Hazelton Golf Club is approaching its time to shine once again

Renovation of the former Sun Valley layout continues under Moniz

By Mike Rego
Posted 4/23/19

REHOBOTH — A local legend about the old Sun Valley Golf Club, the long ago revered public course located up Route 44 from East Providence through Seekonk at its border with Rehoboth, is that …

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Hazelton Golf Club is approaching its time to shine once again

Renovation of the former Sun Valley layout continues under Moniz

Posted

REHOBOTH — A local legend about the old Sun Valley Golf Club, the long ago revered public course located near the Seekonk/Rehoboth border, is that ownership was once won in a card game.

For East Bay resident and current owner of the renamed Hazelton Golf Club, Joe Moniz, purchasing the moribund layout and reclaiming it as a valued playing option for area golfers wasn’t so much about taking a gamble, but rather attempting to make an astute business decision.

A member at neighboring Crestwood Country Club since 1986, Moniz gradually accrued a stake in that then-financially strapped private club around the time of the Great Recession of 2008, before eventually taking over complete control through a series of transactions in 2012.

A few years later, he began his second transformative approach, buying Sun Valley, which had fallen into a state of almost complete disrepair. And now, after extensive renovations, Moniz is gradually bringing Hazelton back up to form.

“The course is probably about 80 percent there. The building (clubhouse) is probably about the same. And we’re just starting to work on the range,” Moniz said recently from Crestwood as the 2019 season began. Asked when he believes Hazelton will finally be 100 percent complete, he added, “I think by some time next year.”

To date, Moniz has poured approximately $4 million into Hazelton. Renovations have included laying over 15 miles of pipe for a new irrigation system, restoring all 18 greens, constructing some 35 new tee boxes and building all new bunkering with different locations.

“It’s coming along really well,” he said of the course, which opened in 1959 and was designed by renowned New England course architect Geoffrey Cornish, who also created Crestwood.

“It’s almost ready. I haven’t really pressed it because I don’t want people expecting things. I think by the end of the spring, it will be better.”

An avid golfer, though he said, “The worst thing I ever did for my golf game was get in the business,” Moniz saw an opportunity when after years of speculation about its availability, Sun Valley was once and for all truly on the market in 2015.

“I did it because, one, that place meant something to me, and, two, I didn’t want someone else to build a private country club by the same designer, because Geoffrey Cornish did both of these, right next door, while I was trying to do the same thing over here. I didn’t want to be fighting for the same people 250 yards from each other,” Moniz explained.

The emotional attachment to Sun Valley for Moniz is a sentiment he shared with many golfers from East Providence and abutting towns who were introduced to the game there and played dozens of rounds a year there in leagues or just for fun.

“It’s where I learned how to play,” Moniz said. “Every Sunday morning we would play over there, and then we’d play other places on the weekend, but that was the place where we played all the time.”

Once in his portfolio, which among other things as well includes Crestwood, thriving real estate, masonry, landscape and wine importing businesses, Moniz got down to the task of returning Sun Valley to its former glory.
He reached out to Mungeam Cornish Golf Design, Geoffrey Cornish’s former firm now run by Mark Mungeam, for insights. Those contacts eventually led him to Tim Gerrish, who worked with Cornish at the time he drew up both Crestwood and Sun Valley.

“We didn’t need it to be redesigned, it just needed someone to oversee,” Moniz said.

Gerrish would return after a trip to the Mungeam Cornish offices just over the Rhode Island border in Douglas, Mass., with the original sketches of Sun Valley. The research found among other things the greens were never really built to the original specifications and only got smaller and smaller over the years. The sketches were the basis for the renovations, which going forward, Moniz said, will also include new “tips” to stretch Sun Valley from its current yardage of 6,700 to over 7,000.

Work at Hazelton began in late 2015. It reopened for play the last few seasons, but wasn’t exactly in prime condition. The new irrigation system meant its fairways were far from being at their best. That fact, however, didn’t deter former avid Sun Valley players who wanted to witness the revisions.

“I still had 600, 700 people a week playing there last year and it wasn’t even that good,” Moniz said. “But I had more people who belong to private places come to me and say the course isn’t that great, but those greens are as good as any they’ve played.”

Moniz said greens fees at Hazelton for the 2019 season are still in flux, but will be based off of the existing rates (18-hole weekday of $30 and $35 for weekend) and will be comparable with other public courses in the area.

“It’s coming along good,” Moniz added of Hazelton. “I’m proud of what’s gone on over there. I kind of wish we were done already, but we’re getting there.”

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