Searsport’s pines are course’s defining trait

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SEARSPORT – When she thinks back on it, Hope Whitten admits that one break ended up getting she and husband Bert into the golf business.

The break: Her wrist.

The immediate result: The portable sawmill business she and Bert had run since they each retired from careers in academia at Michigan Technological University no longer seemed so attractive to her.

“I broke my wrist taking a walk and kind of lost heart,” Hope Whitten said. “[Bert] said he couldn’t saw without his slab-thrower. So we started thinking harder and harder, and he started talking golf course, golf course, golf course. That’s when I said, ‘Well, bring me some numbers.'”

Bert, the avid golfer, brought Hope the numbers. Before long, the couple was applying for a loan, talking to irrigation companies, and planning Searsport Pines Golf Course in earnest.

The course opened on June 28, 1999, and was embraced by an enthusiastic community. Today, the well-maintained nine-hole layout boasts 170 members, hosts impromptu Thursday night scramble events, and enjoys a reputation as a fun place to play the game.

The members are so involved in their club that when they found out that Bert has cancer, they showed up unannounced at the course, Hope says.

“About 40 people pulled into the driveway one Saturday. April 27,” Hope says. “They got out with rakes and wheelbarrows and raked our fairways.”

Searsport Pines sits on 100 of the 400 acres that Bert Whitten’s family has owned since 1876. Bert designed the course, and has another, more spectacular nine holes nearly finished … in his mind’s eye.

But Hope says for that to happen, an outside investor would have to come up with a pile of cash.

Bert says the actual design of Searsport Pines was pretty simple.

“We were blessed with a perfect piece of land,” he says. “I knew where the old [farm] fields were, and we set it out in the old fields.

“They set the fields like any good New England farmers would, between the ledges,” Bert says. “So we just cut the fairways where the old fields were, and sort of manipulated them around.”

For now, the Whittens have focused on fine-tuning a course that measures 2,965 yards from the back tees and 2,366 from the front.

To that end, one early decision is paying dividends.

“The single best thing we did was put in a single irrigation system, with clocks, with pumps, with our pressurized system,” Bert Whitten says. “We would never have even begun to have the conditions we do.”

Bert credits Hope with forcing him to handle the irrigation the right way from the beginning.

“I was gonna have this Rube Goldberg type of thing,” he says with a laugh.

Instead, the Whittens ended up with a state-of-the-art system that helps Searsport Pines maintain its plush condition throughout the hot mid-summer months.

Searsport Pines gets its name from the old-growth trees that line its fairways and surround its greens.

Bert always knew the pines were valuable – he says that every week he spent visiting or living in the old farmhouse over 35 years, at least one logger would stop by and offer a “good price” for the trees.

He resisted the temptation to sell that wood.

And golfers are glad he did: Searsport’s pines are its single defining trait … just as its name suggests.

“When I laid those center lines out [on the future fairways], we had 3,000 ribbons around those trees,” Bert says. “That, to me, was the uniqueness of the landscape.”

Bert says the trees naturally fell in the right places, and very little earth had to be moved to build the course.

“The two flavors I wanted to get out of this course was that it was a tree-lined course with beautiful specimen trees that framed holes, and that most of the holes were separated so you didn’t get the feeling that you were playing into each other all the time,” Bert says.

He succeeded.

While Searsport Pines is open enough that golfers can see other groups playing different holes, the fact that it fills a spacious 100 acres allowed the Whittens to leave buffers of pines on several parallel fairways.

But golfers who end up in one of those groves of 100-year-old pines find out that a shot into the trees isn’t all that bad.

“I always thought that if you’re five or 10 yards off the fairway, you ought to be playable,” Bert says. “You at least ought to be able to punch out and have a shot and not lose a ball.”

Hope Whitten began playing golf after the course opened and says she particularly appreciates one Searsport Pines feature.

“We try to give the ladies a break,” she says. “A lot of times you’ll see that the ladies’ tees are quite a bit forward. Ladies like that. And we need that. We just don’t have the upper-body muscle.”

The most talked-about hole at Searsport Pines may well be the picturesque ninth, which calls for a forced carry over water to a small green. From the front tees the hole measures 102 yards, while men hit it 129 or 133 yards.

But Bert Whitten prefers the other par-3 on the course, No. 6. The tee box sits in one pine grove, and the green is sheltered by another.

“I think actually that’s my favorite place,” Bert says. “I go up and sit on that bench sometimes.”

John Holyoke will be profiling a Maine golf course each Tuesday. Contact him at 990-8214 or by e-mail at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net

SEARSPORT PINES GOLF COURSE

Holes: Nine

Yards: 2,965 (blue tees), 2,695 (white), 2,366 (red); par: 36

Slope: 107; rating: 65.4

Greens fees: 9 holes: $14; 18 holes: $20

Memberships: $425 (individual), $625 (couple), $725 (family, including children up to age 18; $150 (junior, up to age 18), $395 (senior, age 65 or older), $575 (senior couple)

Tee times: accepted, not necessary

Directions: Take Route 1 into downtown Searsport. Turn inland onto Mt. Ephraim Road. Searsport Pines is 1.9 miles on the left.

Footwear: no metal spikes

Phone: 548-2854