The wind which blows in from the Atlantic and across these 10 incredible Long Island golf courses, carries with it the scent of salt and the ghosts of golf past.
Out here, on a slender strip of land east of New York City, golf is not just played—it is preserved. It lives in the whispers of the dunes and in the perfect proportions of a Charles Blair Macdonald green complex. Long Island golf courses are one of golf’s greatest paradoxes: at one end of the spectrum, it houses two of the most revered private clubs in the world—Shinnecock Hills and National Golf Links of America—both guardians of the game’s golden age, as sacred and closed as the circles that play them. At the other, there’s Bethpage Black, a public-access brute with a reputation forged in the crucible of US Opens and queue lines that begin before dawn.
This is where America learned to build great golf courses. Where C.B. Macdonald first channelled the soul of St Andrews into American soil. Where A.W. Tillinghast carved ambition and torment into parkland. Where Coore & Crenshaw and Jack Nicklaus would later return to write new chapters in the same sacred book.
There’s an edge to Long Island golf courses. They’re not soft. They never set out to please just for the sake of it. The best Long Island golf courses challenge your patience as much as your swing. They are often wind-battered, deeply contoured, and shaped by architectural minds who understood restraint as well as drama. They reward the strategic and expose the vain. We believe these ten Long Island golf courses represent the soul what many believe is ground zero for American golf. Some are legendary, others lesser known. But each earns its place either through character, history, or the feeling they leave you with long after the final putt drops.
1. The National Golf Links of America
How to you begin to sum up National with words alone? When you pass through the gates at NGLA, time stops and the outside world drifts away. The land unfurls slowly, deliberately, like a well-paced novel. At first, it doesn’t announce itself. There is no bravado, no modern theatrics. And then, suddenly, the course appears—vast, windblown, and quietly majestic—set against the glimmering Peconic Bay. Welcome to National Golf Links of America, the course that birthed American golf architecture as we know it.
C.B. Macdonald called it his “ideal course,” – few would argue with him. When it opened in 1911, NGLA changed the course of golf design on this side of the Atlantic. It was bold and brilliant in its imitation, lifting the best ideas from the ancient links of Scotland and England and reinterpreting them on American soil.
The result was a masterpiece of templates—Eden, Redan, Road, Alps—that would become gospel for generations of architects. But National is more than its blueprints. It’s the space between the holes, the breeze off the bay, the way the angles tempt and torment. The routing flows like poetry. There is rhythm here, and restraint. Every hole offers options. What Macdonald and Seth Raynor built was not just a golf course—it was a philosophy. One that celebrated width, strategy, and a certain stoic grandeur.
Playing National is like walking through a museum where every painting is somehow alive. The clubhouse, perched like a sentinel above the course, watches over a game that has changed, but not here. Not really. Because this is not a place for trend or fashion. This is golf in its purest American form. And though it is famously private—painfully so—those who are fortunate enough to tee it up at National Golf Links of America walk away understanding, perhaps for the first time, what great golf architecture truly is.
2. Shinnecock Hills Golf Club
Shinnecock doesn’t need to shout. It never has. It simply exists—elevated, elemental, eternal. Tucked behind a narrow drive just off Tuckahoe Road in Southampton, it rises gently onto a plateau of rolling terrain, where the land is wind-swept and wild and the game is stripped back to something raw and real. If National Golf Links is the brain, then Shinnecock is the soul of Long Island golf courses.
Founded in 1891 and rebuilt in 1931 by William Flynn, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is the oldest incorporated golf club in the United States and one of the most storied. It was the first to welcome women members, the first to build a clubhouse, and has hosted five US Opens with more to come. But history is only half the tale. The land itself—those tumbling fairways, the perfectly natural contours—is what elevates Shinnecock into the realm of the divine. Flynn’s routing is a masterclass in rhythm and restraint.
The front nine winds you outward, gradually exposing you to the elements. The back nine brings you home, with each hole rising in intensity. patience: freedom off the tee, agony on approach. There’s a quietness to the place. Not silence, but a kind of reverence. The wind speaks, the fescue whispers, and everything about the place suggests permanence. This is not a course that needs updating or defending—it simply is. In a world of curated experiences and Instagram backdrops, Shinnecock remains gloriously above it all. It’s golf as it was meant to be—pure, proud, and unrelentingly honest. To play it is to feel part of something bigger.
3. Fishers Island Club
Getting to Fishers Island feels like entering a dream. Not just because it requires a ferry ride across Long Island Sound or a chartered boat from the Connecticut coast, but because when you finally arrive, everything is softer. There are no crowds, no grandstands, no fanfare. Just an old-world clubhouse perched on a bluff and, beyond it, one of the most sublime golf courses in the world, etched into the shoreline like a secret.
