Mary Hurley Gosselin had an awful blind date in high school. She and her date had gone to play mini golf, she remembered, but “the game was terrible, [and] the date was worse.” After that, Mrs. Gosselin said, “I wanted nothing to do with mini golf.”
She smiled, recognizing the humor in the statement. This year, Island Cove Adventures in Vineyard Haven, which began life as Island Cove Mini Golf in 1992 (the name changed once the climbing wall and grill were added in the early 2000s) celebrates its 20th anniversary. And from the first deal-sealing handshake that secured the 1.1 acre property on State Road, Mrs. Gosselin, 51, and husband Ray, 60, have been there as owners.
Island Cove opened that September, two months behind schedule—they’d lost the entire summer season. No matter. The aspiring golfers still lined up to play. The first to tee off was an Island family, the Grillos, who had been keeping tabs on the work-in-progress throughout the summer.
Mr. Gosselin flipped through the pages of a small photo album showing the stages of construction, landing on a picture of the Grillos on that first day, and pointed out the small blond boy with the half-size putter. Tony, the very first kid to play mini-golf at Island Cove, has gone on to play in two U.S. Amateur championships. He’s now a senior at Harvard, captain of the golf team.
Since then, Island Cove has seen its share of high-profile visitors. “You never know who you’ll meet at Island Cove Mini Golf,” Mr. Gosselin said. Disney Channel stars have stopped by, as did Lady Gaga (wearing “a huge freaking hat,” Mr. Gosselin noted). The first full season the course was open, when the Gosselins and the Melansons were covering all the shifts among the four of them, Ray and Mary decided they needed a break and took an off-Island day excursion. There had been rumblings of a Presidential visit to Island Cove that year, and the rumblings became reality on the day of the trip, as the Gosselins discovered upon seeing broadcast footage of the Clinton family playing through the instantly recognizable Island Cove cave. “I was out of my tree” at missing the visit, Mr. Gosselin recalled. But Mr. Clinton and his family returned on subsequent vacations. In 1998, “he took the time to write a letter,” Mrs. Gosselin said, pointing to a framed typed missive on embossed White House stationary, dated January 6 and signed in a thick scrawl, “Bill.”
A CNN reporter checked the archives, Mr. Gosselin said, and determined that Mr. Clinton was the first President to play mini golf during his executive tenure.
In more recent years, Malia and Sasha Obama have played the course, stopping by on their first full day on-Island and putting in a game of golf, lunch, and a rock-wall climb before anybody realized they had left Blue Heron Farm.
“It’s fun to know that famous people come here,” Mrs. Gosselin said, “[But] they come here because they know their privacy is going to be respected [staff policy is to not take photos nor ask for autographs]. They can just be normal families.”
From the beginning, the Gosselins have made it a goal to offer mini golf to all. The lower nine holes are handicap-accessible; a bridge on the course that seems off-limits is in fact a conduit for disabled players to loop around and play back through the nine holes for a full 18-hole experience.
The idea was Ray’s, a musing that became a reality after the putt-putt course located across the street from the current Island Cove went out of business in the eighties. Ray, an electrician, and daughter Meghan had visited that original course, Duffer’s Delight, and had had a blast playing its 18 holes.
“I was like ‘Man, that was fun!’” Mr. Gosselin said, seated at a picnic table outside the Island Cove main building. “I just kept thinking about it over the years.”
Eventually he posed the idea to his brother-in-law, Scott Melanson, who agreed to come on board. The pair contacted Harry Nelson, a course designer on Cape Cod, and set about looking for a potential site. Two locations were ruled out due to light pollution concerns. There were no such concerns for the State Road spot, set at the far end of the Tisbury business district. Mr. Gosselin and Mr. Melanson met the site owners, Bobby and Ernie Pachico, and shook hands on an agreement to purchase the land.
There were commission meetings, meetings with Mr. Nelson, meetings to prepare paperwork for small business loans. Things were right on schedule—until the small business loan program the Gosselins and Melansons had been working with canceled funding.
“So now my brother-in-law wants to kill me,” Mr. Gosselin said good-naturedly. But from the start, the extended Gosselin family believed in the endeavor, and Mr. Melanson’s mother offered up an eleventh hour (“eleventh and a half hour,” Mr. Gosselin amended) save in the form of long-held stocks that had not yet been cashed in. The extra capital proved all they would need.
Harry Nelson, the now-deceased course designer, was by all accounts a bit of a genius when it came to laying out mini-greens. Without any sort of blueprints or sketched-out plan, he set down the boundaries of each of the eighteen holes in one day, one session. They fit together as interlocking pieces of a green-turfed puzzle, all the more impressive considering that the course sits on such a small piece of land.
“I have no idea how he did this,” Mrs. Gosselin said. “He literally just took a spray can and walked through it [the site]...he just did it freehand. It was amazing.”
The course is so family-friendly that even animals have taken note. Several years ago, a pair of muskrats made a nest beneath a bush of Scotch broom. When the babies arrived, the little ones practiced their swimming skills in the landscaped ponds, “bodysurfing down the waterfall,” Mrs. Gosselin said. (The muskrats were eventually relocated to Felix Neck; the Scotch broom replaced by fireweed.)
“When we look back at our time here, are we successful?” Mrs. Gosselin said. “Yeah. Oh, yeah. We have so many memories, so many good times.”
Both Ray and Mary say some of the best memories come from working with the core of part-time summer staffers, many of whom are high schoolers holding their first-ever job (the Gosselin’s children, Meghan, 31, and Carl, 18, have also worked at the course, but their parents were adamant about never pushing them to do so). In addition to the staffers from the Vineyard, employees have come from as far away as Afghanistan and Mongolia.
In 2001, the Gosselins bought out their partners and took on full ownership of Island Cove—shortly after, the economy crashed in the wake of 9/11. To offset the financial changes, Ray and Mary invested in the rock wall—perhaps most familiar from its annual appearances at the Tisbury Street Fair and Ag Fair—and a grill for the back area, where Mrs. Gosselin, a former dietician, serves up grilled veggies and chicken alongside the burgers and hot dogs (homemade ice cream and smoothies are always on the menu).
“It’s been an amazing ride,” she said. “We’ll just keep on doing what we’re doing as long as we can.”
Island Cove Adventures is located at 386 State Road in Vineyard Haven. Anniversary events will take place throughout the summer, beginning with a Vineyard Sound concert this weekend. For more information about the concert or Island Cove Adventures, please call (508) 693-2611 or visit facebook.com/IslandCoveAdventures.
Comments
Comment policy »