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Willowbend Club
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Photography by George Peet
The respected owner of Willowbend Golf Club, Paul Fireman, is widely regarded as a golf enthusiast who holds his love for the game close to his heart and close to his property management style. In a past issue of Golf on Cape Cod magazine, before the old Willowbend shed its skin, we had a chance to speak with Mr. Fireman in an exclusive interview about his passion for the game. Willowbend’s latest metamorphosis is more evidence to the fact.
Willowbend recently expanded the existing 18-hole course with a new nine holes. The new nine allows Willowbend members the luxury of all the different playing permutations of three distinct nines, respectively named by Willowbend management: The Bay, The Bog, and The Bend.
Beyond these three nines, members can also play the original 18-hole course, The Old Course, and The Championship Course, a mix-and-match of the longest and more difficult holes measuring a whopping 7,211 yards. That makes for 5 different golf courses on the same 27 holes. Not too bad for a single Cape Cod golf destination.
Seven of the new nine holes are on The Bay section (or the South side), which shares the same starting hole as the 10th of the Old Course original layout, and the other additions are the 7th and 8th holes of The Bog section (or the North side closer to Rte. 28), which now divert off to the left after the 17th of The Old Course layout.
So how have the new nine holes contributed to Willowbend’s reputation as one of the best golf destinations on Cape Cod? That’s the central question. And because it might take the entire magazine to review 5 different golf courses on 27 different holes, the focus for this review is on the new nine.
The long-time course architect for Willowbend Golf and Land Design, Bruce Besse, chimed in with some commentary on the design and construction process of the new nine holes. Billy Clark, the director of sales and marketing, added his two cents. Here goes…
Willowbend is the kind of course that carries a lot of prestige, a lot of weight in the proverbial bag of opinions that surround Cape Cod courses. In short and most obviously, people, especially golf people, know about Willowbend because Willowbend is a celebrated Cape Cod landmark.
The golf course is centrally located in Mashpee. Glimpses of the willow trees weeping their long slender branches onto the grass of various holes and the quintessential Cape cranberry bogs that are scattered throughout the course can be seen as you drive down Rte. 28 or Quinnaquisset Road in Mashpee.
Also, thanks to much coverage in print media outlets, most people are aware of chairman and Reebok International CEO Fireman’s ownership and hands-on role at Willowbend. Not to mention the fact that many of his business operations are highlighted in a number of national news circuits because of his mogul status in the shoe and apparel industry.
Further, many people have been to Willowbend’s Children’s Charity Pro-Am, a perennial summer favorite on Cape Cod, where spectators have watched PGA greats like Greg Norman, John Daly, and Larry Mize play alongside sports celebrities like Bobby Orr, Bill Russell, and John Havlicek.
Even for the non-golfing bunch, Willowbend’s yearly Independence Day fireworks celebration that blasts off above the cranberry bog on the 210-yard signature par 3 attracts a considerable amount of attention.
Clark, who specializes in the real estate segment of the club, spoke about some other reasons why Willowbend is so popular. “I like to think of Willowbend as a lifestyle destination. It has 27 holes of spectacularly conditioned golf course, meticulously maintained. There is an Olympic sized pool facility, complete with a kiddie pool section. The tennis facility is unmatched on Cape Cod which includes a center tennis stadium with 500 seats. We even have personally delivered room service, or house service if you will, from our restaurant, delivered directly to the doors of our members living within the Willowbend community. Really, once you’re here in the Willowbend community, you never have to leave.”
Naturally, with all the Willowbend hubbub in the local media, any golfer would expect to find a no less than spectacular continuation of the already existing 18 holes. And for the most part, the new holes are appropriately complimentary. However, there are some oddities. Three of the nine new holes, for example, are par 4’s 307 yards or shorter.
Bruce Besse explained that the idea to expand the existing Willowbend started in 1996. “Paul Fireman was instrumental with the initial planning,” said Besse. “He spent a lot of time with the planning and that planning involved a lot of different routing options and a lot of different choices.”
The initial idea was simple. Acquire the land surrounding Willowbend and then decide what do with it — expand the real estate, expand the golf course, or expand both. Fireman, being the kind of golf-interested developer he is, chose to expand the golf course. “The direction for Mr. Fireman always seemed to be ‘Let’s do another nine holes,’ ” Besse assured, “and the decision of prioritizing the golf experience over the real estate experience is great. There are not too many developers who are willing to give up real estate for the golf holes. And I applaud Mr. Fireman’s decision to do that.”
Decisions of this magnitude are never made overnight, of course. There were “19 or 20 different routing plans drawn up, completely colored and everything,” said Besse, and with all these different architectural plans came very complicated “cost-benefit analyses.” Essentially it was a matter of permitting. Some permits would be more difficult and thus more expensive to get than others. “We spent literally years developing the best plan for Willowend and the surrounding community,” Besse explained with a sigh of relief, as if he was glad to be talking about the finished project as opposed to still developing those plans. “We started permitting in ’97 or ’98,” he continued, “it took 4 years to get approval and it took 29 weeks to build the nine holes.”
