JOHN MLYNARSKI LOVES HOW THE CONVERSATION HAS CHANGED.
The longtime head golf professional of the newly named and renovated Links at Perry Cabin is answering fewer
questions about the 2005 Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson movie “Wedding Crashers” and more and more about the
golf. He appreciates the former, sure, but he knows he’s sitting on a budding icon, designed by one, with the latter.
“It just seems like it put it on a national level,” Mlynarski said. “It gave us conversation not just locally, but all over
the place. We were getting phone calls from all over the country from people wanting to play. It was the wow factor, the spectacular
factor, just Pete Dye and seeing the layout and how he changed the golf course.”
Opened in 2019 under the Dye family umbrella (that included
his input from his wife, Alice, and son, P.B.), it certainly has.
The property itself has been traced back historically to the
1700s, but golf here began in 1971 as the Martingham Golf
Course and later the Harbourtowne Resort—which Pete Dye
played a late-coming role in developing. But in 2015, it took on
a new face, as the Dyes eventually took up the course owner’s
offer to revitalize it and create something new.
Little did anyone know at that time that it would be Pete Dye’s
final project; he died just a few months after the Links at Perry
Cabin held its grand opening.
“It’s like having a Rembrandt or a Picasso,” said marketing
director Craig Falanga of Kemper Sports, the firm representing
the course. “There won’t ever be another one that both he and
Alice worked on.”
Pete Dye is on record saying the Links at Perry Cabin is an
addition to his legacy. Those who have played on the private
course via memberships or stays at the inn are already boasting
its credibility to friends in the game. There are the staples of Dye’s
work—including the railroad ties and crafted mounding—a heavily
increased playability up the tees and views of the Chesapeake
Bay that have made the Eastern Shore stand out for centuries.
It all comes together perfectly in the aptly named three-hole
stretch rounding out the course, “Goodnight Kiss.” A supershort
par 4 leads into the mirror image of Dye’s No. 17 at TPC
Sawgrass and then the dogleg par-4 finisher on No. 18, where the
Chesapeake is visible from the latter half of the hole.
It was Dye’s final stamp on career worth celebrating. And it
helped move “Wedding Crashers” further down the line in what
people now think of first about Perry Cabin.
COURTESY OF THE COURSE
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S EPTEMBER/O CTOBER 2020 | V IRGINIA G OLFER 29