Maidstone Club

Willie and John Park's 1920s dunes course on the Atlantic in East Hampton, restored by Coore & Crenshaw, with holes routed through the club's best seaside sand.

Maidstone was founded in 1891 and started golf with a seven-hole course by Willie Dunn in 1894. Its present course dates from the early 1920s, when the club acquired dune land on the Gardiner Peninsula and Willie Park Jr. and his brother John laid out new holes; it was Willie's last design before his death in 1925. The 1938 hurricane later reduced the club from 36 holes to the current 27.

The best stretches, holes 8 through 10 and 13 through 15, run through high dunes beside the Atlantic, while the rest crosses flatter ground inland. The Parks' greens, many with steep false fronts, are the strength of the design. Coore & Crenshaw's 2012–14 restoration pulled back thicket, exposed natural sand and expanded the putting surfaces by about half, recapturing lost edges.

Holes to know

9

Part of the 8–10 stretch through the highest dunes on the property, within sight and sound of the ocean.

14

Par 3 · 152 yd

A short par 3 reached after the 13th, with a sweeping view of the course, dunes and the Atlantic from the tee.

Design history

• 2012–14: Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw restoration that cleared brush, widened corridors, and expanded greens by roughly half