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2003 edition of both Golf Digest and Business Week.
Entertain your clients at these posh public courses
By Ron Whitten and John Rooney, PhD
In
these frugal times a corporate membership to a private club may not be the
best way to entertain clients. A less expensive but still impressive alternative
is an upscale public course with all the amenities of a private club, from
wood-paneled lockers to spectacular golf to fine dining. You could organize
several outings during the year for a fraction of the cost of a private-club
initiation fee and a year's dues. To help you find a "country club for a
day" near you, we identified the top 25 business centers in the United States
using the U.S. Census of Business. John Rooney, Regents Professor of Geography
at Oklahoma State University and manager of Golf Digest's Database of Golf,
narrowed the list to 18 (plus two in Canada) based on business activity
and golf interest. Rooney, OSU's Eric Hardy, and Golf Digest Architecture
Editor Ron Whitten then identified the top-rated public courses within an
hour's driving distance from the Central Business District of each city
using Golf Digest's 100 Greatest Public Courses listing and Golf Digest's
Places to Play guide, which ranks more than 6,500 public courses in the
United States and Canada. For an extended listing, visit www.golfdigest.com.
Northeast - Boston
Shaker Hills Golf Club
Harvard, MA
The dominant features at Shaker Hills are its dramatic rock outcroppings. The par-4 11th plays over a field of exposed granite. Tee shots on the 18th must carry a deep chasm to reach a plateau fairway. Second shots play over a long spine of ledge rock that splits the fairway into high and low levels to a green fronted by a cluster of four deep bunkers. It's more than a little reminiscent of one of the game's most storied venues, The Country Club in nearby Brookline.