Author: By Joseph P. Kahn, Globe Staff Date: 06/03/2000 Page: C1 Section: LivingNEWBURYPORT - If you build it, they will putt.
Armed with that hypothesis plus a few hand tools, Leo Melanson, a Bell Atlantic sales manager, set out six years ago to construct every duffer's dream: a backyard golf facility that's open 24/7 and thrives on sunlight and water, making it a rough facsimile of the grass, if not the manicured courses, on which Tiger Woods makes his handsome living. Think "Field of Dreams" with a hole and flagstick out the back door instead of four bases and a pitcher's mound.
His wife, Karen, "thought I was crazy," Melanson remembers, while the neighbors were mostly baffled by the sight of dump trucks, bags of designer grass seed, and a sand trap blooming amid the swale on his half-acre lot.
"They figured we were putting in a swimming pool," says Melanson, 36, who tore up his first two attempts before achieving the desired results. "But like Kevin Costner says in the movie, if you build it, they will come. And they do now, four or five at a time. They don't even bother to call ahead anymore."
Melanson and his 1,000-square-foot, non-USGA-approved bentgrass putting green - built, he says, at an initial cost of around $500 (excluding maintenance equipment) - occupy the low-cost, high-labor end of a burgeoning phenomenon: backyard golf that has graduated from tin cups and Whiffle balls to Stimpmeters and Titleists, becoming the newest yardstick of suburban status and golf mania.
While Melanson's represents the do-it-yourselfer's version, and vision, there are other paths to the same clubhouse.
For $10,000 and up, for instance, companies like the Putting Green in Hudson will embellish your yard with synthetic greens that require no more maintenance gear than a snow shovel or leaf blower. Company president Jim Goodman, a landscaper by trade, has installed several hundred in the six years he's been in the golf construction business, from attic putting greens to 3,500-square-foot monsters and even par-3 courses with multiple sand traps and greens. Costs can easily reach six figures, Goodman says, as property owners' fantasies progress from pebble driveways to Pebble Beach.
"People are starting to understand you can do this," says Goodman. "Socially, backyard greens are fantastic. They're great for practicing your short game. Kids love 'em, and you can play on them all winter."
Richard Mazzola of Shrewsbury, like Melanson an avid golfer, strolled into the Boston Flower Show a couple of years ago, saw a Putting Green Co. exhibit, and decided instantly that his little-used tennis court had to go. Result? A split-level, 600-square-foot putting surface where his court used to be, offset by a sand trap and water hazard - er, swimming pool. Mazzola claims no broken windows yet but admits he has to be careful about those 50-yard chip shots.
"You don't want your ball to wind up in the neighbor's yard," says Mazzola, who, perhaps not coincidentally, makes his living in the automobile repair business.
One thing upon which amateurs and professionals agree is that the Melanson model is not for everyone. "I don't know of many people who can maintain a bentgrass green in their backyard," says Goodman. Melanson heartily concurs. "For those who really want to practice their golf," he says, "synthetic is the way to go. This is more a landscaping hobby than golf hobby."
How difficult is it? One clue would be the 50-page manual Melanson has published, available through his Web site (www.putting-greens.com). It includes sections on equipment and suppliers, site planning, drainage, turf selection, trap construction, green maintenance, pests and disease, soil problems, irrigation, weeds, and mowing, as well as a short chapter (finally!) titled "Games and Family Fun."
Melanson writes that building and maintaining a natural-turf green is a "complex and sometimes mysterious" undertaking and lavishes praise on professional greenskeepers. You may love ice cream, his guidebook suggests, but that doesn't mean you should take up dairy farming.
On the other hand, says Melanson, part of the fun has been learning the art of greenskeeping on the fly.
"I'm somewhat of a pioneer," he says modestly. "When I started, there was very little information on this available. Today a lot of people are giving it a shot."
Speaking of shots, this reporter challenged the resident club pro to a match on his single-hole green, converted, via tees placed strategically around his property, into a 9-hole course.
Melanson, a 12-handicapper on real golf courses, readily accepted, explaining as he fetched his pitching wedge and putter how he had laid out the backyard tee boxes "to beat my dad," also an avid duffer. Par for the course is 27. The course record is 6-under, shared by Melanson and a handful of his golfing neighbors.
The first two chip-shot "drives" were routine enough, but the third required a lob wedge over a child's swing set, and the fourth over a bed of perennials brandishing a "PLEASE REPAIR BALL MARKS" sign. After three holes, Melanson was two-up and cruising like Tiger on a Sunday afternoon.
To reach the seventh tee, golfers must cross a footbridge into a neighboring yard, whose occupants - one is an engineer and bridge designer - fortunately bought wholeheartedly into the home-course concept. Melanson sank a 5-foot putt that settled the match. Unlike last summer's US Ryder Cup team, he resisted celebrating and kept on playing.
The eighth hole, a par-4, began at one side of Melanson's house: the only side lacking windows, it was duly noted. The host barely cleared the dog fence with his tee shot. The visitor fared somewhat better, surprisingly enough, making a rare birdie and closing the match with the kind of shot-making that moves born-again golfers to tear up their tennis courts. Melanson finished the match at four holes up and two over par.
His final piece of wisdom on backyard putting greens? "The only thing you don't want on it is a dog," he advises.