Winged Foot Golf Club

Winged Foot is one of the few clubs in American golf that operates two championship-grade courses on a single property with full major-rotation history on both. A.W. Tillinghast designed the West and East Courses in 1923 on a piece of Mamaroneck, New York land twenty miles north of Manhattan, working at the peak of his career — the same decade he produced Bethpage Black, Baltusrol Lower, San Francisco Golf Club, and the redesign of Quaker Ridge a mile down the road. The West Course is the championship rotation venue; the East has hosted the U.S. Amateur and the Walker Cup but stays largely outside the major conversation.

The West Course plays around 7,500 yards par 72 from the championship markers, with a slope in the upper 140s. Six U.S. Opens have been played on the West — 1929 (Bobby Jones in a 36-hole playoff), 1959 (Casper), 1974 (Hale Irwin at +7, the Massacre at Winged Foot), 1984 (Zoeller-Norman playoff), 2006 (Geoff Ogilvy, with Phil Mickelson's 72nd-hole collapse), and 2020 (Bryson DeChambeau at -6). The 1974 setup gave the championship its nickname — the rough was so penal and the greens so firm that Irwin's seven-over total stood as the high-water mark of USGA punitive setup philosophy.

Winged Foot is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The club has kept Tillinghast's routings substantially intact, with restoration work by Gil Hanse in the 2010s that brought the bunker complexes back closer to the original 1923 lines. The membership is regional — Westchester County and New York metro — with significant corporate and financial-sector representation.

The New York metro climate gives Winged Foot a playing season from April through November, with the firmest conditions in September and October. The course closes through brief winter cold snaps. The Westchester terrain — rolling glacial deposit — gives the West Course significant elevation changes that the back-tee yardage understates.