Union League National Golf Club
Below are excerpts from an article that originally appeared in Cape May Magazine.
Ask any golfer what their idea of the perfect golf course would be. Most would say some combination of perhaps the two most iconic courses, and most regarded, in America: Pine Valley and Augusta National. If you can imagine that, then you are imagining Union League National Golf Club. The Union League of Philadelphia, which owns Union League National, was founded in 1862 to support President Abraham Lincoln and The Union in the United States’ Civil War.
Located in Swainton, here in Cape May County, and built on the bones of the old Sand Barrens Golf Course, Union League National is mind-boggling and breathtakingly beautiful. It is that good and that special.
The course was reconstructed and completely redesigned by its original architect, Dana Fry, and partner Jason Straka. Fry, one of the world’s best and most in-demand golf course architects, who designed Erin Hills, site of the 2017 USGA United States Open, brought Pine Valley to the Shore with Union League National. With its smooth, rolling fairways, lakes and ponds, and large, tiered sloping greens, Fry’s new UL National will remind golfers, and golf fans in general, of Bobby Jones’ Augusta National home of The Masters every April.
“The course is totally unrecognizable from when it was Sand Barrens,” said General Manager Jacob Hoffer. “Lakes, ponds and creeks, plus vast waste areas and creative vertical elevation all create so much more drama than there was here before.”
“There’s a little of Pine Valley and Calusa Pines, Dana’s course in Naples [Florida],” said Hoffer. “Put them both in a blender and you have the new Union League National. It’s a great course and a sight to behold.”
The central and almost unbelievable feature of Union League National is its signature “Big Fill.” Constructed, literally, from tons and tons of earth that was moved to carve out the course’s newly formed lakes and ponds and creeks, the Big Fill is a mini mountain standing tall at the center of the new property. Inspired by a similar hill built at Fry’s famed Calusa Pines course, Union League’s Big Fill at its highest point reaches nearly 80 feet above sea level, close to twice the height of the one at Calusa Pines. The Big Fill towers over Union League’s three nine-hole courses, each one named for Union Civil War generals Grant, Meade, and Sherman. Among several elevated teeing stations. the most dramatic one may be Sherman’s No.9, a straightaway par 4. There, from the back tees, you shoot down from around 60 feet over a finger of water.
“The Big Fill is the primary, and most prominent, feature of the course,” said Dana Fry. “You can see the whole course from the top. Everything just spreads out underneath you from the summit of the Fill.”
Click here to read the full article on capemaymag.com.