The layout in Purchase, N.Y. includes a 25-foot stone waterfall, 50-foot pond, night stadium lighting and a sound system; its designer and builder touts it as “the best private course in Westchester [County].”
Mark Stagg, a homeowner in Purchase, N.Y. has built a three-acre course on his property that not only includes four tee boxes, three huge greens, a fairway and a sand trap, LoHud.com reported, but also a 25-foot stone waterfall, 50-foot pond, night stadium lighting and a booming sound system—in short, “[all] the makings [of] an over-the-top country club,” the website said.
Tucked behind a private gate and alongside a “rather noisy stretch of the Hutchinson River Parkway,” Stagg’s brand-new three-acre toy is “the best private course in [New York’s] Westchester [County],” course designer and builder Michael Lehrer, whose company, Home Green Advantage, is based in Armonk, N.Y., told LoHud.com
“It’s definitely the most elaborate,” Lehrer added. “Is it the biggest? Let’s just say there’s nothing like it in Westchester.”
Since abandoning a career as a certified public accountant 20 years ago, Lehrer has become the go-to guy for building home greens and private golf courses, LoHud.com reported. “I’ve built 600 of them, from Montauk [N.Y.] to Hawaii,” he said.
Stagg, a builder and owner of a stone and masonry supply company, told the website that the decision to build a home course “made sense” because “We’re a golfing family. I have two sons who really, really play the game and practice all the time.”
One son, 19-year-old Tyler, plays golf for Manhattanville College, while another, 17-year-old Justin, has been a star high school player, earning a trip to the New York state tournament, LoHud.com reported.
“This is a practice facility, a state-of-the-art practice facility, with some nice touches,” their father said. At their previous home, in White Plains, N.Y., the family had a backyard green, LoHud.com reported.
The family belongs to Westchester Hills Golf Club in White Plains, Mark Stagg told the website. “We were club champions three of the last four years,” he added.
Before the new course was installed, those three acres, part of a five-acre property, was nothing special, Mark Stagg said. “It was just overgrown weeds, overgrown saplings, high grass,” he told LoHud.com.
“The plan has evolved, like an artist with a blank canvas,” Stagg added, gesturing out across the course. “I had an architect design an initial plan. It’s been a collaborative effort.”
Because Stagg was able to supply all of the raw materials through his company, including 450 truckloads of fill, soil, sand and stone, the project was finished in a very fast three months, LoHud.com reported.
“Golf course construction usually takes over a year,” said Lehrer, who told the website that built his first putting green in 1995, in his own back yard in Armonk, N.Y.. Before long, he was installing them for friends and neighbors, and his company has now installed about 150 private greens in Westchester County alone.
What’s particularly great about the Stagg course, Lehrer told LoHud.com, is the breadth of the three customized greens, which measure 3,500, 3,000 and 2,500 square feet.
The Stagg course, however, is not exactly low-maintenance, it was noted. The special grass on the greens has to be trimmed and cut three to four times a week.
Construction on the site included grading the property, digging out the pond and adding contours and swales. There is also an extensive irrigation system and a paved walkway that circles through three-quarters of the course. The course is a mix of synthetic and natural grass.
More than 400 evergreen trees, mostly deer-resistant Siberian spruce, were added around the perimeter for visual and noise screening, LoHud.com reported.
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