Virginia Golfer September / October 2015 | Page 21

Built in the early
1900s, Tennanah
Lake House had a
luxurious hotel back
in the day.

G
PHOTO CREDIT HERE

olf has always been a
game of memories. There
is muscle memory, so vital
in building an effectively
consistent swing. There is
the memory of a shot well
struck, a 40-foot putt diving into the cup, a
hole-out from a bunker, the first time you
broke 80, 100, or whatever.
And of course, there are memories of
so many unforgettable titans of the game,
riveting past major championships and
Ryder Cups and all those magnificent
venues, some you might even have had the
great fortune to play.
Last August, while vacationing in Saratoga
Springs, N.Y., my own golfing memory of
one particular golf course pushed me toward
the back roads of upstate New York for a
long solo drive up to Roscoe, a tiny town in
the Catskill Mountains. Nearly 50 years ago,
after my freshman and sophomore years of
college, I had a summer job as a caddie master
and starter at a mostly obscure Roscoe resort
with a wonderful 18-hole course.
Back then, it was called the Tennanah
Lake House, with a gorgeous main hotel
built in the early 1900s and cozy cabins all
around nestled atop a low foothill of the
Catskills range, with a steep gravel road

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that tumbled down to a crystalline lake.
A smattering of college kids was included
among the hired summer help for the
demographically older clientele.
It was owned by a dapper fellow named
Paley, a short man in his late 50s who never
appeared in public dressed in anything but
a dark suit, white shirt, and tie, and always
with a red rose in his lapel, even if this was
mostly a summertime “resort.” He also had
a 15-year-old son named Steven who was
too young for a driver’s license but was
allowed to tool around the property, often
at breakneck speeds, in an old gray stick shift
Volvo sedan.
ONE SPECIAL PLACE
My quarters those two summers were on
the hotel’s top fourth floor. No elevator,
a stifling closet-sized room with no air
conditioning and a single community
bathroom and shower shared by a dozen
employees. We ate our meals down in
the hotel kitchen, and late at night that
same table became the smoky setting for
a raucous Asian card game called palla
lasse played mostly by the predominately
Chinese wait staff and overseen by the
head waiter himself. He never lost, because
he claimed 10 percent out of every pot.

S EPTEMBER/O CTOBER 2015 | V IRGINIA G OLFER

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