It started with Shinnecock Hills.
When the Long Island Club opened its clubhouse in 1892, it wasn’t just unveiling a beautiful new building. He was opening what is widely considered to be the first golf club in the United States.
Just like the championship course looks, architect Stanford White the design sits naturally within its surroundings, the timber-clad exterior verandah and wrap-around porch as graceful as they are understated, framing sweeping views of the links and the Atlantic beyond.
It was the first in its category, but hardly the last.
Over the next century plus, thousands of clubs sprang up across America. Some were built for little more than function—grill boxes with a pro shop and a snack bar. Others became architectural statements, steeped in history, personality and place.
Over the past year, GOLF.com has gone inside some of the game’s most memorable clubs to see what makes them special.
At Oakmont, our videographers wandered through halls lined with treasured memorabilia, past the watchful portrait of founder Henry Fownes, and into a locker room where the wooden benches still bear spike marks from Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus.
At Sleepy Hollow, in New York’s Hudson Valley, we documented the evolution—and Gilded Age elegance—of a club that began life as a Vanderbilt mansion.
IN Olympic Clubour cameras captured not one, but two iconic homes: the stately clubhouse overlooking the lake course on San Francisco’s west end, and the sprawling downtown athletic club that has been a mainstay of the city’s sports scene for generations.
In Scottsdale, we explored Desert Mountainwhere architect Bob Bacon walks us through the thinking behind a masterpiece that beautifully blurs the line between indoor and outdoor spaces.
Last but not least, we turned on the lens Bridgethe exclusive Long Island club whose strikingly modernist club breaks with convention in all the right ways.
The result is a video series that goes beyond standard guided tours, offering an inside look at clubs that are as remarkable for their architecture as they are for the stories they inspire.
And while we have yet to produce videos dedicated exclusively to Shinnecock Hills Club, we have filmed the experience of visiting the club, from its historic clubhouse to its legendary links. You can watch that video here.
