Extreme Makeover

Once a toxic waste dump, Liberty National now gets a chance to prove itself as a PGA Tour venue

The unique views at Liberty National were an immediate selling point to the PGA Tour.

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By Jonathan Wall

Photo by Michael Cohen/Getty Images

August 25, 2009

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- Draped by the backdrop of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline, it's actually not hard to see why Tom Kite and Bob Cupp fell in love with the idea of designing a golf course on a toxic waste dump formally known as "Craven Point".

After 17 years of headaches that ranged from old warehouses on the property, contamination from discarded oil tanks and toxic runoff from nearby refineries, the two designers were finally able to come up with a finished project in 2006.

The result is a breed of golf course that hasn't been seen before, and one that beginning Thursday will host The Barclays, the first event in the FedEx Cup playoffs. Unlike most of the courses in the Northeast that were built and designed around the beauty and topography of the land, Liberty National stands as a venue that could be the future of golf course designs.

"Whether you like it, don't like it, or are indifferent about it, everything out there's one hundred percent man-made. There's nothing out there that's natural," Kite, the Hall of Fame player who will turn 60 in December. "The big thing in today's golf course design is to find a great piece of property and touch it as little as possible. This is light years on the other side of the spectrum from that. Everything has been created, and those guys that are in to that type of design and working with pristine pieces of property, they would have run away from this site as quickly as [Usain] Bolt runs."

The hurdles the course had to clear over the past 17 years are especially remarkable when considering the finished product in many ways resembles a reproduction of western Scotland albeit one that rests on a foundation of sand, plastic, and at its core, toxic waste.

But if there's one major hurdle the course still has to clear, it's getting a passing grade from the toughest critics of all: the PGA Tour, specifically the 124 (Paul Casey withdrew from the event) players teeing it up this week in The Barclays.

While the views of the Status of Liberty, Manhattan skyline and other major landmarks give the PGA Tour and television the perfect backdrop for the playoff opener, the course itself will ultimately decide whether Liberty National sinks or swims as a future tour stop.

A majority of the field is seeing the course for the first time this week, and the two remarks that keep coming up in conversations are the severely sloped greens and tight layout.

"The first time I saw was [Sunday], and I liked the golf course overall," said Dustin Johnson, currently ranked 19th on the FedEx Cup points list. "It's really tricky around the greens and the fairways are really, really narrow. You're not going to be able to fake it around the golf course. There's water on almost every hole."

"Faking" it around Liberty National won't be an option. The rain the course has received over the past month has considerably softened up the fairways and the greens on the 7,419-yard layout. But if the current weather conditions continue to dry up the course, the venue could end up playing the way Kite and Cupp envisioned it would as a hard and fast links-style layout.

Most tournament courses have at least five to 10 years to get their feet under them before hosting a major event. Liberty National, on the other hand, is being thrust into the spotlight just three years after the course was completed. And while things appear to look near completion at first glance, there are still a number of projects that have yet to be finished.