By Daniel Bliss
From our September 1962 issue
An extraordinary golf course is flourishing for its second year on the coast of Maine, with mudflats for fairways, sand bars for greens, rock-grown seaweed for rough, and one vast combined sand trap and waterhole for the entire course. As far as is now known, The Tide’s Out Golf Course of Kennebec Point in Georgetown, Maine, which opened on August 25, 1961, has provided the first organized mudflat golf course in history.
Tide’s Out golf began as a serious sport, with regulation clubs and balls, a 2,360-yard layout for nine holes, handicaps, tournaments, and all the other trappings. But, also, it was different golf, as indicated on the cover of its printed scorecard, where a blue whale was pictured on the beach at low tide, grinning broadly and saying, “There’s a whale of a difference!”
One distinction is that a player has a choice of playing “dry” or “wet” golf. If he chooses dry golf, he may tee up the ball as high as he wishes on the fairway (mudflats) or rough (seaweed). However, standing water up to five inches deep is often encountered even by the “dry” golfers, so the founders devised ingenious tees made of wooden dowel pegs, three inches long and topped by a two-inch section of rubber hose.
Wet golf is played where the ball lies, with the exception that if it is submerged in water or imbedded in mud or sand, the ball may be teed up to the level of the water or the sand. It became evident, very early in The Tide’s Out history, that the only really sporting way to play this novel golf game was the wet variety.
A second unique feature of The Tide’s Out course is that its whole layout — greens, fairways, and rough — is washed clean every day, with divots replaced, footmarks erased, and torn-up scorecards cleared away, all at no cost to the club.
A third difference is that the holes on this course are not sunk in the greens; instead, a hole is a tin can, resting on top of the sand. One of the first problems was to provide holes that the 10-foot tide would not fill, as it swept in from the Atlantic twice a day. One of the founders, making a routine State Department inspection tour of embassies and consular posts, discussed the question of The Tide’s Out’s holes with ardent golfers around the world. For example, he caused a great debate to break out in one of the cities of the Middle East; discussion of the moot point continued in Tokyo, Manila, Rabat, Bucharest, and other posts where enthusiastic golfers were found. The issue was momentous: if the purpose were to hit a tin can instead of dropping the golf ball into a cup, how big in diameter should the can be to assure an equivalent test of skill in putting? It was finally agreed that hitting such a tin can could provide the same degree of difficulty as sinking a putt, only if the can had the sporting diameter of approximately two and three-eighths inches.
Some local ground rules had to be established in keeping with the nature of the terrain. For instance, it was originally planned to anchor the cans in the green so that they would remain in place after each fresh tide, but this made no allowance for over-running the can on a too-fast putt. This problem was solved by leaving the can only slightly impressed into the sand. Knocking a can over did not constitute sinking the putt; a player had to continue putting until he hit the can without upsetting it.
Also in putting, the ball may be lifted out of a sand ripple or footmark on the green and placed immediately beside it, but not nearer the hole. Small obstructions — shells, bits of seaweed, dead crabs, or stones — may be removed from the line of putt.
There was considerable debate as to whether seaweed, which grows in profusion around many of the greens, should be treated as rough, fairway, or hazard. It was finally determined that seaweed constitutes a hazard, in which a ball must be played as it lies. If the ball is unplayable, it must be moved out of the seaweed — though no nearer to the hole — at the cost of one stroke.
All water — be it incoming tide, puddles, or flat-drainage rivulets — has been played as a hazard, if the ball lies beyond a depth at which the tee may elevate it to the surface of the water.
Any ball lying above the high-water mark must be considered out-of-bounds; it may be restored to play at the nearest point in a fairway — not in a hazard and not nearer the hole — but at the cost of one stroke.
The response to the establishment of The Tide’s Out Golf Course was so enthusiastic that the small fry in the community, who would normally serve as caddies, became players instead. Therefore, all players became caddies, a do-it-yourself effort that resulted in the improving of mudflat golf-bag stands. One of the more durable of these is made with an old broom or rake handle four or five feet long, wired to the top and base of the bag and protruding a foot and a half below it as a sharpened stake. A crosspiece supports the bag on one side and on the other provides a push-step to press the spike into the mud and allow the bag to stand upright and dry while the player makes his shot.
There is time between tides for four foursomes to play around the nine holes, and then only if all players start at the first, third, sixth, and eighth tees simultaneously. Therefore, an open tournament — the final event of last season — was somewhat limited in numbers. Yet among the contestants were the former United States Deputy Ambassador to Laos in Southeast Asia; a former holder of the Amateur Golf Championship of the State of Maine; the president of the Board of Trustees of International College, Beirut, Lebanon; the Dean of the Medical School of Yale University; a member of the Harvard University faculty; and a Presbyterian minister, assigned to the World Council of Churches at Geneva. During the 1961 season, a course record of 38 was set by Dr. Leonardo Buck, of Bath, Maine, with Dr. Vernon Lippard, of New Haven, Connecticut, scoring the net low after handicaps.
The summer community at Kennebec Point is now swinging away through another good season of this unique golf club, which boasts of having no dues, no greens fees or greens committee, no divots to be replaced, and no golf — at high tide.
