In the early 1920s nearby Piping Rock had become too crowded and popular, making a group of individuals seek out a smaller membership option on the popular North Shore of Long Island outside New York City. The club’s founding group identified a 183-acre plot on the Long Island Sound. One of the original members enlisted Frank L. Crocker, who had been involved with the Lido project, and Crocker suggested bringing in Charles Blair Macdonald to assess the feasibility of golf on the site. Securing Macdonald’s involvement was significant, as he was selective about his projects at this stage in his career. The Creek became one of the very last projects that Macdonald would contribute to.
Upon opening, The Creek became an “it” spot for golf and social life on Long Island. It did encounter some difficulties with its supreme setting on the Long Island Sound, in particular its now iconic holes that sit close to the beach. These holes, which sit extremely low on the property, had drainage issues that made it difficult to maintain the turf. When the problems arose, Macdonald, who served as the club’s Greens Chairman, proposed concepts to alleviate the agronomy issues. He met opposition from another group of members, particularly a man named Herbert Dean, who suggested abandoning the holes and purchasing adjacent land to build new ones. This did not sit well with Macdonald, who was notoriously stubborn and argumentative, and he eventually resigned his membership. Shortly after resigning to spend more time in Bermuda, the club extended an honorary membership to Macdonald.
After Macdonald left the country, The Creek turned to William Flynn and Howard Toomey to solve its drainage issues. Seth Raynor, the natural selection, had passed away in January 1926, and Charles Banks was too busy with all of Raynor’s ongoing projects to assist. The work was mainly engineering, Toomey’s specialty, and the low section of The Creek (Nos. 12-14) was raised with the addition of topsoil and loam.
The next several decades became about what The Creek didn’t do: alter its golf course. In the intervening years after World War II, there were proposed plans that included starting the golf course on the sixth hole and placing a practice range between Nos. 6 and 18, an unquestionably bad decision. But like many of the great clubs in America, massive change did not occur, even with the USGA’s Joe Dey, the person responsible for the alteration of many of America’s greatest designs, as a member. Dey’s influence would lead to a number of small alterations, though, including the filling in of many bunkers and small alterations to the 15th and 18th holes.
In the early 1990s, The Creek brought in Tom Doak to consult. The appointment of Doak followed his work with Pete Dye restoration of Piping Rock and his solo restoration work at Garden City. Looking back, this appointment involved the three most prominent architects of the current period. The club had its hesitations about hiring a 30-year-old Doak instead of a name-brand architect. What pushed the decision over the edge was a recommendation from Ben Crenshaw, who had just started his partnership with Bill Coore. Doak’s lead associate on The Creek project was Gil Hanse, who at the time was working for Doak, helping with projects such as Black Forest and Stonewall Links. The Creek was the only restoration project that Doak and Hanse worked on together during their time as partners in the early 1990s. The Creek was on the leading edge of golf architecture, one of the first courses to 1) dip its toes into the restoration concept and 2) hire a young, up-and-coming golf architect.
The trend of being early to trends continued in the 2010s with the early wave of “full-scale restorations.” The Creek received a package that contained a number of photos of the club from 1923. One picture featured the 10th hole and a large dune that obscured the view of the green from the fairway, but the dune had been removed. The club then hired Hanse, and his first solo restoration work was restoring the mound to the 10th, which fed the appetite to do more. In 2017, The Creek underwent a full-scale restoration of the golf course, which brought it to its current state as one of the sterling examples of Macdonald’s design work on Long Island.
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Take Note…
All green or fairway. Renditions of the biarritz vary with presentation. The vast majority of the original designs were fairway on the front plateau and green on the back plateau. At The Creek in 1992, the club converted the front of its iconic biarritz to green with the island nature of the green and it works quite well.
The greatest family amenity in golf? The Creek has a beach club at the bottom of the hill with a wonderful sandy beach on the Long Island Sound, a restaurant, and a pool. It’s easy to daydream about membership and the ability to have family functions at the beach club while sneaking out to play a few of the holes along the sound. I often think about the great four-hole loop of Nos. 10, 11, 12, and 9 you could sneak in while the family is playing at the pool.
Merging of clubs. During the Great Depression, The Creek and nearby Women’s National Golf and Tennis Club, now Glen Head Country Club, found themselves in financial trouble. It led to the two clubs merging to become The Cedar Creek Club, a partnership that lasted until 1948.
A good book. If you are really interested in The Creek’s history, there’s a wonderful centennial book available for purchase in the pro shop, written by the great Tom Dunne.
Good Brunch. If you are looking for a quality brunch in the area, check out Hatch, a local establishment owned by a friend of the program.
