In all honesty, my first experience at Deerfield Golf and Tennis Club in Newark, Del., was not good.
This was last year, not long after the state of Delaware had bought the onetime country club and converted it into a mid-priced daily-fee facility for any and all taxpayers. I called ahead for a tee time, drove down, pulled up to the bag drop, popped the trunk latch and hopped out, ready to play golf.
"The back nine is closed today," the guy at bag drop informed me. "We aerated."
Now, to me, that's the kind of thing that ought to come up when you're reserving your tee time. It didn't. I thanked the bag-drop guy, slammed my truck, and left - with an attitude.
I didn't go back until last week. I'm glad I did.
Not only did I notch my first-ever, sorta hole-in-one (details on my blog, www.golfinq.blogspot.com), I stumbled into a golf course that oozes personality - hilly, tight, full of twisty little doglegs, and all maintained tidier than the front parlor of grandma's house.
Moreover, I realized my less-than-satisfactory initial encounter with Deerfield was apparently the exception, not the rule.
Like Reading Country Club, a staid, old private club that went public last year, Deerfield arrives on the public golf scene fully formed, a club of a certain age with a respectable history and manicured grounds. No need for the soft opening or the grow-in.
Built by the DuPont Co. in 1955 as Louviers Country Club and later owned by credit-card giant MBNA, Deerfield has a clubhouse that is clean and comfy without being ostentatious, and the grounds are trimmed and green. Delaware has brought in Forewinds Hospitality (Inniscrone Golf Club) to manage the place.
The course itself was designed by William Gordon (Sunnybrook, Saucon Valley Grace Course), a Philadelphian who was one of the more prolific and perhaps unappreciated architects of an earlier era.
By today's standards of behemoth courses, Deerfield is short, only 6,323 yards from the tips and 6,005 from the white tees. In one reference to Deerfield I saw, somebody referred to it as an "executive course."
Trust me, it doesn't play like an executive course. It's a par 70, with only two par 5s (523 and 536 yards), but it's got five par 4s of at least 400 yards (six if you lend a yard to the 399-yard fifth). It's also got a 225-yard uphill par 3.
