McGregor Links
Designed by Devereux Emmet
History
1921 found the Saratoga region already comfortable with the rhythms of summer leisure, its springs and racetrack drawing visitors from New York City and beyond each season. McGregor Links opened into that world just north of Saratoga Springs, in Wilton, offering another reason for the well-heeled to linger a little longer in the region. The club took shape as a golfing counterpart to a resort culture already built on horses and mineral water, giving the area’s seasonal crowd a course worthy of the company they kept.
Devereux Emmet, who by then had a long list of Northeastern designs to his name, handled the routing. Emmet’s work elsewhere often showed a willingness to let terrain dictate the shape of a hole rather than forcing the land into a preconceived template, and McGregor Links gave him ground suited to that instinct. His involvement placed the club within the same generation of golf architecture that produced many of the region’s early clubs, built in the years when American course design was still finding its own voice apart from British precedent.
The course has continued as a semi-private club into the present day, a status that has allowed it to remain accessible to visiting golfers while retaining a membership base rooted in the local community. Its century of continuous operation, without the interruptions of relocation or complete redesign that befell many of its contemporaries, has kept Emmet’s original routing largely intact — a rare thread of continuity linking the golfer of today to the course as it was laid out in that first year of Prohibition-era leisure.
Playing Notes
Bring a cart or plan on a long day walking, since the terrain around Wilton rolls enough that flat lies are the exception rather than the rule. Expect tree-lined corridors that put a premium on keeping the ball in play off the tee — this isn't a course where you can bail out wide and still see your ball. Greens here tend to run true but demand attention to slope on approach, so club selection matters more than raw distance. Pack extra balls if you're prone to pushing shots right, and give yourself extra time in the morning, as the layout moves through varied elevation that can throw off a rushed warm-up.