Saint Andrew's Golf Club in N.Y. to Commemorate 120th Anniversary

On February 22, 1888, a Scottish sportsman named John Reid gathered several of his friends and took them to a pasture in Yonkers, N.Y., for what became the first official round of golf in the United States. Armed with a handful of clubs and balls imported from his homeland, Reid roughed out a three-hole course and made history.

Some 120 years later, Reid's legacy lives on at the Saint Andrew's Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., America's oldest golf club. Following Reid's competition, his golfing converts were dubbed "The Apple Tree Gang" to memorialize the tree located at the apple orchard where they hung their coats and wicker decanters of whisky. Several months later, on November 14, 1888 during a meeting at Reid's home, Saint Andrew's Golf Club was founded.

American golf tips its cap to Saint Andrew's rich history for its many "firsts." The club hosted the first unofficial U.S. Amateur as well as the first "open" championship. Saint Andrew's was a founding member when the USGA was formed in December 1894 along with The Country Club, Brookline, Mass.; Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, Ill.; Newport Golf Club in Newport, R.I.; and Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y.

In 1988 Saint Andrew hosted a gala to celebrate the first 100 years of golf in America. Many of the game's greats assembled to play the golf course, by then redesigned by Jack Nicklaus, who has since made many changes to the layout as the club continues to invest in improvements.

The legendary Bobby Jones once said of the club: "The finest thing the Saint Andrew's Golf Club did in starting the game of golf was . . . that they started it right, with the right traditions." Those traditions carry on today, 120 years later at a hallmark club where members take seriously their stewardship of the birthplace of golf in America. The facility continues to preserve important memorabilia and a priceless collection of early clubs and balls in the clubhouse museum.