Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island is as good as it gets
Paul Hickey once visited the location of this year’s U.S. Open
It seems like it was yesterday. My first and only visit to Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, beautifully situated on eastern Long Island’s south fork, better known as The Hamptons. The region boasts a string of seaside towns, villages and beaches that are summer destinations for wealthy residents of Manhattan. And also happens to be home to some of America’s most historic, challenging, scenic, and ultra-private golf clubs.
This week, Shinnecock Hills will become the first course to host the U.S. Open in three different centuries, as the world’s best male professionals gather in the Hamptons.
If you’re lucky, maybe a couple of times in your life you will set foot on a golf course that looks and feels magical. Not just beautiful. Or difficult. Or impeccably maintained. But otherworldly. With the kind of vistas and a natural-looking routing that makes one think that God could have indeed been a golfer.
Our host member at Shinnecock in 2003 was Bud, who was a friend of Gerry Lee, one of the co-founders of Wildfire. Gerry had graciously put the trip together for myself and course designer Tom McBroom, as a way of thanking us for our involvement in the Wildfire project. Gerry knew that Tom and I would appreciate the beauty and design of Shinnecock above all else. And so there could be no better thankyou gift.
Two things about Shinnecock stood out to me. The first is the famous Stanford White-designed clubhouse perched on the highest point on the property. It is the classic shingle-style design that is uniquely Hamptons and Cape Cod in aesthetic. As with all of my favourite golf clubhouses, it is understated yet grand, and seems to say to all who walk up its steps, come on in and feel comfortable, but know that the real reason you are here is for the golf. I think it is my experience with the Shinnecock and Cypress Point clubhouses that has made me suspicious of any golf club where the clubhouse looks like it is vying to become more loved and respected than the course itself.
The second thing about Shinnecock Hills are the angles. Oh my. I can’t remember a par 4 or par 5 that didn’t bend this way or that. You never played two consecutive holes in the same direction. You’re dealing with a different, stiff breeze every shot. Off the tee you were always forced to think about how much of the angled fairway in front of you you were prepared to bite off.
The entire property felt like it was a thousand acres, and that the course’s many designers over the years had an impossibly perfect canvas upon which to configure and tweak each and every one of the holes.
Our proud host treated us to several bits of “insider knowledge” about his home club that day. I enjoyed hearing him talk about how loved (or unloved) the previous U.S. Open champions at Shinnecock had been by the members.
Ray Floyd endeared himself so much to the members during and after his victory in 1986 that he eventually became a member and now spends a lot of time there.
Bud recounted how devastated the members were when Corey Pavin snatched victory from
Greg Norman in 1995 after Norman led for most of the first three days. Apparently Pavin never captured the hearts of the Shinnecock Hills family in any way close to how Floyd had. Bud let us in on a few club secrets about that one. Needless to say Tom, Gerry and I were sworn to secrecy, and the chances of us ever getting invited back would hinge on us promising that what goes on in the Hamptons, stays in the Hamptons.