Inwood Country Club has a storied background, dating back to its founding in 1901. Located on the south shore of Long Island, New York, Inwood sits along the tidal estuary of Jamaica Bay with views of the Manhattan skyline.
Today, Inwood is primarily known for its Golden Age golf tournament history, which includes Bobby Jones’ first major victory at the 1923 US Open and Walter Hagen’s first PGA championship in 1921. At that time, Inwood was considered one of the top golf courses in the United States. And as recently as the 1960s, Inwood was in Golf Digest’s Top 50 golf courses. However, for the past 60 years, Inwood’s reputation has declined.
Now, after a 20-year mission to re-establish the elements that made up its original personality and character, Inwood is ready to reclaim its place among American golf course royalty.
Inwood was laid out as a nine-hole course in 1901 by Dr William Exton and Arthur Thatcher and was expanded to 18 by Edward Eriksen in 1906. In 1912, the club hired the highly regarded Englishman Herbert Strong as head professional. Strong, whose other work includes Canterbury, Engineers, Metropolis and Saucon Valley, promptly redesigned the course, resulting in the routing that you largely see today. In 1926 Jack Mackie added two new holes along the wetlands with the routing and layout unchanged from that time.
The golf course occupies a lowland setting, adjacent to the bay and wetlands on 11 holes with views of the wetlands from all 18. Photography from the 1920s shows a sandy, unmanicured, rough, beachy landscape. Natural and genuine, Inwood reflected its topography and setting along the waterway. With a clear view of New York City, Inwood later came by expansive views of Idlewild, now JFK International Airport.
Unfortunately, over the past 80 years, something went askew. Inwood intentionally made changes, and some occurred naturally that, when taken altogether, led to an outcome where Inwood’s personality and special attributes were unrecognisable. The specific changes were many, including the planting of 1,200 trees, cutting rough to a penal length, adding asphalt cart paths, and watering and fertilising the grass to a lush, dark green colour. Bunkers had also become manicured, fairways had narrowed and greens had shrunk. The course went from playing firm and emphasising the ground game to playing soft and stressing the aerial approach.
All the changes happened over time and, as such, the loss of Inwood’s original character took place incrementally and was not noticeable as it was happening. The result was a mediocre golf course that felt generic in its presentation. It might have been difficult to play, but was uninteresting with not much variety in how one might have approached the golf course.
The first seeds of reclaiming Inwood were a 1997 bunker renovation undertaken by Tom Doak. While the restyling and restoration of bunkers were a vast improvement, it wasn’t enough to recapture the character of the golf course.
In 2004, under a new green committee, the first order of business was to develop an overall vision of the golf course where none had existed previously. We considered: “What is the personality of our golf course? Who are we designing it for? What is special and unique about our course that we want to emphasise?”
This was a collaborative process among several members of the green committee from which the guiding principles were established. They outlined that the golf course needed to be more fun for the members of every skill level, that we were going to emphasise the links-like nature of the original design and its wonderful views, and embrace the surrounding wetlands and our proximity to JFK airport. Also, we wanted to emphasise the course’s quirky, light-hearted, elegant and majestic personality – classic, charming, genuine and natural would be additional descriptors.
These guiding principles translated into the following concrete action points: remove trees around tees and greens, remove obstruction to views along the perimeter, re-establish fairway lines and green sizes, replace asphalt cart paths with a sandy material, reshape teeing areas, embrace the light green and tan colours rather than the artificial dark green and reorient towards a more natural look and firmer playing conditions.
Once a vision and plan were established, the next step was to achieve buy-in at board level and from the membership. This process always takes time, as it is usually necessary for the interested parties to see the results in order to fully understand the magnitude and direction of the change, and then some additional time to embrace it.
This process for transforming the golf course has taken place over the past 20 years under the guidance of our consulting architect, Brian Slawnik of Renaissance Golf Design. There have been benefits from taking our time in that we have been able to tease out subtleties that might have been missed if we had proceeded at a faster pace. Details matter; it takes time to get them right.
Today, the work continues with Tim Falvey as golf course superintendent. The membership is inspired by what we have achieved to date and in sync with the plans for the future. They are thrilled with what they get to experience day in and day out. The general feeling now is: “I can’t wait to play that again.”
Daniel Friedman is the greens chairman of Inwood Country Club.
This article first appeared in the October 2024 issue of Golf Course Architecture. For a printed subscription or free digital edition, please visit our subscriptions page.