The holes on the manicured course are softened versions of legendary European holes. Players at McCullough's and a growing number of other layouts have found that a course doesn't have to be trashy just because it's built on garbage.

About 70 of the nation's nearly 16,000 golf courses utilize old landfills, strip mines or industrial "brownfields," a concept that began 40 years ago and is picking up steam despite higher development costs, experts said.

Although the trend preserves virgin land, some environmentalists are opposed to the approach, cautioning that blighted land requires constant monitoring and poses unknown health risks.

A multiyear battle by New York City environmental groups failed to halt work on a course being built atop an old landfill in the Bronx.

Of the nearly 250 courses that opened in 2002, about 10 are on so- called "brownfields," estimated Roy Case, a golf course architect.

"It's putting land that's useless right now into some sort of public use," said Case, whose Case Golf Co. is based in Lake Worth, Fla.

Many courses built on reclaimed land, like McCullough's, are owned by towns, so the fees and the course are within reach of the duffer of average means, he said. At McCullough's, a weekday round costs $60; $39 for township residents.

"In most cases, they're developed for what I call blue-collar golf, which still needs a lot more golf courses," Case said.

In recent years, courses on distressed land have sprouted around the nation: the Jack Nicklaus-designed Old Works Golf Course is a former strip mine in Anaconda, Mont. A waterfront landfill on Chicago's industrial south side became Harborside International Golf Center in 1995, and hosted the 2002 SBC Senior Open.

New Jersey, long an industrial hub, has its share: Scotland Run Golf Club in Williamstown, Ballyowen Golf Club in Hamburg and Eagle Ridge Golf Club in Lakewood were all built on old gravel mines.

Other brownfield courses are now being built in the Garden State, including a four-course project on 950 acres of landfills in the Meadowlands and the Bayonne Golf Club atop a former dump in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

The makeover at McCullough's succeeded with Jim Burr, who did not realize he and his buddies were playing on a former dump.

"I like it a lot. I'm surprised they can get this grass to grow," said Burr, 42, of Bel Air, Md.

Another member of the foursome remembered how it used to be. "It's definitely better than a landfill. It doesn't stink," said Eric Austin, 27, of Palmyra.

The trend toward building on distressed land is giving golf courses a second look from environmentalists, who have long complained they use too much water and produce runoff laden with pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer.

The Meadowlands project, consisting of two public and two private courses, is to use only stormwater captured at the site and treated wastewater to keep the greens and fairways green, noted Capt. Bill Sheehan, head of the Hackensack Riverkeeper environmental group.

"That actually makes their impact on the local drinking water supply disappear," Sheehan said.

The developer, EnCap Golf Holdings, has agreed to close seven landfills, a $300 million cleanup that will prevent an estimate 12 billion gallons of decomposing landfill from oozing into the estuaries near the New Jersey Turnpike, according to the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.

Although courses built on landfills are monitored, a scientist with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice is not convinced that course operators are up to the challenge.

"There are a range of volatile chemicals that are typically found in general, household garbage landfills," said Stephen Lester, including benzene and vinyl chloride, which have been linked to cancer in humans.

While the Environmental Protection Agency maintains the small amounts of such agents pose little risk, "We believe that they are toxic in small quantities, especially in combination," Lester said. However, he notes no studies specifically address the results of exposure to such gases.