The Final Round of Golf
Alex Shoumatoff

CEDAR RIVER GOLF CLUB
Routes 28/30, Indian Lake, Opens Memorial Day; closes Columbus Day.

From Star Lake we drove down to Indian Lake to Cedar River Golf Cub, which proved to be an even more splendid nine-holer. The track was built in 1932 by three local men, including Dr. Hubert Carroll, on property owned by another physician, Dr. Carol Goulet, who also owned the adjacent Cedar River House.

In 1947 Dr. Goulet sold the inn and the course to Dewey Brown, who is described thus in Peter Martin's Adirondack Golf Courses... Past and Present: "Dewey was a black man who had learned the game as a caddie in New Jersey. He was to golfing what Jackie Robinson was to major league baseball: a black pioneer in a white world, a superb athlete, a sportsman and a gentleman. He was one of the first black members of the PGA, if not the first. He has been described by sportswriters as the 'Knight of the Fairways' because he was one of God's great gentlemen and sincerity was his trademark." Brown was also a renowned club-maker who crafted a set for President Harding. After he retired, in 1972, he gave the place to his son, who sold it four years later to Robert Below, a golf professional. In 1976 the hotel was bulldozed and the course lay dormant.

The present owners are Peter and Anna Lou Goldblatt. "Dewey brought the course up to standard," Peter Goldblatt told us, "and was admired as a gentleman and a gentle man. He taught not only the swing, but the rules and the courtesy. When we bought the course in 1986, the grass was waist-high and the grass on the greens was dead, so we cut off the greens with a sod-cutter and started over."

Goldblatt described the layout modestly as a "natural little golf course laid out to follow the river." In fact it is a gem. Number one is a nice 320-yarder over a dip; the second hole is a beautiful dogleg left, with the river along the right, winding through the middle of the course, waiting to receive a slice. The greens are lightening fast by Adirondack standards. At the end of number three you gaze at pristine wilderness across the river. Only the Links (formerly the Lower) course at the Lake Placid Resort compares for scenery, but this is much wilder. The river frames the third green on three sides, then it snakes around so on the 155-yard number four it's hooking and pulling you have to worry about.

"This could be the best Adirondack nine-hole course of all," Ben enthused, and we all agreed that it was definitely up there. Vista-wise, it was the most pure Adirondack track of the summer. The last hole required a near vertical pitch of maybe fifty feet, and is one of the Adirondacks' great elevated finishing holes, on par with those of the Lake Placid Mountain Course and the Barracks. After the round we made a pilgrimage to Dewey Brown's grave, which was right down the road. The headstone read "Dewey Brown Sr., 1899-1973."