The Creek

Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor brought their full catalog of template holes — Redan, Biarritz, Cape, Short — to the rolling terrain of Long Island's Gold Coast in 1925, and The Creek has guarded them with a century of deliberate privacy. Meadows, mature hardwoods, and glimpses of Long Island Sound provide a setting that few golfers will ever see firsthand.

The Creek traces its origins to 1922, when a group of prominent New York financiers and industrialists sought to establish a golf club on Long Island's North Shore that would rival the finest courses in the British Isles. Among the founding members were Vincent Astor, J.P. Morgan, George F. Baker Jr., Marshal Field, Clarence H. Mackay, Harry Payne Whitney, Henry Davidson, Herbert L. Pratt, and John D. Ryan. Critically, the group also included Charles Blair Macdonald, the father of American golf course architecture and the man who would shape the property into one of the country's most celebrated layouts. The New York Times dubbed the new venture "The Million Dollar Club," a nod to the extraordinary wealth concentrated among its membership. The course opened for play in 1923 on a stunning parcel of land near Locust Valley, where wooded uplands descend toward tidal marshes and the shoreline of Long Island Sound. Macdonald, who had studied the great links of Scotland and co-designed the National Golf Links of America in nearby Southampton, envisioned The Creek as a showcase for his template hole philosophy. He collaborated with his protege Seth Raynor, who oversaw the day-to-day construction of the course.

Together they produced an 18-hole layout at par 70 stretching approximately 6,583 yards that remains a standout template-rich course in America. Their routing begins on relatively flat inland terrain before plunging dramatically toward the Sound, where the most memorable holes unfold along the water and through rolling duneland, before climbing back uphill to the clubhouse on the closing holes. The template holes at The Creek read like a catalog of Macdonald and Raynor's greatest ideas, each adapted brilliantly to the specific contours of the property. The opening hole, a 385-yard par four, features a Redan-style green angled away from the player, an uncommon choice for a starting hole that immediately sets the tone. The fourth hole is a classic Eden par three at 168 yards, modeled after the famous 11th at St. Andrews. The seventh, a 566-yard par five, follows the Long template. The eighth is a proper Redan at 180 yards, with its characteristic diagonal green that repels shots to the right. The tenth is a short par four of just 313 yards playing as a Cape or Shore hole, with its tee shot crossing an inlet toward a beach-adjacent fairway, demanding both accuracy and nerve. The seventeenth is a diminutive Short template at 132 yards, with a green surrounded by a moat of bunkers that has drawn comparisons to an island setting. Two holes deserve special mention as among the finest on the entire course. The sixth is a magnificent 481-yard par four that reveals itself gradually, descending from the uplands to present a sweeping panorama of Long Island Sound.

Multiple sources describe it as an "all-world" par four, a designation earned by its combination of strategic bunkering, dramatic terrain change, and the sheer visual impact of the seascape that greets players as they crest the hill. The eleventh hole is a Biarritz par three of 195 yards, featuring a green approximately 80 yards deep with a pronounced swale running through its center, set on an island surrounded by water. It stands as a standout faithful and dramatic Biarritz holes in existence and has been called a "superb" expression of the template. The course's lower holes near the creek and Long Island Sound flooded badly during heavy rains in its early years. With Raynor having died in 1926 and Macdonald at odds with the club's board over how to address the drainage problem, the club turned to William Flynn. Working primarily on holes nine through thirteen, Flynn engineered a solution by constructing a dike and using the excavated fill to raise fairways and green surfaces above the flood line. He also added bunkers to several holes during this process. Flynn's work solved the flooding issue while preserving the essential character of the Macdonald-Raynor design. In the decades that followed, from roughly the 1940s through the 1980s, the course experienced a slow deterioration common to many Golden Age layouts of that era. Bunkers lost their original sharp edges and proportions, green complexes shrank through decades of mowing patterns that gradually encroached on putting surfaces, and the strategic intent of several holes became muddied. The club recognized the need for a comprehensive restoration and engaged architect Gil Hanse, who worked in close collaboration with the late George Bahto, a respected authority on C.B. Macdonald's design principles.

Their restoration, completed in 2011, replaced bunkers and returned lost green shapes to their original proportions. Hanse's work was faithful to the Macdonald-Raynor-Flynn layered history of the course rather than attempting to strip it back to a single era. Hanse has continued to serve as a club consultant, completing additional bunkering refinements in subsequent years. The Creek has maintained a consistently strong position in national course rankings. As of 2025, it is ranked 110th by Golf Digest and 53rd by Golf Magazine, with a number-16 ranking among courses in New York. The club has also earned recognition for its progressive approach to the game, implementing a gender-neutral tee system in which members are tested for swing speed early in the season and assigned to appropriate tee positions based on that data rather than gender. The property itself contributes enormously to the playing experience. The variety of terrain across the routing, from the wooded interior to the exposed duneland to the shoreline, gives The Creek a sense of journey that few courses can match. Each section of the course has its own distinct character while remaining unified by the Macdonald-Raynor template philosophy. The firm, fast conditions that the club maintains, with tightly mown fairways and well-groomed bunkers, reward the ground game that Macdonald always championed. For golfers who appreciate architectural history and the art of strategic design, The Creek stands as a living museum of the template tradition, executed on a property of extraordinary natural beauty along the waters of Long Island Sound.