Location Southampton, N.Y. Type Private Equity Tournaments hosted U.S. Open (4 times) Phone +1 631-283-1310 | Established 1891 Total holes 18 Area 105 ha Year built 1892 | |
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Designed by William Flynn 1937...C.B. MacDonald 1901...Willie Dunn 1894...Willie Davis 1891 Address 200 Tuckahoe Rd, Southampton, NY 11968, USA Similar Winged Foot Golf Club, Pine Valley Golf Club, United States Golf Association, Oakmont Country Club, Cypress Point Club | ||
Shinnecock hills golf club
Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is a links-style golf club located in the town of Southampton on Long Island, New York. It has hosted the U.S. Open four times in three different centuries and is scheduled to host again in 2018. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
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It claims to be the oldest formal organized golf club in the United States (1891), to have the oldest golf clubhouse in the U.S. (1892), and to have been the first to admit women, which it did from the start.
History
The club traces its roots to an 1889–90 trip by William K. Vanderbilt, Edward Meade and Duncan Cryder, to Biarritz in southern France where they encountered Willie Dunn, from Scotland, who was building a golf course at the resort.
Back in the United States, Meade and Cryder scouted for a place for a golf course near New York City. They chose the sandhills adjoining the Long Island Rail Road just east of the Shinnecock Canal. The 80-acre (320,000 m2) parcel was purchased for $2,500 and 44 original members signed up for $100 each.
Willie Davis from the Royal Montreal Club designed a 12-hole course that opened in late summer 1891. Members of Shinnecock Indian Nation helped build the course (which is on land they have laid claim to and which remains in litigation). Stanford White designed the club house which opened in 1892 and is said to be the oldest golf club house in the United States. In 1893 a 9-hole ladies-only course was designed and built at Shinnecock Hills.
In 1894 Dunn arrived and added six more holes bringing the total to 18. That same year Dunn won an informal attempt to establish a national championship at Newport, Rhode Island. The following year Shinnecock was one of five founding clubs of the United States Golf Association, which held the first U.S. Open in 1895 in Newport.
In 1896 Shinnecock hosted the second U.S. Open. Many of the golfers broke 80 on a course which was playing less than 5,000 yards. This led to demands to make the course more difficult. Participating in the 1896 open was black player John Shippen.
The popular ladies' course was abandoned in 1901 to allow for a lengthening and redesign by Charles B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor, retaining five of Dunn's original holes.
William Flynn redesigned the course in 1937 into a 6,740-yard (6,163 m) configuration. Flynn's design retains five of Macdonald and Raynor's holes and the green of a sixth hole. Prior to the 2004 U.S. Open the course was extended to a length of 6,996 yards (6,397 m) by the addition of extra tees.
Land claim dispute
There is a question mark over the club's ownership of these lands as the area of Shinnecock Hills is claimed by the Shinnecock Indian Nation as their land, illegally seized in a white land grab in 1859.
In 2005 the nation filed a lawsuit against the state, seeking the return of 3,500 acres (14 km2) in Southampton, New York around the tribe's reservation and billions of dollars in reparations. The disputed property includes the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, which Native American representatives say is the location of tribe burial grounds.
The core of the lawsuit is over a 1703 deal between Southampton and the tribe for a 1,000-year lease. The suit charges that a group of powerful investors conspired to break the lease in 1859 by sending the state legislature a fraudulent petition from a number of Shinnecock tribesmen. Although other tribal members immediately protested that the petition was a forgery, the legislature approved the sale of 3,500 acres (14 km2) of former tribal land.
Awards
Shinnecock Hills was ranked second in Golf Digest's 100 Greatest Courses Ranking for 2007, 2008, and third in 2009.