To the newly arrived hacker on the Island, Mink Meadows sounds like some kind of luxury fur farm. But Vineyard golfers know better.

For 75 years now, the Mink Meadows Golf Club has welcomed players who appreciate its layout, condition and laid-back culture. The nine-hole track on West Chop — just a drive and a wedge from Lake Tashmoo — has hosted everyone from U.S. presidents and captains of industry to farmers and trades people.

Few people know their way around the Island links like local wunderkind Tony Grillo. As President Obama settles into a vacation in West Tisbury that is almost certain to include a few rounds, Mr. Grillo leaves for Seattle to compete in the U.S. Amateur Championship. Before leaving, though, he spoke with the Gazette at his home course, Farm Neck, about what the duffer-in-chief can expect on Vineyard fairways.

Never have a manicure before beginning a major carpentry project.

That’s the first of many lessons Chris Rasmussen learned last week while installing the foundation deck on her new home in Vineyard Haven made possible by Habitat for Humanity. Ms. Rasmussen’s enterprise is the fifth Habitat home to be built.

Mother Nature is keeping the Vineyard Golf Club under construction until the next summer season.

Even though the fairways and contours of the course are beginning to glow in a shade of bright green, the caretakers of Vineyard Golf Club refuse to open the 71-acre facility until they know it can sustain foot and cart traffic.

“We agreed to do this the right way. It’s really a labor of love,” said Owen Larkin, managing partner of Vineyard Golf Club.

The trees have been cleared, the land smoothed over; the contours of a new 18-hole golf course in Edgartown are taking shape. While it is months before grass seed takes root, the landscape already presents vistas never seen before. The Vineyard Golf Club project is well under way.

Some 245 acres of land once planned for 148 houses in the rural perimeters of Edgartown were sold last week to a golf club development group, closing a key chapter in a complicated land transaction which began nearly two years ago.

Total sale price was $15.9 million. The sale resulted in a sharp spike in revenues for the week for the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, which collected $318,000 in fees from the transaction.

Ending an exhaustive regional and local review that began some 15 months ago, the Edgartown zoning board of appeals voted unanimously this week to approve a plan for a private 18-hole golf club at the site of an old subdivision in the rural perimeters of Edgartown.

“I feel it complies with the vision set forth in the bylaw, and I don’t think it will adversely affect the neighborhood,” said John Magnuson, a member of the appeals board, just before the vote on Wednesday night.

Leaders in the two rival golf course development groups in Edgartown said yesterday that they will merge memberships and stop competing with each other.

Owen Larkin, the managing partner for the Vineyard Golf Club, confirmed that he has signed an agreement to offer guaranteed membership to every member of the Meetinghouse Golf Club Inc. In return, the leading developers for Meetinghouse have agreed not to reapply for permission to build an 18-hole golf course on the MacKenty family property along the Edgartown Great Pond, Mr. Larkin said.

The developers who recently lost their bid to build a private golf club on some 200 acres of land along the Edgartown Great Pond intend to file a new plan and try again.

“We are neither dead nor finished,” declared a letter sent to the founding members of the Meeting House Golf Club one day after the plan was voted down by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.

The letter was sent by mail and by fax to 30 seasonal residents of the Vineyard who advanced some $2 million in start-up money for the failed golf course project.