are happy for the chance to play an island course on the quick and relatively cheap.
From the ancient shade trees that provide a canopy between car and cart, to the wooden steps leading up to the clubhouse, Mink Meadows beckons the golfer to enter another era, when the game of golf meant walking, not riding, and shot-making, not slamming the ball to the ends of the earth.
An added bonus to a round here might come in the form of a stray who is looking to fill out a foursome, as in our case, with Fred Pekari, a retired engineer who winters in Florida, lives on Chappaquiddick, works part-time as a green keeper at Mink Meadows and drives always down the middle.
That is why, he explained, they call him Fairway Fred.
“I had never met so many Freds in my life before I moved here,” he said. “I think this must be where we all go to die. In any case, we had so many Freds that somewhere along the line we all got nicknames, and mine became Fairway Fred.”
It makes sense, too, as that’s where he always was, in the middle and usually longer than the rest of us, which he was nice to try to fluff off by saying that as a member of the crew here, he has become familiar with all the hard spots in the landing areas.
In any event, Fairway Fred Pekari showed us how to play the course from the first, a 349-yard par 4 from an elevated tee to a wide fairway that funnels up to a fast, tiny, subtly sloped green.
He did it again at the second, by placing his ball in the perfect spot around the corner of a dogleg left, with just a little wedge remaining for his pitch over the bunkers and onto the slightly larger green than the first.
He slipped a little at the third, pulling one toward the rough on the left, but recovered nicely and barely missed par. That was it for Fred’s wildness, however, as he managed to hit and hold every one of the remaining fairways and dropped only one hole to our group (when I took a 2 on the par 3 at No. 5. Nice putt, Shaky!).
Although the final four were played in that blur that comes over a duffer who has just made his first birdie in weeks, I do remember a few thoughts from the time:
When you know what you’re doing out there, it sure can look easy.
Beware the low-handicapper whose home course is Mink Meadows.
I could live here and play nothing else and be happy forever.
Martha’s Vineyard sure has a great collection of golf courses – and for players at all levels of wealth and ability.
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