A final tee time
Locust Valley Golf Course closes for real this time, opening a floodgate of memories
All the false alarms are over. A famous landmark of the Lehigh Valley officially is no longer. And after the last round of golf was played at Locust Valley Golf Course on Tuesday, the memories kept flooding in. Those will remain forever. “I caddied there when I was pretty young,” said 70-year-old course manager Kurt Zellner. “I was like 13 or 14 years old and working there when it was a private Jewish country club.”
Although Zellner didn’t spend his whole career there, he came back 26 years ago.
He’d be happy to try for another 26 if the course hadn’t closed.
“It’s been a lot of fun being there,” Zellner said. “I really enjoyed it. I’m really going to miss the place.”
Locust Valley eventually transitioned from a club with full amenities, including tennis courts and a swimming pool, to just a no-frills golf course enjoyed by everyone from the highest handicap to Joe DiMaggio to Arnold Palmer, whose wife, Winnie, grew up just down the road in Coopersburg.
Its tight, tree-lined fairways punished those who couldn’t hit it straight off the tee. Its narrow greens beguiled those who weren’t straight with their approach shots.
Trying to figure out which club to use on extreme uphill or downhill shots also could be maddening.
Yet thousands kept coming back for more of the David Gordon design on the rolling hills of the course, located in two counties, Upper Saucon Township in Lehigh and Springfield Township in Bucks.
For Rob Ashford, its most recent owner/ operator, Locust Valley was the first course he played coming out of college.
“It’s a very good course and I think it presented a good challenge,” Ashford said. “Like anything with so many fond memories, you’re sad to see it go.”
One of many memories in Locust Valley lore came on Aug. 4, 1986, when Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller, two legendary baseball Hall of Famers, and other sports celebrities such as Chuck Bednarik and Brooks Robinson, played in the Bud-Bud Light Bobby Shantz All-Star Classic at Locust Valley.
DiMaggio signed autographs for everyone in attendance and bantered with the crowd throughout his round, according to a story in the next day’s Morning Call.
Of DiMaggio’s first drive on the 510-yard, par-5 No. 1, The Morning Call reported:
“Clutching a Bruce Devlin driver instead of a Louisville Slugger, DiMaggio flashed that smooth swing that is his trademark. The result was a booming drive right down the middle of the fairway. The sizeable gallery oohed and aahed its appreciation while Joe D., who still has the look of an eagle with his silver hair flowing in the breeze, kiddingly clutched his left shoulder as though it had been betrayed him.”
What the course will become is what’s been in the works for six years: Anage-qualified housing development run by Traditions of America, which after a number of delays over the past two years, will start construction of a community that will feature more than 100 homes with 70 acres of open space and walking trails.
But until this week, something always held up the transaction.
In 2004, Locust Valley’s owners at that time agreed to a developer’s plan to convert the course into an age-qualified community.
That touched off disputes with Upper Saucon Township over sewage regulations, leading to two lawsuits that a federal judge dismissed in 2008. In 2012, Ashford, who had bought the previous owners’ bank notes, foreclosed on the facility and took over operations.
Ashford originally intended to continue operating Locust Valley as a golf course,
planning upgrades that included a restaurant and driving range. In 2014, he sought $2.25 million from Upper Saucon for development rights, and the township offered $1.2 million. The parties did not agree on development rights, leading Ashford to make a deal with Traditions of America.
Whether or not the course was going to close was a constant question over the last few years.
“The public’s been thinking we’ve been closing for three years because they’ve been seeing it in the paper or whatever that [the deal] was done,” Ashford said. “People would stop booking tee times because they thought we were closed.”
Now it is.
For good.
Homebuyers are already lining up.
“Just last week, over 60 interested buyers toured the property,” TOA partner David Biddison said, “and weplan on having a sales event in November.”
Biddison was among the many golfers who experienced Locust Valley and “was always awestruck by the beautiful natural setting,” he said.
But change in this case was inevitable. Locust Valley Golf Course exists nowonly in memories.
“It was just a very unique experience,” said Zellner. “I became a shoeshine boy there, too. Whoever would get out caddying first in the morning, if you’d get the first loop, you can come in and be the shoeshine
boy, too. It was a really great experience for a young guy wanting to work.”
Not to mention guys who aren’t so young. Locust Valley’s longtime mechanic, Allentown’s Ray Summerson, is 81 and still going strong. He’ll continue on at Ashford’s other course, Shepherd Hills in Lower Macungie Township. He started at Locust Valley in 1959 and has no intention to retire because, he said, “it isn’t work if you love what you do.”
By the time Summerson graduated from Allentown High School (now William Allen), he could essentially fix any machine. So he was a natural for Locust Valley. Whether it was carts, lawn mowers, tractors or irrigation systems, Summerson has lived to keep things moving.
“From one day to the next, you never know what’s going to happen or what you’re going to be doing tomorrow,” he said. “When you come in on a Monday morning, you didn’t know what might have happened over the weekend and what you’re going to be up against.
“That’s part of the fun of it.”
Summerson played at Locust Valley a few times. But his memories are all about the job. “I didn’t have much time to golf,” he said. For all the others who did, the popular course is no longer an option.