The first new hole comes as the 2nd of The Bog section. The tee for the 403-yard par 4 sits roughly 25 yards from the fairway. If there was ever a truly beautiful beginning to a new set of golf holes, the 2nd hole is one.
On the left side of the fairway 150 yards from the tee, a water hazard bends slightly for approximately 150 yards before a stone wall separates the water from the green. A small red New England style barn house sits proudly behind the water. A river, coming from a 3rd hole water hazard, runs along the right hand side of the 2nd fairway and empties into the greenside pond after a miniature waterfall in front of the barn house. This river, according to Besse, is part of an intricate water storage system that was designed to meet the restrictions of town and regional laws on water usage.
Basically, the laws required Willowbend to water the 27 holes with the same amount of water, and not a drop more, that was used on the existing 18 holes. Sound like a difficult proposition? Not for the Willowbend Golf and Land Design team.
They retrofitted all the sprinkler heads with low volume output fixtures, utilized the water hazards on the new holes as extraction and storage lakes, installed an advanced computer system to balance the water levels in the various water hazards with the natural drainage and run-off, and now, officially, with the computer specifications to prove it, the current watering system for the new 27 holes uses less water than the previous 18-hole system. “Whatever we were asked to do on the environmental side,” Besse said happily, “we stepped up to the tee and made it happen.”
The 3rd hole is an anti-climactic follow-up to the splendor of the 2nd hole. An extremely short par 4 at 296 yards, the fairway is strewn with bunkers as it travels uphill the entire way to an elevated green. The right hand side of the fairway houses one of the aforementioned water extraction ponds which will swallow any drastically sliced tee or approach shot. Because of the relative shortness of the hole, one can see how the routing of this particular area must have been difficult.
The next five holes, three par 4’s and two par 3’s, staggered one after another (4, 3, 4, 3, 4) are a demanding lot. The 436-yard par 4 4th is a slight dogleg left to a medium-sized green that allows for a rolling approach shot. The 186-yard par 3 5th is similarly long with mounding around the green, hiding any potential hole-in-ones from the tee box.
The following par 4, par 3 sequence is aligned with Shoestring Bay. The 381-yard par 4 6th doglegs left at about 230 yards from the tee, making it tempting to try and cut off the dogleg. The 6th green sits high and mighty with a majestic view of the waterfront below. Beach grass surrounds the green, providing more of that ocean side allure.
The 6th is a good example of how Mr. Fireman sacrificed plenty of waterfront real estate in order to enhance the golfing experience. In fact, the majority of the new nine holes are surprisingly empty of houses. Besse concurred and explained the reasoning, “One of the classic mistakes that golf architects and planners make is that they line houses up all along the golf course. What happens, as a result, is the house experience gets lousy and the golf experience gets lousy. So you end up decreasing the value. There are few houses located on these holes.”
The 155-yard 7th hole is a contestant for the most visually appealing at Willowbend. An elevated tee protected by surrounding forest and mounds hides the inevitable wind that consistently blows from Shoestring Bay. The green and the surrounding bunkers act as the foreground and the water is the background of this picture-perfect par 3.
What follows is another awkwardly short par 4 at 293 yards. The 8th tee sits beneath the gradually elevated fairway, slightly open on the left side until the 200-yard mark, where the fairway begins a sharp dogleg to the right. The green sits small and well-protected by bunkers roughly 90 yards and nearly 90 degrees from the dogleg. The 8th is a relatively easy hole that seems a bit out of place on a relatively challenging course like Willowbend.
The last two of the new nine holes come into play as the 7th and 8th of the Southside Bog section. The 7th is a spectacular 378-yard par 4 with a moatlike waterway protecting the green and the left side of the fairway. Beautiful stonework borders a series of tiered gardens on the right side of the apron approach.
The final new hole, No. 8 on The Bog nine, has similarly impressive stonework; this time forming a crescent walkway over a narrow water hazard on the left side of the green. A mere 307 yards, the 8th completes the trio of short par 4s on the new design. Birdie is within full reach and eagle, for the Tiger-length drivers among us, is not entirely out of the question.
And that’s it, a clearly ambitious addition to an 18-hole course that had already gained plenty of respect in the Cape Cod golf industry. Bruce Besse is right when he says that the holes along Shoestring Bay place Willowbend “into that category of Cape Cod golf courses that have beautiful water views.” He’s also right when he says that “Willowbend sets its own mark with the 27 hole options.”
So walk away with some birdies on the short par 4s, take in the sights by the waterfront, appreciate the craftsmanship and design of the stonework as well as the other unique architectural features, acknowledge the fact that these new nine holes could very easily have been a host of new houses, and call the director of sales and marketing about getting a Willowbend membership. Willowbend has cemented its placement in the top
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