Friar's Head Golf Club

Coore & Crenshaw's 2003 course on Long Island's North Shore, moving between wooded dunes above the Sound and open former potato fields below.

Friar's Head sits on 350 acres in Baiting Hollow, a hamlet of Riverhead, with bluffs rising 150 to 200 feet above Long Island Sound. The property paired about 165 acres of steep, wooded glacial dunes with flat farmland, and the line between them made routing difficult. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw spent considerable time working out how to connect the two, and the course opened in 2003.

The round starts in the dunes, moves onto the old potato farm for holes 2 through 7 and 11 through 13, and returns to the sand hills to finish. Greens range from about 3,000 to 18,000 square feet, and many bunkers are large and rough-edged. There are no yardage markers, caddies are required, and walking is encouraged. The club rarely hosts outside events and is known mainly through those who have played it as guests. Its reputation rests on how cleanly the routing joins two very different landscapes.

Holes to know

15

Par 4

Played from an elevated tee over a cavernous bunker, with the fairway sloping right to left toward it and trees sheltering the green from the wind off the Sound.

16

Par 4

Begins the closing stretch back in the dunes after a walk across a bridge from the 15th green.