Westhampton Country Club

Nestled into the exceptionally busy yet high-quality Long Island golf neighborhood sits Westhampton Country Club, a lesser-known and perhaps underappreciated Seth Raynor design. Squeezed onto just over 125 acres and sitting at a sporty 6,500 yards, Westhampton feels more raw than Raynor’s later work. The reason could be that it is one of his first solo designs, opening in the spring of 1916 around the time he split with Charles Blair Macdonald. 

Founded in 1890, Westhampton began as a recreational club, catering to local residents as well as wealthy New York City elites who had started summering outside the city. It featured tennis, sailing, and even baseball, which served a prominent role at the club until Raynor redesigned the golf course. Golf’s role at Westhampton was more rudimentary to start, with a nine-hole course played from 1896-1902 and another from 1903-1915. In 1914, in anticipation of the new 18-hole golf course, the club moved from Beach Lane to its current location.

Raynor’s course features many of his most recognizable template holes: Redan (seventh), Bottle (ninth), Short (11th), Biarritz (17th), but the course feels totally unique and features plenty of charming quirks: oddly shaped bunkering around the par 3 third (Punchbowl); the large, horseshoe mound guarding the 13th (a Leven-esque par 4); and patterned mounds that are spotted around the course and between holes. Less refined than Raynor’s later work, these elements help differentiate Westhampton, with more playful shaping and a slightly less engineered feel than the work he’s become known for. 

In 2009, Gil Hanse completed a restoration of the course: clearing trees, expanding greens, and restoring some of Raynor’s original bunkering. The result is an unabashedly fun golf course that punches above its weight in a crowded golf region.

Take Note…

Family Ties. Seth Raynor, who designed the current golf course, was not the first Raynor in the neighborhood. One of his relatives, Jonathan Raynor, was one of Westhampton’s first non-native residents and then another relative, William Raynor, served as the manager of the yacht club from the 1920s to the 1930s. 

‍Temporary Morgue. In 1938, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history (nicknamed the “Long Island Express”) centered on the exposed south coast of Long Island. The destruction in and around Westhampton was extraordinary and some of the deceased had to be temporarily stored in WCC’s clubhouse.

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