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The Creek

One of C.B. Macdonald’s final projects, The Creek weaves his "ideal holes" through three distinct environments on the North Shore of Long Island

Location

Locust Valley, New York, USA

Architects

C. B. Macdonald, Seth Raynor (original design, 1923), Gil Hanse (restoration, 2017)

TFE Rating

Access

Private

price

$$$

Website

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about

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.

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.

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Course Profile

Favorite Hole

No. 10, par 4, 313 yards

Nos. 6 and 11 at The Creek are obvious choices, but a hole I think flies a bit under the radar is the short par-4 10th. Mischaracterized for decades as a Cape hole, this Leven hole is one of my favorite renditions of that template. The mound that obscures the green is a sand dune that extends from The Creek’s beach on the Long Island Sound. The safe play, an iron up the left, will leave you blind to the green with the dune in your way. In the right conditions, this green is reachable for long hitters, but the risk of water up the right needs to be taken on. This is a great hole on the flattest terrain at The Creek.

Explore the course profile of The Creek and hundreds of other courses

Course Profile

Favorite Hole

No. 10, par 4, 313 yards

Overall Thoughts

There is an absolute embarrassment of golf riches on Long Island. The Creek, often referred to as a second-tier course behind the likes of National Golf Links of America, Shinnecock Hills, and Friar’s Head, would be considered the best or one of the best in every other area in America. The C.B. Macdonald design marries high-quality architecture with a stunning and diverse property. The narrow and long parcel of land features a wooded parkland section before it plunges down to the Long Island Sound. The manner in which the routing takes you through the different environments is what stands out most at The Creek. These sections – the Woodlands, the Hillside, and the Sound – are described in detail below:

The Woodlands

The Creek Club’s entry drive has shades of Augusta National, but instead of Magnolias, you go through a series of Linden trees before arriving at the wonderful clubhouse which sits on top of the ridge overlooking the Long Island Sound. If you don’t go into the main clubhouse, you wouldn’t know the sound is there as it remains hidden from view for first-time players at the start of the golf course.

Most critiques of The Creek focus on the starting five holes, which play over rolling parkland topography. Due to the spectacular nature of Nos. 6-18, these holes feel a bit ordinary. The first, like Chicago Golf Club and Blue Mound, is a two-shot redan. This mid-length par 4 rewards those who can find the fairway and control an approach shot to a green that runs quickly away from players. Likewise, any player who hopes to find themselves with a good look at the fairway on the second should favor the left side to hit up into the slope of the severe green. The first five holes culminate with a climb up the hill on the fifth to a stellar green, which reveals the sound and the extraordinary golf that awaits.

The Hillside (Part I)

Seven of The Creek’s holes reside on the severe hill that takes you down to the sound. The drop from the fifth green down to the 10th hole on the sound is 136 feet, a really large number for a “great” course. Most world-class golf courses feature between 20 and 80 feet of elevation. To put the scale of the drop into perspective, a course with a similar elevation change is Augusta National, which features 168 feet of elevation change. As with Augusta, The Creek’s giant feature creates stunning, unforgettable visuals, but it presented a difficult challenge for Macdonald getting down and up it. Wisely, Macdonald broke these holes up, with Nos. 6-8 playing down the hill before the closing stretch of Nos. 15-18 bring you back up.

On the way down, Macdonald tackled 100 of the 136 feet with the epic par-4 sixth. This hole plays down to one of the most memorable greens in golf, a punchbowl that requires a shot to land short left, like a reverse redan. It’s an unforgettable hole thanks to the dramatic drop and green design (for reference, the drop is the same as the 10th at Augusta National).

The reverse redan par-3 eighth is the only hole in the hillside stretch that plays neither up nor down the hill, but rather along the ridge on the far-less severe portion at the bottom. This hole ushers in the new sandy aesthetic players meet on the par-4 ninth, which starts the memorable holes on the sound.

The Sound

The holes along the sound are, without a doubt, the most photographed at The Creek. One of the big changes during the Hanse restoration was expanding the sandy waste areas of this portion of the course. This provides a visual feast of the Nos. 9-14 stretch, which boasts wonderful playing conditions. This waste area is the perfect unpredictable hazard, where anything can happen if you stray off the fairway. You can draw a perfect lie or be stymied by a footprint.

Nearly every hole in this stretch is notable and memorable. It starts with The Creek’s Knoll hole, an exacting par 4 that requires a supreme approach shot to an elevated green. The 10th plays along the beach, as noted in our Favorite Hole section. Perhaps the most stunning biarritz in the world is the 11th at The Creek. It plays into the Frost Creek Inlet, making it the only island biarritz green (to my knowledge). This is a daunting shot, especially when the wind blows, and it can play wildly differently depending on the 86-yard-long green’s hole location. While beautiful, this hole is a feat of engineering and shows the talents of Raynor, who conducted Macdonald’s engineering work. The mere construction of this green in 1923 is astounding.

The 12th offers a breather after the tough 11th and before the difficult 13th and 14th ahead. If you want to beef up the hole, there is a secret tee box off the back edge of the 11th that’s often used for tournaments. The 13th is a tough par 4 that bends around the creek. The 14th presents a tough decision off the tee: lay back short of Frost Creek that bisects the fairway, or try to blast it over. Shorter hitters will face a challenging uphill approach into a severe green. This hole starts the climb back up the hill and signals the start of the end of the round.

The Hillside (Part II)

The final four holes at The Creek climb their way back up the hill slowly. The 15th, 16th, and 18th holes all play significantly uphill, with the short par-4 17th providing nice relief from the 100-plus foot climb. The 15th is one of the finest double plateau concepts. The dramatic green is paired with the course’s best terrain. A principal’s nose bunker sits on the ridge, asking players to either play short on the ridge, leaving a level shot to the green, or push it up, which leaves a shorter shot that’s significantly uphill with a vicious false front.

The short par-3 17th is a neat short concept; it has the graveyard sitting behind it and has a unique central contour, a diagonal trough that cuts from right to left through the green. This is a welcome adaptation to the familiar thumbprint you find on many Macdonald/Raynor short holes.

The closing hole is a severely uphill par 5, which features a semi-blind approach. This makes the uphill climb a little less daunting as it’s filled with the anticipation of seeing where your ball ends up. Upon reaching the top of the ridge, you are treated to looking back over the Long Island Sound and the absolutely thrilling stretch of golf from holes 6-18. There are a lot of “best” considerations in golf. For me, Nos. 6-18 at The Creek belong among the very best 12-hole stretches in the world.

2 Eggs

(How We Rate Courses)

The Creek is an absolutely tremendous golf course. The combination of Macdonald’s ideal holes, matched with a sublime setting, make for great golf. If you wanted to nitpick, you could dive into the property’s limitations. Because of how long, narrow, and severe it is, there are only three holes that play east or west: Nos. 8, 10, and 11, two par 3s and a short par 4. Personally, if I were going to set out to build the best course I could, I would stress directional variety along with design variety. That being said, I don’t know how much you could do to create that with the site Macdonald was given.