The Creek Club - New York, U.S.A.
The Creek Club in Locust Valley on Long Island's tony North Shore holds
back its pleasures for a few holes and then, on
the sixth tee, all is revealed. The fairway
plunges steeply downhill to a butterflied green,
with a broad view of the skeins of fairways and
sea grasses that sweep down to Long Island Sound
and across to the Connecticut coast. Members are
still able to arrive via the sound by boat near
the 10th hole, with the fairway squeezed between
a tidal lagoon and a strip of sandy beach. The
11th requires a brave carry to a pontoon of
green in the lagoon. The club was founded in
1922 by a committee of 11 leading Long Island
sportsmen, including Vincent Astor, Marshall
Field, J.P Morgan, Harry Payne Whitney, and
Charles Blair Macdonald, who was enlisted to
design the course with
Seth Raynor. They named their club after Frost
Creek, an inlet of the sound that loops around the
13th and 14th holes.
Garden City Golf Club - New York, U.S.A.
Garden City Golf Club on Long Island is sui
generis,
for it is neither a parkland course nor a
seaside links but is laid out over sandy soil on the
wide expanse of the Hempstead Plain. The course was
originally designed in 1899 by Devereux Emmet, a man
of independent means who moved in high society. In
1902, Garden City hosted the u.s. Open, with Walter
Travis, a member of the club, finishing second. The
curmudgeonly Travis was a man of deep principle, who
believed that American courses lacked the character
and challenge of their British counterparts. In
1906, Travis wrote an article describing how the
course could be improved through deeper bunkering
and more movement within the greens, and the club's
board decided to engage him to carry out his plan.
Over the next two years, Travis added 50
bunkers, deepened others, and reworked a1118 greens,
creating remarkable configurations of greenside
bunkers and hives of crossbunkers. Travis's
redesign led to friction between him and Emmet, but
the course remains a testament to their vision. Each
spring, the club holds the Travis Memorial
Tournament, a leading amateur invitational event
that was named in Travis's honor after his death in
1927.
The Creek Club and Garden City
Golf Club, U.S.A.
