If you’ve ever played the third hole at Montauk Downs and felt it would make a great closing hole, you’re not alone. Robert Trent Jones, builder of the modern Montauk Downs, felt the same way.
The start of a round at Montauk features an immediate U-turn — up the hill at #1, across to a hilltop green at #2, and back down the slope toward the clubhouse at the third. Then the course leads you through the driving range and onto #4, where a nasty par-4 awaits. And if your playing days at Montauk stretch back before the 1983 season, you might remember when a round out there at “The End” of Long Island began on what is now #4.
So it makes sense that today’s #3, a returning par-4 with an angled green, feels like a closer. It used to be Montauk’s ninth hole.
In Jones’s original late-1960s routing, the front nine started with that rough par-4, with its narrow green tumbling down on all sides. It then continued the same way the course does today — with a par-5 tee shot over water at #2 (today’s #5) and the signature pond-carry hole at #4 (today’s #7). The rugged, wind-blown hole that closes the front nine today was actually the sixth hole in the former routing.
But before the 1983 season, according to Newsday, superintendent Ron Ostaff thought reorienting the front nine would speed up play. The opener was too hard. “It’s a pretty tough hole to start with. We have a driving range but people don’t take advantage of it as they should,” former head professional Bill Luzi told Newsday’s Jim Smith. “So they’re off to a bad start and then have to tee off over water [on #2].”
Instead, the new routing would send players out on what had been #7, #8 and #9. “The old seventh hole is more wide open,” Luzi said. And once you have those three forgiving holes under your belt, “you should be warmed up and ready for that old first hole.”
The course staff tried the new routing late in the 1982 season — Luzi said it sped up play by 30 minutes. So they stuck with it from 1983 forward.
Other things have changed since then too. “We’re a fishing village. People go to the docks to see the fleet and they go to the lighthouse,” Luzi said. “I don’t think a lot of people know about the golf course. But each year it gets a little more exposure.”
