Old Oaks Country Club

A.W. Tillinghast designed Old Oaks Country Club in 1925 on a piece of Purchase, New York Westchester County land north of New York City. The course is one of Tillinghast's mid-career Westchester commissions, completed during the same prolific decade that produced Bethpage Black, Baltusrol, San Francisco Golf Club, and the redesign of Winged Foot. Old Oaks reflects the Tillinghast architectural vocabulary at full maturity — small green complexes, deep penal bunkers, and the strategic decisions that depend on tee-ball positioning rather than length alone.

The course plays around 6,800 yards par 71 from the back markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 130s. The yardage is short by modern championship standards, but Tillinghast's green complexes and the property's mature tree canopy give the course defense that the back-tee yardage doesn't convey. The fairways play firm given the Westchester subsoil. The fifteenth hole is a 432-yard par-4 with a tee shot played over a creek; the seventeenth, a 198-yard par-3 across a natural depression, is the routing's most-discussed one-shotter. The Tillinghast bunker complexes — deep, steep-walled, set against the green corridors — remain the architectural defense.

Old Oaks is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The membership is regional Westchester County and New York metro business and professional families. The Tillinghast architectural pedigree is the primary institutional identity, and the hospitality model is traditional country club without the destination-private apparatus.

Westchester County climate gives Old Oaks a playing season of April through November, with the firmest conditions in September and October. The course closes through brief winter cold snaps. The mature tree canopy through the property gives the routing a parkland character that has been preserved through generations of restoration work, and the autumn color through October is part of the seasonal signature.