GOLF’s latest High 100 Programs within the U.S. rating consists of 11 newcomers, which we’ll introduce you to right here. Meet Sankaty Head in Massachusetts.
Patrick Koenig
GOLF lately launched its newest rating of the High 100 Programs within the U.S. (2024-25), an inventory that features 11 newcomers. A few of them you may know. Others you won’t. Right here, in our newcomer spotlights, we’ll introduce you to those rookie High 100 gems.
Newcomer highlight: Sankaty Head / Rank: 92nd
Location: Nantucket, Mass.
Kind: Non-public
12 months opened: 1923
Architect: H. Emerson Armstrong
What you want to find out about Sankaty Head
In keeping with panelist Roger Hoit: “Magical, mystical, whimsical, stunning, enjoyable — a day at Sankaty Head on the idyllic island of Nantucket is all of these issues and extra. Sankaty is a course for everybody. It’s extremely playable from the stress-free ahead tees but in addition a stiff check from the again tees, particularly within the prevailing southwest breeze, as gamers realized on the 2021 U.S. Mid-Beginner right here. Jim Urbina did a beautiful job with a 2017 restoration of the unique Emerson Armstrong design. Highlights embody the 4th gap, a 520-yard reachable par-5 the place a well-positioned drive units up the chance to go for the inexperienced. The Sankaty Head lighthouse dominates the horizon for the second shot that requires navigating improbable bunkering, together with a trench bunker over the inexperienced. One other standout is the par-4 fifteenth. The method to this 410-yard gap is my single favourite shot on the course because it performs uphill with the long-lasting clubhouse and lighthouse looming on the horizon. Sankaty Head is without doubt one of the recreation’s nice one-hit wonders because it was Armstrong’s solely design.
What our raters say
“Sankaty, located on tiny Nantucket Island, seems quaint and understated, and there’s a way of remoteness and timelessness. These are qualities that only a few venues within the U.S. exhibit. It’s not particularly tough, and like all programs of this ilk requires wind to reveal all its guile.”
“I performed Sankaty in 2023 and positioned it simply outdoors my U.S. High 100 for 2024. I reckoned that, if one put Sankaty Head in a parkland setting (nearly every other setting), it will strike discerning golfers as a bit…plain. Whereas, if one took Salem CC and dropped it within the dunes, we’d by no means cease salivating. In fact, it wouldn’t look and play like a pure product of its environment, and that dynamic can and will matter. What’s extra, whereas Sankaty would fare much less properly in opposition to so many comparable designs within the U.Ok., we simply don’t have that many programs like this in North America. That shortage is a part of what makes Sankaty Head so distinct and in the end pleasing: tremendous terrain and sensible, largely unadorned bunkering that brilliantly/strategically intrudes on progress down most fairways. When the tough and wind are down, the course can current as nearly kittenish. If both one is up, be careful.”
