A LINK TO THE ORIGINS OF THE GAME At The Jersey Shore, Get A True Links Golf Experience At McCullough’s Emerald Golf Links By Tom McNichol, Contributing Writer
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om Sullivan has been there since the beginning when Egg Harbor Township, N.J. opted to turn its closed landfill into a golf course that opened in 2002. The general manager at McCullough’s Emerald Golf Links has seen a golf course corporation come and go, Hurricane Sandy come blowing through and the condition of the golf course improve since Steve Lane came on as the superintendent. And now he’s seen the effect of a global pandemic on his operation. McCullough’s Emerald Golf Links, a 6,100-yard, par-71 layout, is named for the Egg Harbor Township mayor, James “Sonny” McCullough, who pushed to turn an expiring landfill into a golf course. The property’s former life as a landfill makes it the highest point in Atlantic County, which, combined with its proximity to the ocean, made it the perfect spot to create a links-style course. Golf course architect Stephen Kay turned 17 holes into a homage to various great links designs in Europe, some on the continent, but primarily from the famous linksland courses of England and Scotland. The signature seventh hole at McCullough’s
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tri-state golfer | Summer 2021
Emerald Golf Links adopts a design created by Alister MacKenzie, who collaborated with Bobby Jones to design the Augusta National Golf Club that golf fans have become so familiar with watching the Masters every April, although MacKenzie was never able to incorporate the hole into any of his golf courses. The result is a resort golf course between Atlantic City and Ocean City that offers a unique challenge. “There’s elevation changes and rolling hills and because we’re so high up, the wind is always a factor,” Sullivan said as he and his staff started gearing up for “the season” with Memorial Day weekend just a few days away. A year ago, with COVID protocols from New Jersey shifting with each issuance of another executive order, Sullivan was just hoping to have a season. Golf, though, would not just survive the pandemic, it would thrive and Sullivan and his team learned a few lessons from COVID that will continue to be part of the McCullough’s Emerald Golf Links experience for years to come. “We’ve experimented with eight- and nine-minute intervals in our tee times in
the past,” Sullivan said. “For a short period we were only allowed to have 16-minute intervals, which didn’t work out too well But when we really got going in mid-June, we settled on 10-minute intervals and that’s really worked out from a pace-of-play standpoint, which is something we’ve always been aware of. “We had discussed pre-pay for tee times and curbside pickup at the bag drop, but we were always worried the customers wouldn’t like it. But we were forced to do those things because of COVID and people adjusted to it, so we’re going to continue to do those things.” By mid-summer of last year, golf was booming. There simply weren’t a whole lot of entertainment or athletic outlets available in the midst of the pandemic. People who had once abandoned the game because they felt it simply took too much time to play a round suddenly had time on their hands. “There just weren’t a whole lot of options when it came to things you could do safely, maybe biking, tennis, you could go to the beach, but golf was definitely something you could do safely,” Sullivan said. Sullivan noticed his numbers start to
