as good as i've seen

friar's head golf club on the edge of the North Fork

erin hills

so a couple years ago I wrote here when I heard the rumblings of a gem carved out in Southampton--Sebonack Golf Club, a Nicklaus design that seemed to hold its own against neighbors National and Shinnecock. Given the fact that I don't even like the vast majority of Nicklaus designs, I was still not at all surprised when the September Golf Magazine showed up at my doorstep with the annual rankings showing Sebonack at #76 in the US.

On a tangent, some other notables I can speak for included; Fishers Island (20),The Black (21), Torrey Pines South (74), Myopia Hunt Club (86), and Ridgewood (West/East) (87). Kinda surprising that all of them fell several slots with the exception of Ridgewood. As a looper there for a couple years, i find it even more ironic, since West/East isn't even the best 18 combo at the course. Goes to show the arbitrary and subjective nature of these rankings I suppose.

So that swings me in to Erin Hills. The next 'big thing.' I'm going up there at some point before the season ends, and I don't doubt that it will be one of the better experiences I've had in this sport. Since others have said it better, I'll give you just a few snippets from what I've read--

"The green complexes are tremendous, with as much movement as the putting surfaces at Augusta National or Oakmont Country Club. The fearsome, shaggy-edged bunkers have "U.S. Open" written all over them."

"Located three miles west of Holy Hill in the scenic Kettle Moraine, the 600-acre site is so perfectly suited for a golf course that on 14 of the 18 holes not a single shovel of dirt is being turned. The holes were just. . there.

"It's one of the great natural sites anybody's ever had to work with," said Dana Fry, one of three course architects involved in the project. Fry and others have drawn comparisons with Shinnecock Hills and Prairie Dunes, both of which are perennially ranked among the top courses in the U.S."

"I've been doing this since 1983, I've been everywhere. I've played all of the top 100 courses in the U.S. and 97 of the top 100 in the world. There are not many sites this natural for golf."

"To make something one of the truly great golf courses, it's got to be a truly unique site. The natural contouring here is unbelievable. That's what gets golf people so pumped up. You never, ever see things like this."

"I'd like this to be considered the Midwest's Bethpage," said [co-designer] Whitten, referring to the public course in New York that played host to the 2002 U.S. Open. "We want it to be a championship course everyone can play."

"It will be all about golf at Erin Hills. No tennis courts or swimming pool, no home sites, no power lines, no holes bordering roads."

not too often a place like this comes around. its nice to be within 100 miles of it.

shinnecock and national declined comment.

a buddy i've looped with for several years plays a lot of nationally recognized golf courses. maybe he just kisses ass better than anyone I know. afterall, this is the kid who, on the 1st tee-box during a pro-am at our course, asked ernie els, "so, ernie, who's the biggest asshole on tour?" maybe he has a way of buttering people up without them even realizing it. in any event, whenver i play a top 100, he is the first one i call, to let him know that he isn't the only looping burnout playing some red carpet courses. when i went to Fisher's Island he cursed my mother. when i went to Myopia Hunt Club and Caves Valley, i could feel his teeth clenching in my ear. now, he's got Oakmont and Friar's Head under his belt, so we're pretty even when it comes down to it.

Until last week, that is. A guy we often carry for took him out to Sebonack Golf Club, a new Nicklaus design in Southampton, and arguably the most anticipated golf course in America (eat your heart out Donald Trump). He told me it absoultely blew away any course he has played. So i dug up some pictures, and was pretty fucking impressed.

Here is an article with details from Bloomburg for you golfers out there:

Hamptons' Newest Golf Club Has Priciest Membership at $650,000
By Michael Buteau
(Bloomberg) -- The newest golf course in the Hamptons may already be No. 1 in at least one category: price.

Sebonack Golf Club, which opened for limited play last weekend in Southampton, New York, costs what might be a world- highest $650,000 for a membership that ensures accommodations at one of 15 four-bedroom "cottages'' being built around the course. It's $500,000 just for golf.
The new club sits between 95-year-old National Golf Links of America and four-time U.S. Open host Shinnecock Hills Golf Club at the eastern end of Long Island. Other neighbors include Atlantic Golf Club and the Bridge, both in Bridgehampton. Membership in those clubs -- by invitation only -- tops out at $575,000.

"The numbers are all amazing, but you're dealing with the Hamptons here,'' said Phyllis Dixon, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, which lists about 2,500 properties in the area. "I guess that's the going rate.''

