Siwanoy Country Club
Designed by Donald Ross
History
Siwanoy Country Club traces its founding to 1901, when a group of Westchester County residents organized a private club along the rail lines feeding out of New York City. The club took its name from the Siwanoy, the Native American people who once inhabited the region along the Long Island Sound, and settled into Eastchester as the borderlands north of the city were opening to the kind of leisured suburban life that country clubs were built to serve.
The membership turned to Donald Ross, by then already the most sought-after golf architect working in America, to lay out the course. Ross’s commission at Siwanoy came during the years when he was shuttling constantly between job sites, building a portfolio that would eventually number in the hundreds, and his design here reflects the same principles he was refining across his New England and Northeastern work — a course meant to test shot-making through the ground game rather than through manufactured length. Siwanoy stands among the earlier examples of his Northeastern output, built as his reputation was still solidifying into the name that would define American golf course architecture for the next three decades.
The club’s standing in the game was cemented in August 1926, when Siwanoy hosted the U.S. PGA Championship, won by Walter Hagen in match play — one of Hagen’s five PGA titles. That championship placed Siwanoy briefly at the center of professional golf’s competitive landscape, a distinction the club has carried in its history ever since, even as it has remained, in the decades since, a private club attentive to its membership rather than to the broader championship circuit.
Playing Notes
Expect a walk that tests your legs as much as your swing — Siwanoy sits on rolling Westchester terrain, so sidehill and uphill lies show up often enough that you'll want to club up on the approach shots that look shorter than they play. The greens run true but firm up quickly in dry stretches, which means a ball landing hot can skate past the pin, so distance control matters more than raw length off the tee. Trees frame most holes tightly enough that a wayward drive can end your hole early, putting a premium on keeping the ball in play rather than swinging for extra yardage. Bring comfortable shoes for the walk, a few extra sleeves of balls for the tree-lined corridors, and be ready to think through your approach angles — the course gives you more trouble around and on the greens than it does off the tee.