VERONA, N.Y. – Matt Falvo has a natural way of sauntering around a golf course – armed with an impressive driver, a confident stride and a coy smile. When he’s walking one of the three championship courses at Turning Stone, a casino property in Central New York just east of Syracuse, he’s even more at ease. Now the director of golf courses and grounds, Falvo has worked for nearly a quarter-century at the property and he knows every in and out of this pastoral piece of paradise.
Falvo points to his house while playing the picturesque but inviting Shenendoah course, the one staffers often recommend as the resort’s best starting point. Also, his son is a 6-foot-4 defensive end for the local high school football team, which plays its games at a campus visible from the Turning Stone grounds.
And Falvo can share funny stories about when the complex – part of a massive and expanding casino property owned and operated by the Oneida Indian Nation of New York – was host to the PGA Tour’s Turning Stone Resort Championship from 2007 to 2010. For example, he won’t go into detail about John Daly’s brief appearance in the 2008 event, but when asked if the two-time major winner spent too much time in the casino before his opening round, Falvo stops and smiles.
Turning Stone
“All I’ll say is this,” Falvo quietly says with a smirk. “He only played seven holes. And it took a while to figure out that he was gone when he left.”
But for all his knowledge about the casino property, one that’s seemingly adding new pieces every summer, Falvo has no desire to trumpet how demanding the resort’s most difficult track is. In fact, he insists it’s not his place to do so. But he does know that when many players come off the Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed Kaluhyat, they liken it to another famous New York State track nearly 400 miles away.
“It’s not my job to say so, but people love to tell me that this course is harder than Bethpage Black,” Falvo said in his relaxed style. “That’s them. Not me. But I hear it all the time.”
In fact, Kaluhyat’s slope is 145, which makes it one of the state’s toughest courses, although not the 155 of Bethpage Black. But there’s still room for debate about whether it’s as difficult as the municipal course hosting the 2025 Ryder Cup.
There is no sign warning players how difficult the challenge at Kaluhyat is, but there probably should be. And starters, staffers and pro shop attendants are all quick…
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