Seth Raynor’s masterpiece at Fishers Island Club is part golden-age classic, part coastal sculpture. Built in the 1920s and largely unchanged since, the routing weaves through windswept terrain and along jagged cliffs, where the sea becomes both stage and soundtrack. The holes are generous in width but ask constant questions. And the greens—oh, the greens—are bold, sloped, and filled with subtle menace.
The routing runs across terrain that feels utterly pure. There is rhythm here, a harmony. As if the course emerged from the ground rather than being shaped by hand. To play Fishers is to feel part of a secret society. Not because it’s exclusive—though it is—but because it feels sacred. Every step, every shot, every glance out to sea is steeped in serenity. It’s not a course you conquer. It’s a place you absorb. A reminder that the best golf doesn’t always roar—it whispers. And long after you’ve left the island, that whisper lingers.
4. Bethpage Black
There is no pretence at Bethpage. No manicured entrance or hushed exclusivity. Its home to new fewer than five 18-hole golf courses, including the world-renowned Bethpage Black, with its now world famous sign near the 1st tee, warning golfers: “The Black Course is an extremely difficult course which we recommend only for highly skilled golfers.” It’s the most honest and effective piece of golf course marketing in America. And it sets the tone for what’s to come—an unrelenting test carved into the thick woodland of Long Island’s public parkland, where greatness comes at a cost. Designed by A.W. Tillinghast in the 1930s as part of a grand New Deal project, The Black was always meant to be a monster. But it wasn’t until the US Open arrived in 2002—won by Tiger Woods in brutal conditions—that the world truly understood its menace.
This is a public golf course that can humble even the best players. Bethpage Black isn’t just tough. It is legitimately tough. The routing is punishing. Fairways narrow under the weight of trees. Bunkers are vast and steep, carved like open mouths ready to swallow whole afternoons. The rough is usually biblical. And the greens—though not tricked-up—offer just enough slope to make two-putting a daily ambition. There are no real breathers. Only brief pauses between battles. But for all its difficulty, there’s something romantic about Bethpage Black. This is where the everyday golfer queues up in the dark, sleeps in their car, and waits hours for a tee time. There are no shortcuts. No name-drops. Just a shared pursuit of something real. In that way, Bethpage is more than a golf course—it’s one of the most important Long Island golf courses. A place where effort is part of the price. And when you do finish, bent but not broken, you feel something rare: that you’ve earned every step.
5. Friar’s Head
If Fishers Island whispers and Bethpage roars, Friar’s Head sings. Not in chorus, but in notes—long, low, lingering—like a cello played into the wind. Built by Coore & Crenshaw in 2003, it is one of the youngest courses on this list, yet already feels like it has always belonged. Set along the bluffs above Long Island Sound, Friar’s Head is a symphony of movement, mood, and masterful restraint.
The site was dramatic—wooded dunes giving way to farmland and cliff. And in lesser hands, the result might’ve been over-designed, forced, or flashy. But Coore & Crenshaw let the land speak. They followed its rhythms. The routing dances between contrasting environments: open and closed, high and low, intimate and panoramic. The transition from the 8th green to the 9th tee—climbing from wooded hollows to wide-open dunes—is one of the great moments in modern golf.
The holes themselves are clever and fluid. Everywhere you turn, there’s both serenity and suspense. It’s not about punishment at Friar’s Head. It’s about decisions. And the joy of execution. There is an almost spiritual calm to the place. The minimalist aesthetic, the natural routing, the absence of noise—it all contributes to a sense that this is how golf is supposed to feel. Friar’s Head is not a shrine to tradition, nor a monument to ego. It’s something rarer: a modern course with an old soul. And those lucky enough to walk its fairways rarely speak of yardages or scores. They talk of moments.
6. Maidstone Club
There’s something charmingly offbeat about Maidstone. Maybe it’s the seaside setting, or the way the clubhouse leans gently toward the Atlantic, weathered but proud. Maybe it’s the fact that amidst the moneyed elegance of East Hampton, Maidstone somehow manages to feel both stately and scruffy. But one thing is certain: few Long Island golf courses offer such an unfiltered connection to the sea, or to the soul of old American golf. Founded in 1891, with the current design largely shaped by Willie Park Jr. in the 1920s, Maidstone is a coastal original. Unlike Shinnecock’s elevated majesty or National’s genius, Maidstone sprawls through sand and sea grass, hugging the dunes like a Scottish links exiled to the Hamptons.
