# The Best Golf Courses in Suffolk County, New York Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-suffolk-county-ny/ [The Course Rankings](/) County Rankings / New York A deep sand bunker guarding a green. Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Suffolk County is the strongest golf county in America, and the argument is not really an argument. The eastern end of Long Island holds Shinnecock Hills, National Golf Links, Friar's Head, Sebonack, Fishers Island, and Maidstone in one county, a concentration of great courses no other county in the country matches at the top. Seventeen courses make the bench here. We score the golf first, then the day, then value and access, and access is where Suffolk collapses: nearly all of it is private, and the public golfer gets one great consolation at the far tip of the island. The state picture is in [the best courses in New York ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-new-york/). ## 1Shinnecock Hills Golf Club The county's No. 1 and one of the three or four best courses in the United States. Founded in 1891, a founding member of the USGA, with the current course by William Flynn and Howard Toomey opened in 1931: par 70 at 7,440 yards of wind-exposed linksland in Southampton. U.S. Opens in 1896, 1986, 1995, 2004 and 2018, with a sixth in 2026, and champions including Raymond Floyd, Corey Pavin, Retief Goosen and Brooks Koepka. The Coore and Crenshaw restoration begun in 2012 recovered Flynn's intent from 1938 aerial photographs. The seventh is a Redan par 3 and the 18th is named Home, which at Shinnecock is not sentimentality. It is a description of American golf coming back to one of its first addresses. ## 2National Golf Links of America Charles Blair Macdonald built his manifesto in Southampton in 1911, on 250 acres between Shinnecock and Peconic Bay: par 72 at 6,873 yards, rating 73.6, slope 137. Macdonald studied at St. Andrews and patterned his holes on the famous British originals, and the template names still organize how golfers think: Redan, Alps, Sahara. The National hosted the first Walker Cup in 1922 and the Walker Cup again in 2013, and its windmill is the most recognizable landmark in American inland golf. Shinnecock beats it on championship severity. Nothing in America beats it as an idea made playable. Some panelists would flip these two, and they would not be wrong to argue. We give Shinnecock the top spot for the Opens and the sterner test. ## 3Friar's Head Golf Club The modern masterpiece, Coore and Crenshaw in Baiting Hollow, opened 2003, founded by Ken Bakst, the 1997 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion. Par 71 at 7,070 yards, routed between sand dunes 200 feet above Long Island Sound and reshaped former potato fields. Golfweek ranked it No. 2 on its 2026 list of the best modern courses in the United States, and it climbed from 34th on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest on debut in 2011 to 14th. The 15th, a 460-yard par 4 from an elevated tee guarded by a vast bunker, is the hole the ranking is built on. Friar's Head is the proof that Suffolk's golden age did not end in 1931. ## 4Sebonack Golf Club The collaboration nobody predicted: Jack Nicklaus and Tom Doak, together, in Southampton, opened 2006 on ground owner Michael Pascucci bought in 2001, directly beside National Golf Links and Shinnecock. Par 72 at about 7,220 yards, rating 77.3, with panoramic views over Great Peconic Bay. It hosted the 2013 U.S. Women's Open, the first played on Long Island. Sebonack loses to its two neighbors on the same neck of land, which is the toughest neighborhood draw in golf, and beats nearly everything else in the state. ## 5Fishers Island Club Seth Raynor's island, opened 1926, reachable only by ferry, with ocean views from nearly every hole. Par 72 at about 6,566 to 6,616 yards, slope 134. Raynor died in early 1926 before the course officially opened, which makes Fishers Island his parting work, and it contains two Redan greens, one of them on a par 4, a template liberty nobody else took. Three of its holes sit on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest Holes. On setting alone it could argue for third on this list. On the full examination it lands fifth, in company that would headline any other county in America. ## 6Maidstone Club East Hampton, Willie Park Jr. and William H. Tucker, opened 1899, par 72 at 6,719 yards along the Atlantic Ocean. Maidstone is the old-money links of the Hamptons, coastal golf that predates every other course on this list except Shinnecock's founding, and its oceanfront holes give it a character the inland Southampton courses cannot copy. It concedes ground to the five above it on depth of examination and keeps this spot on setting and seniority. ## 7Atlantic Golf Club Rees Jones in Bridgehampton, opened 1992, par 72 at 7,121 yards, a modern links-style design built by developer Lowell Schulman on a former 205-acre potato farm. Atlantic proved in the 1990s that the East End formula still worked: take farm ground near the ocean, build exposed, wind-open golf, and the rankings follow. It is the last of the county's clear top tier. ## 8Montauk Downs State Park Golf Course The public golfer's one great Suffolk round, and a genuinely fine course: a state park layout at the tip of Long Island, 120 miles east of New York City, where golf had been played for at least 40 years before Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Rees Jones redesigned it in 1968, and Rees returned in 2008 to restore the par-3 bunkers and tees. Golfweek ranked it No. 6 among New York courses you can play in 2026, the ocean wind changes it daily, and New York residents could play it for under 50 dollars, per Golf Digest. In a county of gates, Montauk Downs is the open door, and it is a good one. ## 9St. George's Golf and Country Club Devereux Emmet in Setauket, opened 1917, ranked No. 73 on Golfweek's 2026 list of the best classic courses in the United States. The western Suffolk entry on this list, a Golden Age course holding national classic standing a long drive from the East End traffic. Emmet's name on a 1917 routing, still ranked a century later, earns this spot. ## 10East Hampton Golf Club Private, in East Hampton, ranked No. 31 on Golf Digest's Best in State list for New York. The record here is thin and we will keep its movement honest and short: a private East Hampton club the state panel places just outside its top thirty, in a county where that still means very good golf. The rest of the bench is private depth: Southampton Golf Club, ranked No. 133 on Golfweek's classic courses list, Noyac near Sag Harbor from Golf Digest's best of Long Island coverage, and Huntington Country Club on the county's western edge, with Sunken Meadow State Park, whose Red and Blue nines are the preferred pairing, as the second public option, and The Bridge, the Thunderbird Course, and Westhampton Country Club completing a seventeen-course list. Suffolk's flaw is access and Suffolk's glory is everything else: five courses that would be the best in most states, sharing one county, one coastline, and one wind. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.