Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is an old club with old traditions and Scottish professional Willie Dunn, aided by 150 Indians from the neighbouring Shinnecock Reservation, can take credit for what was probably the inaugural authentic US golf course design which dates back to 1891. Charles B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor overhauled the course during the Great War and the design firm of Howard Toomey and William Flynn remodelled it yet again in the 1930s – although credit should perhaps be given to Dick Wilson. Little has since changed. 

Not only was Shinnecock Hills Golf Club one of the five founding members of the USGA but also it was where one of the first specifically designed golf clubhouses was built. Stanford White designed the clubhouse in the shingled style of the region and it sits majestically on the highest point of the property. A few steps away from the white columned building is the first tee box from where you can see Peconic Bay shimmering in the distance and, in the foreground, lies the open, 300-acre expansive golf course which tumbles away from the clubhouse. 

“Shinnecock Hills fully utilises the outstanding features of the area – the strong prevailing winds off the Atlantic to the southwest, the sandy and rolling terrain and the thick, reed-like grasses that border the fairways.” Wrote Charles Price in the New World Atlas of Golf. “While not truly linksland – the grass of the fairways and greens is more of an inland texture – the ambience and windy bleakness of Shinnecock Hills on an average day evoke feelings of the British seaside links.” 

Ben Hogan was a fan of Shinnecock Hills and in a letter to a Shinnecock club member he once wrote: “Each hole is different and requires a great amount of skill to play properly. Each hole has complete definition. You know exactly where to shoot. All in all, I think it is one of the finest courses I have ever played.”