In an effort to increase rounds and income this season, Orangeburg is now offering corporate and non-resident memberships at Blue Hill and Broadacres.

And the price appears to be reasonable.

The corporate membership is open to any corporation or business within the town. Anyone who owns property in Orangeburg is also eligible. The membership fee is $100, and includes reservations for two foursomes per week.

The associate membership is open to non-residents. The fee is $75, and there is no limit on the number of rounds each week.

Both plans allow the ID holder to book tee times three days in advance. Members get discounted greens fees, which are $36 for weekdays, $23 for weekdays after 3:30 p.m., $42 for weekends and $27 for weekends after 3:30 p.m.

If town residents do not buy all of the weekend tee times, associate members will be allowed to secure a Saturday or Sunday time slot, as well.

Further information about the new membership programs can be obtained by calling the Orangeburg office of recreation and parks at 845-359-6503.

I don’t know much about either of these courses, yet, so if anybody out there wants to leave a comment about conditions and crowds at Blue Hill or Broadacres to help those considering the membership plan, fire away.

Among the new features on the blog will be tips from the wealth of golf knowledge we have in the Metropolitan section. To get you started, here are three stretches from Anthony Renna of Five Iron Fitness in White Plains that will help you before you start emptying that bucket of balls on the range. There’s even a link to a video at the end.

Three Moves For More Power
Anthony Renna, FiveIronFitness.com

Everyone wants to hit the ball longer, and good golfers know that just trying to kill it won’t do it. You need a combination of mobility, stability, strength power and endurance to consistently hit longer shots.

There are three keys to generating power in the golf swing:

1. Maintaining good posture. This will allow you to get the proper rotation needed in the back swing.

2. The ability to internally rotate around your hips. During the back swing, you need to be able to internally rotate around the right hip (for the right handed golfer) and then on the follow through, internally rotate around the left hip. Not being able to do so will cause compensations, lead to a loss of power generation and mess with sequencing.

3. Have good separation of upper body from lower body. In order to create tension in the torso and have the ability to generate power, you need upper body mobility with lower body stability. Mobility is useless without stability.

Here are three quick drills you can do right on the range before you start hitting balls:

1. Hip Hinge Drill

Stand tall with your driver on your back. You want three points of contact with the club, your head, in between your shoulder blades and your butt.

Keeping your knees slightly bent in a good athletic stance, move your butt back (hinge from the hip) keeping your torso straight the whole time. Imagine you are bowing. The club provides the feedback you need. If it comes off of your back, that means you are rounding or flexing your spine and doing it wrong. This drill will help you feel what it is like to be in good posture at address. Do 10 repetitions.

2. Hip Twisters

Standing tall, hold your club in front of you and use it for balance. Put one foot behind your other knee and keep the grounded foot pointing straight. Twist left and right (think of your knee as a windshield wiper going back and forth, 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock and really feel the rotation through the grounded leg hip. I like to try to keep the upper body as square as possible throughout the movement with my eyes looking forward. Do 10 repetitions on each side.

3. Back Lunge with Rotation

Standing tall with the club over your head, take a step back. Keeping the club over your head, rotate over the front leg. It is important to try to keep the front knee stable, in line with the foot. Do not let the knee move laterally in the direction of the rotation. Do 10 repetitions on each side.

If you would like to see videos of these exercises, go to the Five Iron Fitness web site.

Anthony Renna is a Level 3 Titleist Certified Golf Fitness Instructor and the owner of Five Iron Fitness, a golf-specific fitness studio, in White Plains. To find out how you can Improve Your Body and Improve Your Golf Game, go to www.FiveIronFitness.com or call them at 914-948-3549.

I usually drive past Centennial Golf Club several times a week, and the grass is always greener on that side of Route 6.

The 27-hole facility opens for the season tomorrow.

“We’re in great shape,” director of golf Scott Klemme said. “Fantastic. All of the bunkers have been edged. The greens have been rolled and mowed. It should be a good weekend if the weather holds.”

They’re expecting 300-400 rounds.

Centennial is a high-end course, but they have a special to entice golfers early in the season. You can play for $65 Monday-Thursday until May 1. That includes a cart and range balls. The weekend rate is $90 until May 1.

“It’s a good deal,” Klemme said.

And if that’s not in your budget, how’s $20 work? Centennial has a walking rate available starting at 4:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday. The rate is $35 on weekends.

Seniors (62-and-older) will also get a break this year, it’s $65 Monday-Thursday and $80 on Fridays.

Anybody who doesn’t get enough reality on the course will be able to watch Valley Cottage resident Nicole Sikora compete in the 11th season of the Big Break.

The latest installment of the Golf Channel reality show premieres April 20.

According to her bio, Sikora was on the golf team at St. Thomas Aquinas College and was a member of the Duramed Futures Tour in 2007 before heading to Wall Street as an executive assistant for a New York broker. She doesn’t have the same kind of resume on the course as the other 11 competitors, although Sikora was twice featured in the Golf Digest Japan World Ladies of Golf calendar.

I know. I laughed, too.

