This course is in our GSPro library — pull it up in any bay and play it wall to wall.

"Confirmed in GSPro's community library — one of the very few ways most golfers will ever experience this ultra-remote, ultra-exclusive club."

Seth Raynor's masterpiece, and the one he never saw finished — he died of pneumonia in January 1926 and his associate Charles Banks completed the course, which opened that July. Set on a ferry-only island off the Connecticut coast (technically New York), it's the purest gallery of Raynor's template holes: Redan, Biarritz, Alps, Cape, Punchbowl, Eden, Short, Double Plateau, each framed by Long Island Sound. Golf Digest has ranked it as high as the top ten in America, and among seaside classics almost nothing matches its calm.

Architecture obsessives above all — this is the Raynor template course. Also anyone who believes golf peaks where the land meets the water and the phone loses signal.

The 5th, a Biarritz played across the water's edge, is widely called the best and most beautiful Biarritz in golf — a long green split by a deep swale, demanding a committed long iron. It caps a stretch where nearly every hole is a named Macdonald/Raynor template rendered on seaside land.

Not long by modern standards and the turf is friendly, but template greens punish the wrong miss badly, and wind off the Sound is constant. A beginner would survive; the design's genius is aimed at better players.

In GSPro, and it's one of the best architecture lessons a Clubhouse bay can serve: you can replay the Biarritz 5th until the swale putt makes sense. Wind settings matter — play it calm first, then add a two-club breeze for the real thing. Perfect for members curious what 'template holes' actually means.

One of America's most private clubs on one of its least accessible islands — ferry from New London, members and guests only. Realistically you need a member invitation; there is no visitor play.