Inside the best golf clubhouses in America: a video tour of 5 iconic designs

It began with Shinnecock Hills.

When the Lengthy Island membership opened its clubhouse in 1892, it wasn’t simply unveiling a good-looking new constructing. It was opening what’s extensively thought to be the primary golf clubhouse in the US.

Just like the championship course it overlooks, architect Stanford White’s design sits naturally in its environment, its wood-shingled exterior and wraparound veranda as swish as they’re understated, framing sweeping views of the hyperlinks and the Atlantic past.

It was the primary in its class, however hardly the final.

Over the subsequent century-plus, hundreds of clubhouses rose throughout America. Some have been constructed for little greater than operate — cinderblock packing containers with a professional store and a snack bar. Others turned architectural statements, steeped in historical past, character and place.

Over the previous 12 months, GOLF.com has stepped inside a few of the recreation’s most memorable clubhouses to see what makes them particular.

At Oakmont, our videographers wandered halls lined with priceless memorabilia, handed beneath the watchful portrait of founder Henry Fownes and right into a locker room the place the wood benches nonetheless bear spike marks from the likes of Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus.

At Sleepy Hole, in New York’s Hudson Valley, we documented the evolution — and Gilded Age class — of a clubhouse that started its life as a Vanderbilt mansion.

On the Olympic Membership, our cameras captured not one however two iconic houses: the stately clubhouse overlooking the Lake Course on San Francisco’s western edge and the grand downtown athletic membership that has been a pillar of town’s sporting scene for generations.

In Scottsdale, we explored Desert Mountain, the place architect Bob Bacon walked us by the considering behind a masterpiece that superbly blurs the boundary between indoor and outside areas.

Final however removed from least, we turned our lenses on The Bridge, the unique Lengthy Island membership whose placing modernist clubhouse breaks from conference in all the fitting methods.

The result’s a sequence of movies that goes past customary guided excursions, providing an inside have a look at clubhouses which are as outstanding for his or her structure as they’re for the tales they encourage.

And although now we have but to supply video devoted completely to Shinnecock Hills’ clubhouse, now we have filmed the expertise of visiting the membership, from its landmark clubhouse to its legendary hyperlinks. You’ll be able to watch that video here.