My son Andrew Gai holds the golf course record at Longshore with a 59 which he set in August of 2012. when he was 19 years old. He's currently on a pro tour in the south. We know he's one of the best golfers anywhere and I can't wait until the world knows it too.

Longshore is one of the main reasons Westport is so special. With its purchase by the town in 1960, for under 2 million, Westport has set itself apart from other towns with a public 167 acre country club located on Long Island Sound with Beach front, a sailing school, swimming pools, tennis courts and an 18 hole golf course. Enjoy my research.. I think you'll get a kick out of it.

Frank Fellowes owned much of the property along Westport's Coastline  the property until his death in 1900 when his widow sold the property to Frederic Lewis. Patrick Powers, wealthy entrepreneur bought the property in the early 20s. Powers was a powerhouse. He backed Walt Disney at one time and was the founder of Universal pictures. Here's a little tidbit from 1938 which caused an uproar. These three articles found in 1938, chronical a time when the landscape of Westport could have been shaped very differently than it is today.

Music: Salzburg on the Saugatuck

Monday, Mar. 28, 1938

One of the world's most famed places of musical pilgrimage, Austria's Salzburg, last week appeared on the verge of losing its eminence. It had already lost its three leading artistic personalities, Italian Conductor Arturo Toscanini, who resigned (TIME, Feb. 28), Jewish Conductor Bruno Walter, who was last week safe in The Netherlands although his daughter was arrested in Vienna, and Jewish Stage Director Max Reinhardt whose two Salzburg presentations were canceled. The moment was therefore favorable for revived talk of a U. S. Salzburg.

A bid for that honor promptly came last week from Westport, Conn., an arty village lying on the sluggish River Saugatuck where it empties into Long Island sound. There Author Hendrik van Loon's Connecticut Society of Friends of Music announced plans for an initial summer season of six concerts scheduled for this summer. While this six-performance schedule would still leave Westport trailing in competition with such established U. S. summer festivals as the Berkshire, Hollywood Bowl, St. Louis Municipal Opera, and Manhattan Lewisohn Stadium, such Westporters as van Loon, Grace Moore and Lawrence Tibbett hope for glamorous future expansion, to help keep American music lovers from stumping off to Europe every summer.

A Westport resident is Patrick A. Powers, an enterprising Irishman, onetime backer of Walt Disney, organizer of Universal Film Co., later of Film Booking Office of America (forerunner of RKO) who sold out his Hollywood interests several years ago, purchased a 200-acre estate in Westport, where he built the Longshore Country Club. Sociable, civic-minded Powers spends his winters in a marble-floored palace at Spuyten Duyvil on the Hudson River, wears green suits and still sports an Irish accent. Last week he promised Westporters a great gift: he would build a $100,000 "marine stadium" at Westport, lease it to the Friends of Music for $1 a year.  (Time Magazine)

Music: Saugatuck Symphony

Monday, Sept. 12, 1938  (that's wild, that is the date my parents got married in 1938)

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With the Wabash running a close second, the most musically celebrated of U. S. rivers is probably the misnamed Swanee.* But during the past year suburban Connecticut's sluggish Saugatuck has meandered into the national consciousness. Last March the arty town of Westport, on its banks, got into an argument with itself about whether or not to become "the U. S. Salzburg" (TIME, March 28).

And last year Bridgeport Hydraulic Co., which supplies water to a large part of southwestern Connecticut, proposed to dam the Saugatuck, throwing it completely out of kilter. Local patriots rose to the defense of their river, with "Save the Saugatuck" their watchword. To defend groves threatened by the utility's axmen, women residents of the valley threatened to lash themselves to the trees. While Writers Stuart Chase and Deems Taylor protested, Fiddler Jascha Heifetz gave a "Save the Saugatuck" concert, devoted its proceeds to the cause.

Among the most fervent saviors of the Saugatuck is bushy-headed Composer Edwin Gerschefski, who lives with his wife at Meriden, Conn., hard by the threatened river. Broadcast last week on Conductor Howard Barlow's CBS "Everybody's Music" program was Composer Gerschefski's contribution to the great Connecticut cause: a "Save the Saugatuck" Symphony. Subtitles of the flashily orchestrated symphony's four rather noisy movements: 1) Natural Ruggedness; 2) Robot Controlled Precision without Escape; 3) Natural Flow; 4) Dynamite Accomplished Perversion and Artificiality of Every Description.

Music: No Salzburg

Monday, Apr. 04, 1938

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The repercussions of Austria's Nazification last week continued to widen through the world. Opportunistic Hollywood threw its hat into the ring as a prospective "American Salzburg." And 200 embattled citizens of arty Westport, Conn, nearly shattered the rafters of their Town Hall with furious protests against the plan to make Westport a "Salzburg on the Saugatuck" (TIME, March 28). Following the meeting, Westport's Board of Zoning Appeals refused to grant Millionaire Patrick A. Powers a permit to continue construction on his $100,000 "Dream Stadium."

Protesting Westporters, preferring rural quiet to culture and glory, feared that their "simple" village would be turned into a Connecticut Coney Island instead of an American Salzburg. "We don't want to be the Salzburg of America," declared one anxious Westporter. "We want to die in peace."

 We see snippets of information that Powers actually did try to build the concert hall but was stopped by concerned citizens who knew he did not have a permit to do so. Westport may have been a very different place today if the town didn't stop the building of this "marine stadium"