The friendly young man behind the pro shop counter said he was happy to extend the hotel guest rate of $89 to 10 of us at the River Marsh golf course at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, MD, last Thursday. Although a bit pricey, I had read some nice reviews of the course, which was designed by Keith Foster and runs along the Choptank River on what is known as the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I figured the fee was relative to the layout and condition of the course.
        I was wrong. The green fee, apparently, was what the traffic would bear. I have no complaints about the River Marsh layout, which featured typically wide resort-course fairways but enough bunkering and marshland to keep things interesting and challenging. (It was reminiscent of a Tom Fazio or Rees Jones layout.) And the greens, though slow, were large, interestingly contoured and with smooth bent grass; more about the greens below.
The River Marsh course at the Hyatt Resort in Cambridge, MD, is not without a nice view of the Choptank River or some challenging holes. But conditions on much of the course are not consistent with the $89 green fee.
        At 9 a.m., the employees in the area where the bags of clubs were supposed to be loaded onto carts seemed totally confused, as if a rush of people had showed up 30 minutes before the club was to open for play. Our group wound up loading its own clubs onto the carts 10 minutes before our tee time, even though three red-shirted resort employees were standing around, apparently discussing how to handle the four or five foursomes in the area. The practice range was closed because of heavy rain the night before; the small practice putting green was a bit ragged, especially around the edges, which we hoped would not be the case out on the course.
        Wrong again. You don’t expect the collars of greens at the peak of grass-growing season to be intermittently bare or marked by different grasses, but most of the edges of the greens on the course made replacing your ball a couple of feet away mandatory for a clean chip or putting path. All the greens looked as if they had been bombed with tiny cannon balls, such were the depth of the divots made by spinning approach shots onto the soft greens. Many of these pockmarks appeared to be at least a week old.
Keith Foster designed the River Marsh course in what could be described as the manner of Tom Fazio, or Rees Jones.
        Greens with unrepaired ball marks are the burden of any resort course; infrequent players don’t understand or care about golf etiquette since it is not their golf course, and they do not feel the need to make the repairs for the golfers who follow. Shame on them, but that’s the way it is. Those confused and under-utilized employees at the bag drop could certainly be trained to fix ball marks toward the end of the day. But apparently, even in the height of the vacation season, the destination that calls itself a “Hyatt Golf Resort” doesn’t see the need to make the investment to justify its four-to-five-star rating on some web sites or its fairly lofty green fees.
        At one point I had to chuckle as I spied two supervisory looking people surveying the course in a cart, stopping along the way to point out one needed improvement or another. They easily could have been out there all day given the number of blemishes our group encountered.
        Golf courses suffering from problems with temporary turf conditions should consider a program of “dynamic pricing.” Professional baseball teams have taken to doing this, lowering their prices when the home team hosts a lousy competitor and raising them a little when a pennant contender is in town. In that regard, a condition-challenged course like River Marsh at the Hyatt should reduce its rates while the golf course is in iffy shape and raise them when it is restored. If that young man in the pro shop had said to me, “We are pleased to offer your group a special rate today,” I might be planning a return visit in the future. How special a rate? Something like $39 would have done the trick.
Guests of the Hyatt Hotel received a discount on green fees. It should be greater.

        A friend and former customer invited me to play the Ralston Creek course at Daniel Island this past week. After two inches of rain the night before, the course was in outstanding condition, and except for a few flecks of mud on the ball on a few drives, we could have played the ball from its place of rest. The greens were smooth if a little thin on grass in a few places; like many golf courses up and down the east coast, greens are still recovering from the extraordinarily heavy rains of last October which made many greens virtually unplayable early this spring. The Rees Jones designed greens on the Ralston Creek course are enormous and undulating; the undulations provide a sense that putts break much more than they do, and most of my misses -- there were many -- were on the high side.



        What was most impressive about this latest visit to Daniel Island -- I try to at least drive through the "new urbanism" community once or twice a year -- were the number of homes under construction. After more than two decades, Daniel Island is now at the age that it can be described as "mature," but there seem to be a number of large undeveloped patches still available; along the golf course, homes were going up in between other established homes, a sure sign of a healthy market. Indeed, homes that were priced at around $300,000 when my wife and I started our drive throughs 15 years ago are now approaching list prices of $1 million.
        We noted on this year's drive through that three-story buildings were going up along the drive just before the entrance to Daniel Island Park, the upscale neighborhood of estate homes and the location of the Daniel Island Club (Tom Fazio designed the other 18 holes in the 36 hole complex.) We saw a sign for apartment leasing, stopped by the office and received a guided walkthrough of a few apartments in the community called Wharf Seven, which is being developed separately from the Daniel Island developer. The apartments were modern, well appointed and priced from $1,475 for one bedroom units, $2,065 for two bedrooms and $2,400 hundred for three bedrooms. Our guide did not know the answer to my question about whether there is a special arrangement for membership in the Daniel Island Club whose regular initiation fee is around $80,000. Yes, it is expensive, but I have always found the service in and around the clubhouse to be impeccable. One thing I had not seen before at any other club was a barber shop inside the men's locker room.
        If you can afford it, Daniel Island membership offers excellent golf, lots of sshopping and other services right on the island, and the great city of Charleston just 20 minutes away.