Van Cortlandt Golf Course

Few courses carry a birthright quite like Van Cortlandt's. Opened in 1895 in the Bronx, it holds the distinction of being the oldest public golf course in the United States — a fact that gives every round here a quiet weight of history. Generations of New Yorkers have learned the game on these fairways, and the course remains a municipal staple, accessible and unpretentious in the way only a true city layout can be.

The course winds through Van Cortlandt Park, one of New York City's great green spaces, where wooded terrain and rolling ground give the layout more character than a flat urban track typically offers. Tall trees frame many holes, and the parkland setting provides a genuine sense of separation from the surrounding city — though the Bronx is never far from mind.

Playing Van Cortlandt is less about shooting a career round than about connecting with something larger: the long, democratic tradition of public golf in America, which in many ways began right here.