Koji Nagasaka ran a Tokyo investment firm, played golf and loved Dirty Dancing, a movie that takes place at a Catskill resort. In 1989 he found Kass Inn for sale near Margaretville, and he bought it.
The inn already had nine holes. Frank Wilson of Roxbury built them in 1949 on what had been corn fields. Nagasaka designed the new layout himself and turned Wilson's nine into an 18-hole mountain course. It rises and drops, the greens are tiered, and some fairways run right by the water. The inn's up on Hubbell Hill now, looking down over the course, the river and the valley.
On No. 9, bunkers sit on both sides of the fairway off the tee. A big one short of the green makes it hard to run the ball on, and a pond wraps around the back and right side.