February, 2024. Article courtesy of NJSGA. By Rebecca Corzo.
In early September 2021, debris but to go all in on Green’s plan, hired for the project. The Skillman Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana and barreled north. High winds and torrential rains impacted homes, businesses and infrastructure as the system made its way through over a dozen states before dying out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. New Jersey was one of the states hit hardest by the storm, and one of the many golf facilities that sustained significant damage was The Bedens Brook Club in Skillman.
Faced with an unfortunate situation, Bedens Brook decided to make the most of it. In 2015, the club had commissioned golf course architect Andrew Green to come up with a master plan for the course, and in the aftermath of the storm the club decided not just to clean up the conducting a thorough renovation of its Dick Wilson golf course. “The storm kind of jump started the project process,” said James Bryson, Bedens Brook’s superintendent. “That gave us an opportunity to have almost a blank canvas and to let Andrew come in here and prove to the membership what this place really could be.”
Originally founded as The Princeton Golf and Tennis Club in the early ‘60s, The Bedens Brook Club has changed names several times over the years. Following the addition of the founding charter members, the club went on a search for a worthy architect. Wilson, who along with Robert Trent Jones, Sr. was considered the most prominent designer of the postwar period, was course would be among the last of the architect’s works — he died in 1965 — a career that also included such highly regarded layouts as Deepdale and Meadow Brook on Long Island as well as Pine Tree Golf Club and Doral Resort’s Blue Monster in Florida.
Around the summer of 1964, the club voted to change its name to The Bedens Brook Club.