Winged Foot Golf Club (West)

Overview: Winged Foot's West Course is a private parkland championship layout in Mamaroneck, New York. A.W. Tillinghast used the property's rolling ground, wooded edges and natural changes of direction to create a course where the approach is often more demanding than the drive. Deep bunkers, sharply contoured greens and narrow targets give the routing its famous severity, while the two-course setting makes the West part of a larger piece of Golden Age golf architecture.

History: Winged Foot Golf Club was founded in 1921 by a group drawn largely from the New York Athletic Club, and its first round was played in 1923. The founders asked Tillinghast to design both the West and East courses, which opened in June of that year. The West gained national recognition almost immediately when the USGA awarded it the 1929 U.S. Open. In 2017, a restoration led by Gil Hanse and Steve Rabideau used 1920s photographs to return the greens closer to their original scale. In 2024, the club was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Did You Know? Winged Foot West was the youngest course in history to receive a U.S. Open when it was selected for the 1929 championship, only six years after its opening. That early appointment established a pattern that has continued through later U.S. Opens and other national championships: the course's reputation was built on the strength of its original design, not on a long period of gradual fame.