SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. -- Back in 1969, a young Jack Nicklaus seven years into his meteoric rise to fame in professional golf, teamed with an up-and-coming course designer name Pete Dye to create Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, S.C. That was, in essence, the beginning of Nicklaus Design.
Now, farther up the East Coast to the Long Island, the home of some of golf's most venerable layouts, Nicklaus has teamed with another prominent architect, Tom Doak, to unveil Sebonack Golf Club, the 300th Nicklaus Design golf course to open worldwide.
Situated on 300 waterfront acres and neighboring the historic National Golf Links of America and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Sebonack is being celebrated as one of the most anticipated and innovative course designs to be unveiled in years.
"I always look forward to the day I officially open a golf course, and this one is particularly special to me," Nicklaus said. "Not only is it a milestone for our company, with it being Nicklaus Design's 300th golf course to open, but it's also a very unique project that I have immensely enjoyed being a part of the last couple of years.
Sebonack features holes that offer sweeping panoramic views of Long Island's Great Peconic Bay and Cold Spring Pond. The visual impact of the dominant water vistas competes for the golfer's eye with the contours of fairways, expansive bunkers and waste dunes, and undulating greens that present tricky swales and borrows. Meant to look as if manicured by time, Sebonack appears to have fashioned itself from the wild terrain.
Sebonack measures 7,220 yards from the back tees, plays to a par of 72 and is a challenging but not intimidating golf course. Three other sets of tees test golfers with total yardages that range from 6,717 to 5,244. The par-5, 560-yard 18th, which runs along the bluff of Great Peconic Bay, may rate as one of golf's more dramatic finishing holes.
The par-4 11th is viewed by Nicklaus and Doak as one of the most beautiful of Sebonack's holes, but one that has teeth to it and requires precision on both the tee shot and the downhill second shot.
"Both Jack Nicklaus and Tom Doak have given Sebonack a lot of their attention and time," said Michael Pascucci, Sebonack's owner. "My goal in securing this extraordinary alliance of experience and talent was to get the best 18 holes out of this piece of land as possible.
"What I had hoped for was to have Tom's minimalist style successfully mesh with Jack's strategic mind as the greatest golfer ever and one of the game's finest designers, in order to result in a course of beauty and a pure test of golf skills. I believe we have achieved something very special with Sebonack."
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