When an 18-hole golf club—private and exclusive—opens in the next couple of years at the controversial Lewis Road luxury development in East Quogue, it will mark the latest and probably the last of 135 years of links building on and around the South Fork of Long Island. This will bring to 20 the number of golfing options, not including some favorites on the North Fork.
But long before it got to No. 20, the Hamptons made history with No. 1.
Shinnecock Hills, oldest incorporated golf club in the U.S., was the start of a first-wave of “summer colony” courses to populate the stretch. It took its name—and some say its land—from a native tribe that arguably had been hornswoggled by settlers decades earlier. But Shinnecock’s pedigree with golf professionals is solid—it will host its fourth U.S. Open tournament in 2026.
With the extended Long Island Rail Road opening up the territory to a new seasonal population, other courses followed in short order in the 1890s: the Westhampton Country Club (relocated in 1915), Quogue Field Club, Southampton Golf Club, the Maidstone Club in East Hampton and Gardiners Bay Country Club on Shelter Island. A decade later came National Golf Links, neighboring Shinnecock Hills on the Peconic Bay side.
The next burst of course creation occurred in the Roaring Twenties. The Bridgehampton Club opened nine holes near that village, south of the Montauk Highway. Soon, nine holes were carved out of woodlands east of Sag Harbor for a public club (today Sag Harbor Golf Course is operated by the state of New York). Another “executive” course, the Shelter Island Golf Club, was opened to general play. And in 1927, Carl Fisher’s grand resort vision for Montauk featured the initial iteration of today’s celebrated Downs layout.
As noted in William Quinn’s pictorial history, “America’s Linksland: A Century of Long Island Golf” (2002), several of the coastal courses were heavily damaged in the September 1938 hurricane that struck the area. The Quogue club lost a few holes and ultimately shortened to nine. Shinnecock Hills, meantime, had to shift some holes that once straddled the railroad tracks northward as the Sunrise Highway was extended into town.
New links activity went quiet for decades, awakened only by the golf craze of the 1960s. First came nine new public holes at Poxabogue in Sagaponack, in 1962. The membership course at Noyac Golf Club signaled new wealth in the mid-‘60s, inland from an old bay boating hamlet and existing, it says, as a “hidden gem” for years until a course redesign. (Noyac is the course depicted in the early-March photo.)
Meanwhile, tucked away in a forest of upper Westhampton, Hampton Hills Country Club opened in 1965. Remarkably, given later battles over the surrounding Pine Barrens, it attracted little controversy. (However, later proposals to build hundreds of homes along the course and by the Teamsters union to build 2,000 homes on property it held nearby did not fly.) Completing this era, Suffolk County in 1972 created Indian Island Golf Course around what had been a huge Riverhead duck farm.
Even then, however, the great change in the Hamptons was yet to come. One indication is a June 1964 advertisement in the East Hampton Star for the Montauk course: $4 green fees and “No Waiting for Starting Times.” Ownership would later shift to New York—and today it’s $86 for out-of-staters and a lot of luck could get you a prime spot on the tee.
A last push for golfing rights on the South Fork would be seen after the great Hamptons rush of the 1980s. By then, land values had begun to skyrocket—it’s generally accepted that at least 125 acres is needed for 18 holes—while a natural-resources lobby had grown unhappy to see fertilized grass stretches take the place of native terrain.
In fact, several golf-developer visions of the later 1900s failed to pass muster in the area, as local or state parklands or open space were approved instead. One of the last such efforts to die, in 1999, was at Montauk’s ocean-facing Camp Hero, a former federal installation given over instead to the public as rustic day-use grounds.
The increasingly vocal resistance complicated the founding of the next 18-hole course to open, the private Atlantic Golf Club in upper Bridgehampton. After a long battle over the 200 acres of onetime potato farm, with both competing developers and foes of any repurposing, Atlantic members—many of them from the South Fork’s growing Jewish community–realized their aims in 1992.
Almost a decade later and two miles up Millstone Road, another tussle ensued over the former Bridgehampton Raceway site on a rise overlooking Noyac Bay. Again, various interests including nature lovers sought to control the parcel. Ultimately the racetrack’s last impresario, Robert Rubin, put together an exclusive golf resort, The Bridge, to accompany a handful of fancy home sites. Rubin’s plans were sufficiently restrained to overcome opposition. But the approvals came just before the Community Preservation Fund, an East End tax designed to allow towns to compete for valuable and sensitive properties, could kick in enough to vie for the scenic site.
Meantime, an 18-hole membership course had opened in the agricultural belt above Amagansett with few fireworks. The East Hampton Golf Course, however, had the benefit of history. The locally prominent Bistrian family created a public 9-holer on its farm plot there in 1978, before the landscaping graders became such a sore point. A new membership simply expanded to 18 and took charge in 2000.
The most recent course to open on the South Fork, Sebonack Golf Club in 2006, also avoided serious resistance. This may be explained by its location and pedigree: It adjoins the National Golf Links on what had been Bayberry Land, a banking magnate’s compound going back to 1919 and subsequently a retreat for the IBEW electricians union. Michael Pascucci spearheaded Sebonack’s creation with a “green” sensibility and ceded a long stretch of waterfront to Southampton town for conservation purposes. (With today’s polarized times, this has not satisfied all objections.)
In the nearly 20 years since, more affluent golfers have descended on the South Fork, with few openings for play. But development issues have only become more fractious and legally bound. So it’s no surprise that future golf prospects come in the form of a highly contested project. Lewis Road, formerly known as The Hills, is to be part of a 100-some home project over nearly 600 acres of woodland south of the Sunrise Highway. Just to its north are hundreds of protected acres of the Pine Barrens, and indeed the Long Island Pine Barrens Society was an early foe of the whole plan.
The current iteration of the project is four years old, and an earlier, similar blueprint failed after that long of a fight. But Discovery Land, the developer, has prevailed at all stops so far this time, and construction looms.
As hard fought as each additional golf hole has been in recent years, there’s likely plenty of demand to keep all the existing courses busy for Long Island’s eight-month active seasons. Thus, even with a generally-aging player population and high land values, closure of any of them for developments is a political nonstarter. (Increasingly, the bigger clubs have had to house maintenance workers on site, because nearby rental shelter is so dear.)
Reversion to nature preserves, as has happened elsewhere as golf supply exceeded demand, is an economic leap too far in the Hamptons. But there can be ancillary outdoor uses—the Southampton Trails Preservation Society has pitched an “accessible” visitor path on the donated bayfront stretch next to Sebonack, and created an unusual hike in the watershed of the Atlantic club. Enthusiasts asked for a trail as part of the Lewis Road project.
In years past, ample winter snowfalls created cross-country skiing possibilities on gently sloping fairways, but such cover has become rare on the South Fork. If anything, the warmer bridge seasons have brought more golf to a place that won’t be seeing any more spots to accommodate it. –March 15, 2024
Tim W. Ferguson 