The 11 episodes were filmed in Canada, on Prince Edward Island and include the usual physical and mental challenges. It’s darn near impossible to break those panes of glass. At least on purpose. The winner receives $100,000 to finance a run on whatever tour they can latch on with.

We run little updates every week Johnson Wagner and Meaghan Francella are on tour and playing, but we don’t often have space in The Journal News to keep up with the growing list of college talent.

Nannette Hill probably headlines that list right now.

The senior at seventh-ranked Wake Forest finished one stroke removed from a playoff after closing with a 4-under-par 68 yesterday in the LSU/Cleveland Golf Classic at the University Club in Baton Rouge. She did not card a bogey over her last 40 holes, and wound up posting a 210 for the event, which is the lowest 54-hole score in program history.

Hill broke her own record by a stroke. The 211 came on the same course during the 2007 NCAA East Regionals.

Is anybody celebrating the first day of spring, or did the snow flakes dampen your enthusiasm?

Mother Nature is a tease.

This is why heated stalls were installed at the driving range. Anyway, if you need a good laugh, here’s an observation I made on Wednesday during the opening-day tour.

What’s the most noticeable difference between Maple Moor and Hudson Hills?

The parking lots!

Get it? Sorry. Blame it on cabin fever, I should be out swinging a golf club somewhere.

I have a ritual every golf season: some time in the first week the local golf courses open, I set up a tee time at Dunwoodie to serve as my inaugural New York round. For some reason, I fool myself into thinking those short par-4s and manageable par-3s make it an easy course.

And, like an idiot, I pull out my driver on the first hole.

Yup, I did it again today. Despite wind in my face and rust on my swing, I tried to drive the first hole, a par-4 260-yarder, even envisioning the majestic flight of my ball over the bunker. Instead, I hit a low liner into a row of trees along the right side before nestling up to a patch of brown dirt.

Welcome to the 2009 Season, dummy.

I only got to play nine holes today but it was glorious enough. I made par on the first, followed by back-to-back doubles and an unsightly quadruple on No. 4, before settling in the rest of the way.

Overall, I thought the condition of the course was fair. The only temporary green was on No. 5, which is the way it was for most of last season (turning a dog-leg par 4 into a downhill par 3). But it looked like the normal green was almost back to health after being rebuilt last summer.

The green on No. 3 wasn’t great, but it never is. While I was hitting up, there were four workers there pointing to the trees above. Perhaps the green isn’t getting enough sunlight, which is why it’s a mess. The hills on No. 7 and 8 were both very short, allowing balls to run off back into the green/fairway. And if you thought the green on No. 9 was slick last season, wait until you see it this year. (Hackers tip: Always be below the hole).

Amazingly, the course was pretty quiet. I teed off just after 9 and there were probably 3-4 groups ahead of me but only 3-4 directly behind. There were more people on the course after that. But even when I left, the parking lot was only 2-3 rows full and there were 5-6 people on the driving range.

This is the Hudson Valley, so obviously that’s going to change very soon.

Here’s the final dispatch from Ernie Palladino, who got lost in Yonkers:

Both courses showed a boost in attendance, some of which was due to an influx of players who once belonged to private courses.

Sprain Lake head professional Tom Avezzano could not put an exact number on it, he surmised that at least of some of the 200 golfers today came from the club scene.

“A lot of private courses are hurting right now because 60-70 members have dropped out and are going to public courses,” Avezzano said. “You put your membership fee together with how many rounds you play in a year, and a lot of those guys are looking at $500 a round. It just doesn’t make sense in these economic times.

“As long as our numbers are reasonable and consistent, they’ll come out (here).”

At Dunwoodie, where things slowed down after 1 p.m., head pro Jeff Bohr also predicted an eventual uptick at the public courses.

“I think we’ll get people from the high-end public and private courses,” he said. “They’ll be happy with the price and the quality of our course. Once we get them here, hopefully we can keep them here.”

It’s gotten considerably warmer and I’m pretty impressed by the way Rotella looks over here in Rockland. They almost have green grass. It’s a good thing my clubs are not in the car or I wouldn’t be home in time for dinner.

Deadline might’ve become an issue, as well.

Anyway, they’ve had about 108 golfers come through already. There are more on the way. People were calling the pro shop to make sure they could show up around 4 p.m. and sneak in a quick nine.

“It’s nice. It’s nice,” said Dan McKeever, a senior on the North Rockland High School golf team who was getting in a practice round. “I’ve been waiting for this since October.”

Me too.

Don’t roll up to Hudson Hills without a tee time thinking you’ll get right out. They don’t have room for a twosome until 3 p.m.

Before the day’s over, they’re expecting 130 golfers to play through.

Everybody is just happy to be out playing, so there’s nothing but praise for the changes implemented here. I’ll go out eventually and play the course to give you my thoughts, but they expanded the landing area over the ravine at No. 7 and rerouted No. 15 so you can hit driver off the tee, which is always handy on a par 5.

“It’s beautiful, a great course,” Mark Girordano of Ossining said. “It’s less scary.”

We still have a few more stops to make. Stay tuned.