Measuring a mere 6,702 yards, Wykagyl Country Club does not
intimidate on paper, but since it was built more than a century ago, its
relentlessly hilly, rocky terrain has provided a worthy challenge for the game’s
best. And if not for a location in the heart of New York’s golf-rich Westchester
County, where neighbors like Winged Foot and Quaker Ridge cast long shadows,
this stellar layout that plays much harder than it appears would be considered
among the country’s best.
When a need to replace an antiquated irrigation system led to the
consideration of a restoration, the club contacted numerous architects,
including the noted minimalist duo of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Although
their company rarely accepts existing course projects, the opportunity to work
on Wykagyl Country Club was too good to pass up.
It wasn’t the course’s first renovation. In fact, the history of
Wykagyl is one of change. Founded as the nine-hole Pelham Country Club in 1898,
the club moved to its current location in New Rochelle in 1905 and received a
new name based on a Native American tribe that once lived in the area. (The
current Pelham Country Club, nearby, was founded in 1908.)
The layout itself has seen a who’s who of golf architects during
the 20th century, but the touch of three men have had the largest impact. Greens
on the 1st, 7th, 9th and 16th holes remain essentially the creations of member
Lawrence Van Etten, who designed a 6,326-yard layout. Van Etten built three
consecutive par 3s: the 5th, 6th and 7th. Thirteen years later, Donald Ross
created two par 4s to replace the 5th and 6th holes. Just over a decade after
that, A.W. Tillinghast implemented dramatic changes, namely a rerouting that
largely survives today. He eliminated the 1st and 2nd holes, built the current
4th, 5th, 6th and 11th holes, reversed the dogleg on No. 17 from right to left
and substantially shortened the 18th, turning it from a par 5 into a
two-shotter.
Coore’s work, undertaken during the last half of 2006, was aimed
at subtly recapturing visually dramatic aspects that had faded over time, as
well as renovating bunkers to make them more indicative of the look and feel
from years past.
While the routing is the same, numerous holes have changed. The
best example is the controversial par-3 7th, 172 yards to what Coore calls the
“most severely tilted green [from back to front] I have ever seen.” He regraded
the green, turning what was a marginally unplayable putting surface into a
marginally playable one, where good putts should at least stay on the green.
The following hole, a 452-yard par 4, remains a sharp dogleg left.
But three new fairway bunkers offset the loss of a 100-foot oak, which often
blocked approaches from the left side of the fairway. The tree, estimated to be
more than 200 years old, succumbed to disease.
Coore believes the new playing options created by the project will reveal the
character of Wykagyl, rather than change it. “If they had said to just add 700
more yards to the course, we would have said that we’re not very good at that
and you should really probably talk to someone else. It would never be our
intent to go to a club like Wykagyl and walk away trying to leave such an
imprint that the course would be unrecognizable.”
