Ridgewood Country Club has hosted a Senior PGA Championship (2001), a U.S. Senior Open (1990), the U.S. Amateur (1974), and a Ryder Cup (1935). And with the playing of The Barclays that ended Sunday, it proved more than sufficient challenge to the best and longest hitters of the modern era.
David Feherty was so favorably impressed by Ridgewood that he told the CBS audience it had vaulted into his top ten. Vijay Singh praised it early in the week, albeit by way of taking a shot at (PGA Championship venue) Oakland Hills, but he was surely singing the same tune late Sunday when he defeated Sergio Garcia and Kevin Sutherland in a playoff.
So depending on the membership's appetite for that kind of unabashedly positive attention, it would seem that Ridgewood, a Tillinghast design founded in 1890, has nudged its way into the elite New York-area venues that can host USGA, PGA and PGA Tour championships. Or maybe it always was there.
The Barclays, as the first event in the FedEx Cup playoffs, moves to Liberty National in 2009. Contractually, it's supposed to return to Westchester Country Club, its home for 40 years, at least once before 2012. Ridgewood, at the very least, could become part of a Barclays rotation or maybe now that the world's best players have taken such a liking to it, it might be considered for a major championship.
In modern times, the USGA has held its Open at four New York-area courses: Winged Foot, Baltusrol, Shinnecock and Bethpage. Hosting a U.S. Open involves far more than a challenging course with superb conditioning. There are the twin issues of crowd and hospitality logistics.
Working in Ridgewood's favor is its third nine, meaning there was plenty of room for facilities and it has the ability to line fairways with corporate skyboxes and hospitality tents.
More complicated is the issue of moving that number of spectators into a course that's basically set in a residential neighborhood. The ace in the hole for Ridgewood is a mall (not just any mall, but...drumroll, please...the Paramus Mall) that gives it a pretty good-sized satellite parking field and the ability to run shuttle buses to the course from within about five miles. Also in its favor is that the county's blue laws mean the mall is closed on Sunday, so you could accommodate many thousands of final-round golf spectators with ease. (Sunday blue laws? We ask, who else but www.styledtoatee.com gives you the kind of local knowledge that includes retail traffic patterns!?!)
I'm still searching the web, and the local papers, for crowd estimates. That alone would be the best barometer of whether Ridgewood can be considered for something as grand as a U.S. Open or PGA Championship. -- Robert Lohrer
Editor's Update: Barclays president Bob Diamond reported Friday's attendance at around 18,000, with crowds of 20,000 expected for the weekend.
Editor's Update II (8.26.08): The PGA Tour sends word, via e-mail and in response to our attendance query, that it does not release attendance figures. Barclays, the sponsor, issued a press release Monday "that fans turned out in tournament record numbers." As they say, make of that what you will.
Editor's Clarification (9.9.08): Belatedly, we append one correction. The satellite parking used for The Barclays was incorrectly identified. It was at Garden State Plaza, not Paramus Mall.
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