CLUB FOCUS
By Hank Gola
From the time Donald Ross first forced spade into soil in 1914, Knickerbocker Country Club in Tenafly, N.J., has been something special. Contemporary papers marveled at how Malcom Mackay “with characteristic energy” displaced some tree-covered swampland on his property into a “magnificent” nine-hole golf course. The best, they said, was yet to come.
It won’t be long before the best arrives. Knickerbocker is in the midst of a $25 million master plan that touches every part of the club from course to clubhouse. If Knickerbocker was ever under the radar, it will not be any longer. The goal is to honor tradition through restoration while looking to the future with improvements and growth. Knickerbocker, which lies just across the Hudson River from Yonkers and is slang for a New Yorker, is a club that holds tightly to its history. Notably, it has had just six head professionals, only three since 1953. The objective is to balance that legacy with an eye toward modernization.
Golf remains the cornerstone, but Kelly adds, “I think that some of the areas where the club just hadn’t invested in the last generation, they’re catching up with this current master plan work. It’s obviously a competitive area when it comes to the family offerings and the club is accepting that. If you’re going to offer rackets and pool and dining, you want them to be a valuable part of the membership experience, complementing the great heritage in golf that the club has always had.”
For now, the golf course portion of the undertaking is on hold until 2028, with 75% of the work yet to be completed. Well-satisfied with the first stages of the course restoration, the club turned its focus to the other side of Knickerbocker Road, its east campus. The clubhouse is being gutted and, as Kelly explains, “being rebuilt from the inside out: old electrical, ancient HVAC, outdated utilities, aging locker rooms, dated decor, all of it. Event space will be much more attractive. The goal, again, isn’t to erase history. The goal is to bring a 1914 building into 2026.”
Outside and behind the clubhouse, a new short game practice area is being planned with the tennis courts moved to stand alongside additional pickleball and paddle ball courts. That will also open up space for outdoor dining. Additionally, the driving range is being reconfigured and the pool rebuilt.
Of course, most eyes outside the club will be on the golf course, last previously touched by Ron Forse in 2007–2008. In 2020, the club retained Jaeger Kovich to restore the layout to its original character, a task Kovich embraced for its two-pronged challenge of channeling two separate Golden Age architects, Donald Ross and Herbert Strong, and bringing back their key elements. Although Strong’s contributions are now being questioned, it has long been thought that he designed holes two through nine, 13, and 14. Kovich was immediately impressed by the bones he found.
“It has some seriously cool potential for restoration,” he says. “It’s a unique golf course. We heard about the Donald Ross part when we first started there but when you unpack the history it’s more the combination of the two that make it really exceptional. We started uncovering these old photographs from when the golf course was in its heyday and you see some unbelievable bunker shapes with all these fingers and lobes throughout.
“When we first started, I put a picture up on Instagram, and a friend from the Melbourne sand belt reached out and asked, ‘What sand belt golf course is that?’” he adds. “I said, ‘That’s New Jersey.’ Once we're able to start getting the right amount of those (fingers and lobes) and adjust little bits and pieces, it’s going to stand out as one of the most uniquely bunkered golf courses in the area.”
Head professional Bill Hook is in his 16th year at Knickerbocker, following in the footsteps of New Jersey PGA Hall of Famers Otto Greiner (31 years) and Ed Whitman (26 years).
Hook loves the 168-yard, par-3 sixth with its boldly countered green and dead zone left.
“It’s a hole that really catches your eye,” he says. “And 14 (a 379-yard par 4 improved greatly through tree removal) has turned into one of the best holes around. It’s not going to kill you with length, but you better be precise. Two of the ones I’m most excited for are the third hole and the 13th hole. Once we renovate those, the drawings and the spec sheets look incredible.
“Everything done so far has been well-received; everybody’s ecstatic,” he adds, noting in particular the work of superintendent Kyle Hillegass, who was brought in along with Kovich in 2020. “We hosted the New Jersey Section PGA Championship in September. A lot of the competitors hadn’t been here since we had the 2020 State Open. The letters I received after that event were off the charts about the golf course and what has happened out there. There’s definitely a buzz about the golf course now. People are excited to see what happens next.”
A group of top juniors from the Northeast and Canada will get to see for themselves in August when Knickerbocker hosts the Williamson Cup.
One thing that won’t change at Knickerbocker is what members love most and have loved for 111 years.
Current president Robert “Woody” Cohan, a member for 26 years, couldn’t agree more. “it’s the friendliness of the members,” he says. “When I first joined, buddies of mine, a bunch of lawyers, brought me in. But there were four of them, and they always played together on Saturdays. They said, ‘Just go to driving range at 7:30 and you’ll get a game.’ We didn't have tee times back then. You’d just meet people and go off. It ended up being great. It’s just a nice bunch of people there.”
That welcoming vibe extends to the staff, too. “It’s a membership that when they ask you how you’re doing, they really care, and they want you to feel a part of the place,” Hook notes. “They want you to be involved. They want you to play with them. They want you to be around. They really make you feel like part of the family, which, honestly, is why I’ve loved being here for so long.”
The late Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist, was one of those members. In writing the program piece when the Metropolitan Golf Writers named Knickerbocker its 2014 Club of the Year, he said, “It’s not famous. It’s never been the site of a major championship. To its members, of course, Knickerbocker is No. 1.”
Photos by Nick Santoriello