When the wind is up—and it usually is—it plays like a different course, shifting mood and strategy hour by hour. The routing is loose, relaxed. Some holes are tucked into the dunes. Others stretch across flat, exposed land, relying on wind and wildness for their bite. There’s a slight unruliness to it all, a refusal to be tamed. It’s not polished in the modern sense. Bunkers are rugged, the terrain occasionally uneven, and the routing meanders more than marches. But that’s part of the magic. Maidstone doesn’t follow a script. It just is.
Playing here feels like you’ve stumbled into a bygone era, where golf wasn’t a product but a pastime—where beach breezes and blind shots coexisted without contradiction. There’s salt in the air and sand in your shoes. And as you finish up and look out over the Atlantic, you’re reminded that greatness in golf isn’t always about precision or pedigree. Sometimes, it’s about how a place makes you feel. Maidstone lingers.
Sebonack offers panoramic views of Long Island’s Peconic Bay. Credit: Sebonack Golf Club
7. Sebonack Golf Club
Sebonack doesn’t whisper or tiptoe. It announces itself—with sweeping views over Peconic Bay, undulating fairways sculpted into dramatic shapes, and bunkers so jagged they look like they were torn from the earth rather than shaped by man. Built in 2006 by the unlikely pairing of Jack Nicklaus and Tom Doak, Sebonack Golf Club is a study in creative tension between tradition and innovation, subtlety and spectacle, restraint and ego. Tucked between Shinnecock and National, is sacred ground in American golf.
That Sebonack even exists here is remarkable but to its credit it doesn’t try to mimic its legendary neighbours. It has its own identity. Doak brought contour and artistry; Nicklaus brought strategy and muscle. The result is a course that can feel at once natural and theatrical—fluid but forceful. The holes are framed by bold movement. The back nine, especially holes 14 through 18, offers a crescendo of views. Greens are rumpled and hard to hold. Fairways are generous but demand angles. And the wind off the bay is ever-present, reshaping every round like an invisible architect. Sebonack is not for everyone. Some feel it tries too hard. Others marvel at how audacious it is. But whether you admire its bravado or question its balance, there’s no denying it makes you feel something. And that, in the end, is what great courses do.
8. Garden City Golf Club
There are places in golf that feel untouched by time. Garden City Golf Club is one of them. Set just 20 miles from Manhattan, hidden behind a discreet entrance in Nassau County, it is golf as it once was—and, in this case, as it insists on remaining. No carts. No tee markers, signage, or anything that resembles modernity. Just a quiet, deliberate reverence for the game and the land it’s played on. The course, originally laid out by Devereux Emmet and later refined by Walter Travis, is a masterpiece of understatement. It’s not long by modern standards—barely pushing 6,900 yards—but it doesn’t need to be. The defence is in the details: the firmness of the ground, the cunning angles into greens, and the ever-present wind that filters through the flat, sandy site. There’s a purity here, a spareness, that modern courses rarely achieve.
Garden City is an inland links, and it plays like one. The fairways are wide but deceptive. The bunkers—ragged, deep, and perfectly placed—dictate strategy from the opening tee. The greens are sublime: subtly contoured, maddeningly quick, and protected by both topography and fear. Nothing is given here. Everything must be earned. Playing Garden City feels like reading an old book by firelight. There are no tricks, no distractions—just golf, in its simplest and most demanding form. It is not interested in impressing you. But if you love architecture, nuance, and the quiet challenge of doing things the hard way, you’ll love it.
9. Piping Rock Club
Tucked into the wealthy enclave of Locust Valley on Long Island’s North Shore, Piping Rock Club feels like something from a Fitzgerald novel—graceful, exclusive, and just a touch mysterious. But beneath its genteel exterior lies one of the finest examples of early American golf architecture, a course that speaks softly but leaves a lasting impression. Built in 1911 by Charles Blair Macdonald and later refined by his protégé Seth Raynor, Piping Rock was among the first to bring the great template holes of the British Isles to American soil. Here, they don’t shout for attention. The Redan, Eden, and Biarritz blend seamlessly into the flow of the round, not as pastiches but as perfectly integrated moments—reminders of the game’s roots.
The land rolls gently across former estate grounds, allowing for natural movement and elegant transitions. The bunkers, deep and geometric, are vintage Raynor—more sculpture than hazard. The greens are large and expressive, often with bold internal contours that demand imagination and nerve. Piping Rock doesn’t try to compete with the drama of Shinnecock or the mystique of National. It operates in a different register—one of subtlety, rhythm, and refined challenge. This is a course that rewards the thoughtful golfer, the one who plays with their eyes as much as their hands. And when the round is over, you feel not just satisfaction but that you’ve briefly stepped into golf’s golden past, where elegance was the ultimate weapon.
