It's no Liberty National, but the 9-hole Hudson County Golf Course in Lincoln Park, Hudson County’s first public golf course, is shaping up.

The $20 million course at Route 1&9 and Duncan Avenue is scheduled to open around the middle of next year and promises a setting with amazing views and natural wetlands, all for $20 a round.

“This is really golf - this is not pitch and putt,” Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise said Friday at the 3,100, to 3,200-yard course, which has three par three holes, three par four holes and three par five holes, including drives over waterways. Its working name is the Lincoln Park West Public Golf Course.

The project involved bringing about 1.2 million cubic yards of fill to the site, which had been completely flat. Altitudes at the site now average 25 feet and go as high as 45 feet, Hudson County Improvement Authority Chief Executive Norman Guerra said.

Golfers will be playing with views of the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, the Pulaski Skyway, Journal Square, the Hackensack River and wetlands where egrets walk among the reeds in the shadow of the Carson-Nguyen Memorial Bridge, formerly the Lincoln Highway Bridge.

About half the site is already green and officials expect by late spring or early summer the lawns will be ready for golfers. Netting borders the park on Routes 1&9 and Duncan Avenue to snare wayward golf balls.

County residents will be allowed to be buy a card that gives them a discount at the course and priority when it comes to tee times, officials said.

“This is the first public, affordable golf course in Hudson County and we are the only county in New Jersey that did not have a public course,” DeGise said. “The only golf courses in the county now are in Bayonne and Jersey City and both cost about half a million dollars to join.”

Real estate mogul David Simon, Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft are all members of the ultra posh Liberty National Golf Club, which was established in Jersey City in 2006.

The county is footing the bill for the 55-acre course and DeGise said he expects it will pay for itself. The course, he said, will attract seniors, schools, and other organizations.

The grounds will include a club house with a pro shop, dining facility and patio. There is an elongated S-shaped wooden bridge crossing a waterway amid the rolling hills, blacktop paths for golf carts, and a walkway around the perimeter.

Located near a county building that houses offices for the Hudson County Sheriff, county prosecutor, as well as the county Department of Public Works building, DeGise said he hopes to move those functions to free up parking for the golf course.

An 18-hole golf course takes more than four hours to complete, but a 9-hole course allows someone to play before or after work, he said. An avid duffer himself, DeGise said he's played about seven rounds of golf this year but expects to double his time on the links once this course opens.

DeGise said he hopes to be the first golfer to try out the new course so he can establish the first club record.

The firm of Paulus, Sokolowski and Sartor, which has a Central New Jersey office in Warren, provided engineering, design and permitting for the course and recently posted a news bulletin on the project on its website.