Course Comparisons / New York
Sebonack Golf Club vs. Shinnecock Hills Golf Club: The Southampton Choice
No golfer with a choice between these two is having a bad week. Sebonack Golf Club and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club sit adjacent to each other and to National Golf Links in Southampton, three private courses sharing one stretch of Suffolk County ground above Great Peconic Bay. The choice is not good versus bad. It is new versus foundational, a 2006 collaboration between Jack Nicklaus and Tom Doak against a William Flynn course from 1931 that has hosted the U.S. Open in 1896, 1986, 1995, 2004, and 2018, with a sixth Open in 2026. Pick wrong and you still played a great course. Pick right and you played the one that matches what you actually value.
Shinnecock Hills: the standard
Shinnecock is one of America's oldest clubs, founded in 1891 and a founding member of the USGA. The present course, by William S. Flynn and Howard C. Toomey, opened in 1931 and plays par 70 at 7,440 yards. Champions there include Raymond Floyd, Corey Pavin, Retief Goosen, and Brooks Koepka, a winners list that spans finesse and power because the course demands both, in wind, on ground that gives nothing away. The 7th is a Redan par 3, the 18th is named Home, and the Coore and Crenshaw restoration from 2012, working from 1938 aerial photos, put Flynn's intent back where decades of drift had buried it.
On pure golf, Shinnecock wins this comparison and it is not especially close. It is the harder examination, the deeper championship record, the routing that every architect working on Long Island still studies. If your measure is which course would identify the better player over four rounds in championship conditions, the answer has been settled since 1931.
Sebonack: the modern counterargument
Sebonack plays par 72 at 7,252 yards, with a course rating of 77.3 in the record, and it hosted the 2013 U.S. Women's Open, the first U.S. Women's Open played on Long Island. Owner Michael Pascucci bought the property in 2001 to build a championship course, and hiring Nicklaus and Doak together was the most interesting decision in modern American design at the time. Those two do not naturally agree. Nicklaus builds for the elite aerial game. Doak builds for the ground, for options, for the bouncing ball. Sebonack is the record of their negotiation, with panoramic views of Great Peconic Bay that Shinnecock, for all its greatness, does not lean on the same way.
The case for Sebonack is the day itself. The views are bigger, the course is younger and more obviously shaped for the modern member round, and a very good golfer who is not a professional will likely enjoy his scoring chances here more than at Shinnecock, where par 70 at 7,440 yards in bay wind can turn into survival. Concede Shinnecock its crown and Sebonack still wins the afternoon for a lot of players.
Access decides nothing here. Both are private in the strictest Southampton sense, members and guests, estimates for initiation at clubs of this level running well into six figures and beyond, with those figures as estimates only. Nobody is choosing between them on price or tee time availability. You choose on invitation, which is a polite way of saying most of us do not choose at all.
Our verdict: Shinnecock Hills, clearly, on the golf. It belongs at the top of the best golf courses in Southampton and near the top of the 5 best golf courses in New York for reasons that have held for ninety years. Pick Sebonack instead if the invitation is to Sebonack, if you want the bay in your face and the Nicklaus and Doak argument under your feet, and if a modern championship course interests you more than a foundational one. That is not a consolation prize. That is a different great day, one headland over from the standard itself.