Styled to a Tee is setting out to play some golf in a pivotal swing state this weekend. It’s serendipitous as a few family members plan to canvass neighborhoods in an effort to get out the vote.
Our focus — brief as it is over a few-day span — is golf in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, the Poconos, the plateau and rugged hill country just west of the Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. At first blush, based on limited exposure, it’s a vastly underrated golf destination. I say this for a few reasons, most highly empirical, not rising to the level of scientific.
The first is that while New Yorkers are proud of where they live, that pride is rivaled closely by feelings about where they weekend. (Notice the use of "weekend" as a verb; similar to "race" but way more competitive.) And the hierarchy of weekend destinations goes something like this:
1. The east end of Long Island (the Hamptons, Amagansett, Montauk, the North Fork, etc. There’s a hierarchy within the hierarchy, but that’s for other blogs and realtors to sort out.)
2. The Hudson Valley
3. The Berkshires
4. Bucks County
5. The Jersey Shore
6. (tie) The Catskills/Poconos
And yet if I were setting out to play golf and didn’t belong to a club or have a standing invitation, I’d almost rank them in inverse order for being golf friendly. That’s possibly a bold statement and I’d welcome responses and input from regional visitor bureaus. (I’d welcome feedback from my partner, Rico Williams, but like winter itself, that’s inevitable and will arrive soon enough.) If you’re going to write that a region with Shinnecock, Maidstone, National Golf Links, Sebonack and several others couldn’t possibly be last on any golf list, please include the tee time (or lifetime) when I might see the inside of any of these.
Meanwhile, the website,www.800poconos.com, lists 36 facilities. Though not all are resorts or daily fee and no combination rivals the Murderer’s Row listed above, it appears the vast majority welcome the public, at rates that would accommodate a variety of budgets.
Further, my limited experience of playing golf in the Poconos includes an outing atSkytop Lodge. While the phrase "hidden gem" is overused in most golf travel correspondence, Skytop (in Skytop, PA,population 87) would seem the very embodiment. Unheralded and, in my experience, virtually unknown to other golf-crazed Gothamites, I came upon it several years ago, quite by accident. The lodge is historic, the accommodations old world, the grounds expansive, and the golf course lush, picturesque, memorable and challenging.
A few years later I returned for a two-night stay, but with two young children I didn’t have the chance to play the golf course for a second time. It being a late fall weekend — in fact, I think it was Halloween three years ago — we were able to sample the wide range of family activities, both indoor and outdoor. With an in-season room rate of about $550 a night (including all meals), Skytop would rank comfortably with The Equinox and Woodstock Inn of Southern Vermont and Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y.
So, we’re headed back to the region, if not to Skytop this time. As we like to say at Styled to a Tee, see you down the road. — Robert Lohrer