The initiation fee at Sebonack doesn't include the $12,000 annual dues, or items such as tips for caddies. Like most clubs, members can play as much as they like for that price. They will have access to a yet-to-be-built 28,000-square-foot clubhouse and a 19th hole with a green rather than barstools; it's a par-3 constructed especially to break ties and settle wagers.
Demand Drives Price

The reason Sebonack is so expensive is that the other golf clubs in the Hamptons -- where it can cost $600,000 to rent a beach home for the summer -- have waiting lists for those who do get asked to join, said Jim Frank, editor of New York-based Golf Connoisseur, a quarterly luxury golf magazine that profiles business leaders, celebrities and private clubs.

"It's the Hamptons for God's sake,'' Frank, 52, said in a telephone interview. "They don't sell stuff for cheap there. It's what the market will bear.''
He said he doesn't know of any club that charges more to join.
Owner Mike Pascucci agreed that his membership fee "just might be'' the most expensive, although that wasn't what he set out to do.

"My goal was to get the best 18 holes out of this piece of land as possible,'' he said in a telephone interview. Pascucci, 69, sold Oxford Resources Corp., the car-leasing business he controlled, to Barnett Banks Inc. for $700 million in stock in 1997. He now owns WLNY, a local television station based in Melville, New York.

While Sebonack may be the priciest, the Hamptons aren't the only place where initiation fees are high. Membership at Koganei Country Club in suburban Tokyo, perennially the most expensive in Japan, rose 21 percent this year to 63 million yen ($560,000), according to a survey reported in the weekly magazine Diamond.

Founding Members
Sebonack has 10 founding members who paid $1.5 million each to join. Among them are Stanley Druckenmiller, chairman of Duquesne Capital Management LLC; Richard Santulli, chief executive of Woodbridge, New Jersey-based NetJets Inc.; Paul Desmarais Jr., chairman of Power Corp. of Canada; and Johann Rupert, chief executive of Geneva-based Cie. Financiere Richemont, the world's second-largest luxury-goods company.

The 7,286-yard course, similar in length to a PGA Tour event, was carved into the dunes along the Great Peconic Bay. It once was ``Bayberry Land,'' the summer estate of Charles H. Sabin, a former president of Guaranty Trust Co. of New York.

Most recently, the property was owned by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union Local No. 3, who used the old Sabin mansion as a convalescent home for its members.

The club will cost about $120 million to build, including $46 million for the 314-acre site, Pascucci said.

For the design, he hired Jack Nicklaus, who won a record 18 major tournaments as a player and has designed 206 courses; and architect Tom Doak, who at age 45 already has three courses ranked by Golf magazine in the top 100 in the world.
The pairing of Doak, who lets the contours of the land dictate his designs, and Nicklaus, who builds manicured courses to challenge the best golfers, brought together two opposing philosophies. Pascucci was able to get them to put aside their differences: Doak once criticized a Nicklaus design with man-made waterfalls as "client overkill.''

"It was insurance that we wouldn't have any bad holes,'' Pascucci said.
The result is a layout that has few trees, leaving golfers to contend with winds that regularly reach 30 mph.
Sabin's 28-room Georgian mansion was torn down to make room for Sebonack's second, third and 18th holes. What once was a reflecting pool is now the "Coffin Bunker'' on No. 18, named for Sabin's landscape architect Marian Cruger Coffin.

Slate from the roof of the home, imported from Wales, now is part of a walkway in the club's practice area. Pascucci's immediate neighbors aren't talking about Sebonack. Gerard Gagliardo, general manager of National, and Joanne Gallagher, general manager at Shinnecock, declined to comment. National opened in 1911 as the first course in the U.S. to be designed as a championship layout. It hosted the 1922 Walker Cup amateur matches between the U.S. and Britain and is ranked as the ninth-best in the U.S. by Golf Digest.
Shinnecock, founded in 1891, was the first incorporated golf club in the U.S. and the first to have its own clubhouse. Ranked by Golf Digest as the third-best U.S. course, Shinnecock most recently hosted the 2004 U.S. Open.
Members of those two clubs include Julian Robertson, who founded the Tiger Management LLC hedge fund; and Ted Forstmann, chief executive of IMG, the world's largest management agency.

Doak said trying to challenge the area's top courses for supremacy would be futile.
"Shinnecock and National are two of the best courses in the world, so I would never say I built something that good,'' he said in an interview.
Pascucci said he's drawing people from around the world, and prefers serious golfers over jet-setters.
"Our type of members love golf, respect the game and are low-maintenance, non-glitzy type of people,'' he said. "It's not a valet-parking type of place.''