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It was the height of the Roaring Twenties and the game of golf was being celebrated across the country.
Accordingly, in 1924, William K. Vanderbilt II, one of Long Island’s most avid sportsmen, decided to convert some of the rolling acreage on his Deepdale summer estate at Lake Success, into a private golf course. It was a historic moment that would create what is still considered to be one of the most prestigious private clubs in the nation. |
Vanderbilt engaged Charles Blair Macdonald, architect of the National Golf Links of America and his protégés, Seth Raynor and Charles Banks, to help design and create a premier golf course. Vanderbilt’s friends soon approached him with the idea of organizing a golf club with a small, select membership, a place for weekday play when there was no time for the train ride out to Southampton and The National.
On October 26, 1924, the Deepdale Golf Club was incorporated. |
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After decades of play, in 1954, the Long Island Expressway was routed through the northern part of the course as the region began to pioneer the concept of suburbia. Dick Wilson was hired to reengineer a new course on the old site, but when this didn’t prove feasible, the club purchased the W.R. Grace estate, located just a short distance from the original Deepdale and had Wilson design a new course with numerous doglegs, tight fairways, subtle greens and sculptured bunkering. |
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Deepdale Golf Club’s relocated course, with the stunning Grace mansion serving as the clubhouse, was officially opened in 1955, and its role as one of the preeminent private clubs in America continues to this day, welcoming a diverse membership of men and women united by their common love of the game of golf. |
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