BAYONNE, NEW JERSEY | Twenty years ago this summer, the Bayonne Golf Club opened for business. Located on New York Harbor in this city of 70,000 people, the links-style course that serves as its centerpiece boasts sweeping views of the waterway as well as the Statue of Liberty, the Manhattan skyline and the massive Port Newark marine terminal. It also provides glimpses of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and cruise ships from the Royal Caribbean and Celebrity lines sailing in and out of local piers. Designed by a Norwegian-American real estate developer and R&A member named Eric Bergstol, the layout features two miles of water frontage, man-made dunes rising as high as 90 feet and swaths of blond-brown field grass. Holes are both long and short and bend left and right, with fairways full of hills and hollows. As for the well-contoured greens, they vary in size and shape and are generally receptive to run-up shots. Some are quite well-guarded by revetted bunkers of the Old World variety. Eric Bergstol In addition to demonstrating a de...