Guy Cipriano
Up a gentle hill with a slight rightward bend through a fairway pinched by two bunkers, the ninth hole at En-Joie Golf Club concludes with a green tucked beneath mounding with a human-created backdrop.
Golf elitists likely consider the four-level wooden fence stacked with billboard-sized cards promoting local businesses and national corporations a tacky backdrop. Easygoing folks view the backdrop as personifying the appeal of community-focused golf.
Plenty can be learned about the local business scene by studying signs on the fence:
HH&K? A law firm.
Nick’s? An East Main Street pizzeria and restaurant.
William H. Lane Incorporated? A general construction and construction management firm.
Too many businesses on the fence to fit into this column space. Too many special mornings, afternoons and evenings experienced on En-Joie to count.
En-Joie is a municipal course in Endicott, New York, a 13,000-resident village in the state’s Southern Tier. Located near Binghamton, Endicott has lost more than 20 percent of its population since 1970. IBM started, developed and prospered for decades in Endicott. The company has significantly curtailed its physical and personnel presence in the region over the past two decades. “Big Blue” still boasts a presence on the second column of the fence, beneath Dick’s Sporting Goods, between Toyota and Security Mutual Life, and above Senator Lea Webb.
Connecting a community through golf remains the primary business at En-Joie, a 98-year-old parkland layout between the Susquehanna River and Endicott’s main-street business community. Proximity to the river has induced multiple massive floods, resulting in course changes to fortify vulnerable spots such as the 15th hole, a long par 4 with water paralleling the left side of the fairway. Locals vividly recall times when river water inundated their course. Working on an ultra-busy course near a river isn’t for the weak, yet superintendent Sully Murphy and team keep En-Joie flourishing.
En-Joie personifies municipal golf’s egalitarian appeal. The course feels like it belongs to everybody who lives in Endicott and surrounding areas. From a comic-stripped inspired dinosaur welcome sign to modest green fees, En-Joie represents a place where people with tattered equipment and $829 drivers can easily comingle.
Locals warmly greet strangers and then enthusiastically act as course guides. This Ohio-based columnist booked a tee time as a single on a sparkling late-July Friday morning. I hit the random pairing jackpot, playing 18 holes with a local high school varsity basketball coach with similar interests. It might be the best $72 I’ve spent on golf. Note to industry friends: You learn a lot about what golfers want and appreciate by playing municipal courses with strangers.
The relatable uniqueness of En-Joie emerged during the walk up the ninth fairway and seeing the decorated fence. Hundreds of communities boast a course like En-Joie, which offers valuable green space, generates commerce, provides solid jobs, promotes personal wellness and boosts civic pride.
En-Joie attracts slightly more attention than courses of similar ilk because of its annual presence on the televised golf calendar as host of the PGA Tour Champions’ Dick’s Sporting Goods Open since 2007. The first Dick’s opened in nearby Binghamton in the 1940s, with the founding family relocating its headquarters to suburban Pittsburgh in the mid-1990s. The company blossomed into a national sporting goods juggernaut following the move.
Numerous players who have participated in the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open competed at En-Joie in its previous tournament life. The course hosted the PGA Tour’s B.C. Open from 1971 until 2005. Sadly, the PGA Tour abandoned many of its small-town stalwarts as its coffers expanded.
They’ll never be another PGA Tour stop named after a newspaper comic strip. Johnny Hart, the creator of B.C., hailed from Endicott. The dinosaur on the wooden welcome sign honors the prehistoric-themed comic strip. Sadly, the pro shop doesn’t sell prehistoric-themed En-Joie swag.
Hosting an annual televised tournament requires abundant community support. And the people facing the most pressure before, during and after tournament week at hyperlocal events are golf course maintenance teams.
En-Joie’s slogan, “Play Where the Pros Play,” is accurate but sets enormous expectations. The pros always play on tidy, slick and aesthetically pleasing turf. Visting En-Joie three weeks after the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open represented a treat and reaffirmed how fortunate the pros are to have people like Murphy and his crew dedicated to polishing and preserving treasured courses.
Imagine how ugly a fence with billboards might look if struggling Poa annua, bentgrass, ryegrass, bluegrass and fescue resided in the foreground.
Instead, everything fits wonderfully at En-Joie.
Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s publisher + editor-in-chief.
