Deepdale Golf Club

William Kissam Vanderbilt II commissioned Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor to lay out the original Deepdale golf course at his Lake Success summer estate on Long Island in 1924.

All was well for thirty years until the routing of the new Long Island Expressway through part of the course forced the club to relocate. It was at this point that Dick Wilson was called in to carve out 18 holes on a nearby hilly, forested site.

The tree-lined fairways at Deepdale Golf Club – many of them tight and sharply doglegged – lead to famously fast, heavily contoured greens. Prominent holes include the 415-yard 8th, the 450-yard 11th and 425-yard 15th, all of which play to raised greens that are heavily protected by sand.

Tom Doak commented on Deepdale in The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses: “You never see it in the rankings of great courses, because if you’re on one of those panels, they’ll ask the members not to bring you out. Too bad – it’s one of Dick Wilson’s best courses, although there are too many sharp doglegs to put it among America’s best. Conditioning is routinely compared to Augusta National, because there are a few greens with such a steep back-to-front slope that you can easily putt off them. Legend has it that when one guest questioned whether the greens were really that fast, his host called up a jet and flew the guest down to Augusta the same afternoon, just to prove him wrong!”