National Golf Links of America

The fourth hole here is called Redan, and it is a copy of the fifteenth at North Berwick. Charles Blair Macdonald had learned the game at St Andrews in the 1870s, and he wanted a course in America that could stand beside the ones he played abroad. After the 1896 U.S. Open he left Shinnecock Hills to build it. He began in 1908 with the Southampton engineer Seth Raynor, and the club opened in 1911 with 67 founding members, among them Henry Clay Frick, William Kissam Vanderbilt II and Walter Travis. The first Walker Cup was played here in 1922, the United States winning 8 and 4. The match came back in 2013.

Macdonald had firm ideas and the means to act on them. A member once said a windmill would look well on the property; Macdonald bought one in Europe and sent him the bill. The course covers 253 acres on Peconic Bay, next door to Shinnecock Hills, and plays 6,873 yards to a par of 72. What holds it together is the borrowed holes. The second is Sahara, after the third at Royal St George's. The third is Alps, with the blind approach of Prestwick's seventeenth. The seventh is St Andrews, built on the Road Hole, and the thirteenth is Eden, after the eleventh there. The eighth, Bottle, comes from Sunningdale's twelfth.