To call Union League National Golf Club a masterpiece would be an understatement. To put it mildly, Union League National is maybe the very best, most beautiful and fun-to-play golf course ever imagined at the South Jersey Shore.
Golfing a round at Union League National Golf Club is pure bliss.
The newest of the great South Jersey first-class, private golf clubs, Union League National, formerly Sand Barrens Golf Club, a hybrid of New Jersey’s very own Pine Valley, perennially America’s No.1 rated golf course, and Bobby Jones’ Augusta National, is almost too incredible to be believed.
Built right upon the very bones of the old Sand Barrens Golf Course by its original architect, Dana Fry, with design partner Jason Straka, Union League National is like a phoenix risen from the ashes. It is both awe-inspiringly amazing and incredibly thrilling to get to play.
“ The course is totally unrecognizable from when it was Sand Barrens,” said Union League National Golf Club P.G.A. 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.”
Three Nines named for Civil War heroes, generals Ulysses S. Grant, George Meade and William Tecumseh Sherman make up the brand new Union League National Golf Club. The newest of the Nines, Meade, which opened last year in the final year of a four-year total re-imagining, along with Grant and Sherman, feature breath-taking elevations with desert-like waste areas and lush, green rolling Augusta-like fairways and large, multi-tiered sloping greens.
One of the very best examples of this is the brilliantly designed, and somewhat intimidating, par four 8th on Sherman. Teeing over water to a rising fairway guarded with two fairway bunkers, 8 plays straight upward to a plateaued putting surface protected by several strategically spotted sand traps. A terrific Risk-Reward par 4, long hitters will love to try to have a go to possibly putt for eagle or, more likely, chip or play from the greenside bunkers to get up-and-down for birdie.
One of my other favorite holes, and one of several Signature holes is Grant’s No.3. A pretty and petite par 3 modeled after one of Pine Valley’s most renowned holes, No.10, the play calls for a well struck wedge to maybe an 8-iron over a sea of sand to a postage-stamp, table-topped, two-tiered green. In a course just chock-full of amazing, shot-maker delights, hitting and holding the green at the beautiful, and puzzling, Grant Third is a victory in and of itself and an absolute joy to go and give it your best shot.
“ Grant 3 is just one of the many, many highlights in a round here at Union League National,” said Hoffer. “ It’s an homage to Pine Valley, which is one of the inspirations for the course. It’s a test of great shot-making. love to play it every time.”
A unique, and hard-to-comprehend, and signature feature of Union League National is its nearly 80 foot tall “Big Fill”. The Fill, created from carving out all of UL National’s new, crystal blue water hazards, based upon Fry’s similar, but smaller, Fill at his Naples, Florida course, Calusa Pines, is home to several super elevated tee boxes for holes from all three Nines like the dramatic tee on No.9 Sherman.
It’s very easy to forget that you’re in New Jersey when playing Union League National. Practically isolated from the world, and surrounded by wild woods and acres and acres of sand, players like myself are often, and easily, transported to playing Pinehurst No.2 and many of the other Sandhills golf courses in the “Cradle of American Golf” in North Carolina.
“ The idea was to make a one-of-a-kind, and total immersive, golfing experience,” said Hoffer. “ Dana(Fry) did just an amazing job. When you play here, it’s kind of like being in a different place and time.”
“ We are very proud of our work at Union League National,” said Fry. “Union League National will take its place as one of the premier clubs not only on the Jersey Shore, but on the entire East Coast.”
