A day of fun at the Salem Golf Club

SALEM — Local public golfers won’t have too many opportunities to play at the Salem Golf Club, but if you get the opportunity don’t pass it up.

I had the privilege of playing the club last week and it had been some 25 years since I had been over the layout and I can honestly say that I didn’t remember one hole on the layout.

There has been a lot of work and effort put into the club by the membership over the years and the results have turned it into one of the finest layouts in the area.

I played with head golf professional Mike Shulas, Greens and grounds chairman Bill Grieb and board member Rich Cochran. Three outstanding gentlemen and three very good golfers.

Shulas, who has been the head professional for several years, is a local boy. He played football and golf at Beaver Local High where he was a standout quarterback in football. He then went on to Waynesburg College before turning professional.

In the past eight to 10 years there haven’t been a lot of changes to the golf course — mostly cosmetic changes, cutting down some trees, replacing a few fairway bunkers and such.

The last real change came eight years ago when heavy rains flooded parts of the golf course around the second hole and the club then renovated the area enlarging a stream that surrounds the area and put in a beautiful rock boarder around it to keep future flooding away.

The first thing you notice about Salem Golf Club is that it isn’t a very long course, but it will provide any caliber of golfer a very good test.

The course measures 6,409 yards from the blue tees, down to 4,850 from the red tees. We played the course from the white tees, which measures 6,139 yards. My playing partners did that after I quickly told them that I hadn’t touched a golf club in almost a month.

The second thing you will quickly notice about Salem Golf Club is there isn’t a flat fairway on the course. Rolling fairways would be putting it mildly and several holes have hills so high that one, maybe two shots are almost blind to the green.

In my case this was good because I didn’t have any idea where to hit the ball and in cases like that I usually do much better.

I was pleased to say that I hit the ball very well for not having played in a while and I was in control of 13 of the 14 clubs in my bag. However the one that I had no control over was the most important since it was my putter.

I’ve never been a good putter — heck, I’ve never been even close to being a good putter — and the greens at Salem Golf Club don’t give you a lot of room for error.

The greens are very fast. My playing partners told me that the greens are twice cut and rolled every day and the green speeds are right between 9 and 10 on the stimp meter.

Unfortunately I was told that before we started, which promptly enabled me to three-putt the first three greens. I had seven three-putts on the day which didn’t help my score. I never did ask what my final total was, but I guessed it was somewhere around the 90 mark.

Both of the nine-hole layouts end with a par-3, although the 258-yard No. 9 is hardly what I consider a par-3. My tee shot was pin high just off the left edge of the green and I didn’t hit driver. I still made four.

I made my first par on the 12th hole, a short par-3 and made four more on the back side as my game started to come around a little. I even had honors on the tee on the 16th hole, but that was only because Shulas tried to cut the dogleg with his tee shot and made one of his few bogeys of the day. He took them back on the next hole.

Salem Golf Club was established in 1921, built on the old Timothy Gee Farm and in 1967 the second nine holes was added. A few changes were made since then, but basically the golf course has remained the same over the years.

The club offers a full list of amenities to its members including an Olympic-sized swimming pool, two clay tennis courts and a driving range.

X Pete Mollica is a sports writer for The Vindicator. Write to him at mollica@vindy.com.