10. The Bridge
No course on Long Island divides opinion quite like The Bridge. Some call it audacious. Others say it tries too hard. But one thing’s for certain: you don’t forget it. Occupying some 300 acres above Sag Harbor, it sits on land that was once home to the Bridgehampton Motor Racing Circuit. In terms of golf, it is a place where art, architecture, and exclusivity collide in ways that challenge the old guard and thrill the new. Built in 2002 by architect Rees Jones, The Bridge feels more like a cinematic vision than a traditional club.
The clubhouse is futuristic, angular, and controversial—a sharp-edged glass-and-concrete structure perched above the landscape like a Bond villain’s lair. But out on the course, there’s a different kind of drama. The fairways sweep and fall across heaving terrain, with panoramic views of the bay and Eastern Long Island. Jones used the land’s natural movement to maximum effect. There’s width here, yes—but also deception. Blind tee shots. Diagonal carries. Greens that tilt away from the line of approach. It’s not subtle—but then, The Bridge was never meant to be. This is golf for the modern era: confident, curated, and unapologetically exclusive. The membership leans toward the cultural elite—tech founders, artists, financiers—and the atmosphere is more avant-garde than old-school. But love it or not, The Bridge has carved out a place as one of the Long Island golf courses that can’t be ignored.
Long Island Golf Courses: final thoughts
Long Island doesn’t just have great golf—it has the full spectrum. From the ancient to the avant-garde. From egalitarian grind to patrician sanctuary. It is a living museum of American golf architecture, a place where you can feel the game’s past brushing up against its future. Whether you’re teeing it up on the windswept fairways of Shinnecock, navigating the temple of templates at National, or grinding it out at Bethpage before sunrise, the message is the same: golf, at its very best, is about place. And few places in the world can match the depth, drama, and diversity of Long Island.
Here, the courses don’t just challenge you—they change you. They reveal your patience, your imagination, your humility. They remind you that great golf isn’t about scorecards or status—it’s about the pursuit. The places that stay with you. The moments you can’t quite describe. And in that way, Long Island is more than a destination. It’s a pilgrimage. One that, once made, becomes part of who you are.
Long Island Golf Courses: Key Facts
| CATEGORY | DETAILS |
|---|---|
| Total Golf Courses | 140 courses across Nassau and Suffolk counties |
| Public Courses | 90+ (including Bethpage Black, Montauk Downs, Harbor Links) |
| Private Courses | 45+ (including National, Shinnecock Hills, Fishers Island, Friar’s Head) |
| Oldest Course | Shinnecock Hills (founded 1891) |
| Famous Public | Bethpage Black (host of 2 U.S. Opens and a PGA Championship) |
| Most Exclusive | National Golf Links of America, Fishers Island Club |
| Golden Age Classics | Shinnecock Hills, National, Maidstone, Garden City, Piping Rock |
| Modern Masterpiece | Friar’s Head (2003), Sebonack (2006), The Bridge (2002) |
| Best Time to Play | May–October (peak conditions in September and early October) |
| Notable Architects | C.B. Macdonald, Seth Raynor, A.W. Tillinghast, Coore & Crenshaw, Jack Nicklaus |
Long Island Golf Courses Map
Long Island Golf Courses: Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
What are the best public golf courses on Long Island?
Bethpage Black is the crown jewel of Long Island’s public golf, but the other Bethpage courses—Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow—are also strong. Montauk Downs and Harbor Links are also excellent public options.
Can you play National Golf Links or Shinnecock Hills?
Both are private and extremely exclusive. Access typically requires an invitation from a member or participation in a sanctioned event.
What’s the best time of year to play golf on Long Island?
May through October offers the best conditions, with September and October providing ideal weather and firm turf. Summer is great but can be humid and crowded.
How do I get on Bethpage Black?
It’s open to the public, but demand is high. Local residents can book online in advance. Others often sleep in their cars overnight for first-come, first-served tee times.
Which Long Island golf course has hosted the most major championships?
Shinnecock Hills has hosted five US Opens, with more on the way. Bethpage Black has hosted two US Opens, a PGA Championship and the 2025 Ryder Cup. National has twice hosted The Walker Cup, the Ryder Cup for amateurs
Are caddies available at these courses?
Yes. Most private courses offer caddie programs. Bethpage also offers caddies, especially at the Black Course, but it’s optional for the public.
Is Long Island golf walkable?
Absolutely. Many of the top courses are designed for walking. Bethpage Black, Shinnecock, and National are all best experienced on foot. Some private clubs even prohibit carts.
