Virginia Golfer September / October 2015 | Page 23

TENNANAH LAKE GOLF AND TENNIS CLUB

golf holes, playing the last few in near
darkness and occasionally breaking 80. Very
occasionally.
On my most recent visit to what is now
known as the Tennanah Lake Golf and
Tennis Club, just about everything had
changed except the golf course.

of the course or the old hotel, and had no
idea what had happened to the Paleys.
He did know the name because both his
grandfathers had caddied “up at Paley’s
place” back in the 1950s.
General Manager Mary Wagner only
started working there two years ago and
also was not familiar with the former
resort. She’d lived in Roscoe since 1980,
but referred me to an old friend, Ron Novak,
who now resides in Virginia Beach but had
worked at the Tennanah Lake House as a
caddie and lifeguard back in the 1960s. His
grandfather owned property nearby, and
Novak said in a telephone interview that he
also recalled Paley and his son, Steven, and
especially that out-of-control Volvo.
“Steve Paley actually dated my sister,” he
said. “I remember one time when he got
in a lot of trouble with his dad. Steve had
a key and would let us take the golf carts
out at night, and we’d go out on the course.
He’d speed like a real nut, and one time, he
had my sister in it and they flipped it over,
ruined it. Nobody got hurt, but the old man
was mad. After that, no more night riding.”
Novak, now in his mid-60s, left the area to
join the military when he was 18 and rarely
goes back. He said the old hotel had struggled
for many years before it was knocked down
in the late 1980s. “People just didn’t seem
to be coming up as much as they once did,”
he said. “It was
too bad, because it
The new Tennanah is
really was kind of a
starting to draw more
neat place.”
and more golfers.

MAKING A COMEBACK
These days, the golf course does about
10,000 rounds a year, according to Reimer,
who tries to drum up more business with
presentations at golf shows around the
state. More visitors are starting to come
up and play, he said, and some of them
also can stay in a dozen more townhouselike accommodations around the heavily
wooded property.
The golf course, he added, has never been
in better shape. He was right. Manicured
fairways. Nicely maintained greens. Many
holes framed by tall, mature trees. I played
the back side—the original nine—for old
times’ sake and actually made par on my
first hole. I stopped scoring after a couple
of lost balls in the woods and the water at
the signature 500-yard No. 12, a dogleg
right off the tee and a downhill fairway to a
smallish green protected by a pond left and
sand right.
Still, despite my typical on-course struggles,
this very personal trip down memory lane
was well worth the five hours spent on the
road. And it most definitely did not include
a stop at the Roscoe Diner on the way back
to Saratoga.
“I never eat there any more,” Mary
Wagner told me. “The food is horrible.”
Clearly, some things never change,
memories included.
A longtime sportswriter for The Washington
Post, award-winning journalist Leonard Shapiro
is a regular contributor to Virginia Golfer.

THE “NEW” TENNANAH
The massive hotel was gone, replaced by a
motel-style, two-floor 24-room facility to
attract stay-and-play golfers, a catering hall
for weddings and other big parties and a
modest restaurant. The old rickety structure
with the leaky roof in the bag room that
once housed the golf operation had been
torn down years ago. It