Play at Liberty National---part one

Liberty National, the host of the 2009 Barclays tournament and the first stage of the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup playoffs, is a new and distinctive course in a region blessed with elite golf offerings. But from the beginning — it was first envisioned in 1992 — Liberty National was laid out along the New Jersey waterfront to take advantage of an unmatched vista: the Statue of Liberty, less than 1,000 yards away, the Manhattan skyline beyond, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the harbor all around.

A good golf course makes a beautiful backdrop. At Liberty National, the backdrop makes the golf course beautiful.

“In this site, it was always about the landmarks, even if they are off-site,” said Tom Kite, a former PGA Tour star and a co-designer of Liberty National with the veteran golf architect Bob Cupp. “How many holes can we position in a direction so you can see the Statue of Liberty, the skyline or the harbor? You went there and just let your imagination run wild.”

It took plenty of imagination when Kite, Cupp and Liberty National’s co-founders, Paul and Dan Fireman, visited the location.

“As a piece of property, it was an awful blight on the landscape — a swath of mistreated land,” Kite said last month. The 160 acres that would become Liberty National — 4,000 feet of it waterfront — were a condemned collection of toxic waste, petroleum and garbage.

He and his father, Paul, the founder of Reebok, financed the building of Liberty National at a cost of $250 million.

It wasn’t long before someone wondered: Imagine the views on television if the golf course hosted a PGA Tour event. Or a major championship. Imagine everything a TV blimp would be able to focus on from the sky above New York.

The TV networks would love that panorama.

Not surprisingly, two years ago, when Liberty National was announced as the site of the 2009 Barclays, Commissioner Tim Finchem of the PGA Tour was on the same page.

“Liberty National will look like New York to the rest of the country on television,” Finchem said.

However, the"beauty" is not kind. We can not ignore the problems.

Play at Liberty National---part two

Woods edges Villegas

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