National Golf Links of America

Charles Blair Macdonald wrote the original architectural manifesto for American championship golf in the late 1890s, traveling repeatedly to the British Isles to study the great holes at St. Andrews, North Berwick, Prestwick, and the other founding links of the modern game. He came home with sketches, photographs, and a determination to build an American course that would translate those holes — the Redan, the Alps, the Eden, the Sahara, the Cape — into a single eighteen on American sand-and-grass terrain. The National Golf Links of America opened in 1911 on a piece of Southampton, Long Island land adjacent to Shinnecock Hills, and the routing has stayed substantially intact since.

The course plays around 6,700 yards par 73 from the back markers, with a slope in the low 130s. The yardage reads short to the modern eye, but the routing was designed for the gutta-percha and early wound-ball era, and the green complexes — modeled on the British originals — carry contour and angle that defend against modern equipment more than length would suggest. The third hole is the Alps (modeled on the second at Prestwick); the fourth is the Redan (modeled on the fifteenth at North Berwick); the seventh is the St. Andrews Road Hole. Macdonald's strategic principles — angle of attack matters more than distance, the bold play is rewarded but the conservative play is preserved — appear in every routing built by every American architect for the century following.

The National is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The club hosts Walker Cup matches periodically — most recently in 2013 — and the routing has been used for various amateur championships through its history. The membership is small and the club operates closer to a links-style Scottish private than an American country club.

Long Island coastal climate gives the National a longer playing season than inland Northeast courses — April through November — with the firmest conditions in September and October. The Atlantic wind is the constant; the course was designed for wind, and rounds without it play differently than Macdonald intended.