Heatherwood executive golf course returns as Spy Ring

Long Island golfers have something new and rare to consider. The Spy Ring Golf Course in South Setauket opens on Monday, a nine-hole regulation tract on the site of the Heatherwood Golf Course.

It’s the first new public facility in Suffolk County since Tall Grass and the Links at Shirley opened in 2000, but both of those courses subsequently closed for redevelopment.

The old Heatherwood Course was an 18-hole executive course with 12 par 3s and six par 4s. The new Spy Ring is a standard layout of five par 4s, two par 5s and two par 3s for a par 36 that plays 3,105 yards from the back tees. The course plays around the perimeter of the Heatherwood Luxury Apartment complex.

The name was cleverly derived from the Culper Spy Ring, a group of spies in the area during the Revolutionary War who provided critical information to Gen. George Washington.

Heatherwood owner Doug Partrick, whose family developed the original executive course in the early 1960s, was seeing a sharp decline in play and needed to repurpose the property. He brought a proposal to the Town of Brookhaven in 2015.

“When I approached the town, I had an idea to go for a multifamily rezone,” Partrick said. “There was some pushback from the town. The compromise was we’ll take 25 of the 70 acres and rezone that for multifamily in the core of the property. The deal was to maintain a public golf course of nine holes, which we built around the perimeter of the community. It really has not impacted the community negatively. There are still all the buffers between the housing and the surrounding housing. It became a win-win. For us, it was making something out of nothing and for the town, we were still maintaining some golf options.”

Partrick and Heatherwood president Chris Capece enlisted golf course architect Tyler Rae, who was a fan of the iconic Donald Ross, to design the course. What Rae came up with is a classic layout with wide fairways and interesting green complexes with eye-catching bunkering on rolling land that still is quite walkable.

“We have these big-name golf courses in our region, the Sebonacks, the Shinnecocks, the Friar Heads of the world,” Capece said. “We wanted to attract a big-time architect, which we did in Tyler Rae, who since taking the job has won some national awards.

“If someone is coming to Long Island to play golf and they have their one big get, like Maidstone and maybe they set themselves up to play Bethpage Black, maybe Montauk Downs and Spy Ring. We think we have created something pretty cool. Hopefully it has the bones to grow into what it’s going to be.”

Greens fees are $50 for nine holes Monday through Friday, $60 on Saturday and Sunday.