The Rockaway Hunting Club traces its roots as what’s often cited as the oldest country club in the United States—though its earliest identity looked more like a haven for the horse set, built around fox hunting and steeplechase racing. After an 1877 chase between Lawrence and Valley Stream sparked the idea, a group of young men from Bayswater in Far Rockaway formed the club in 1878, only to relocate in 1884 to Lawrence as development closed in. There, members constructed a famed Long Island clubhouse—grand, luxurious, and set above views of Reynolds Channel and Long Beach—alongside a polo ground and a four-mile steeplechase course. Golf arrived in 1900 with an 18-hole layout by T. Bendelow, later reworked in the mid-1920s by Albert Tillinghast into a links-leaning test that plays 6,452 yards across mostly level terrain, punctuated by five natural water holes. With winds that constantly reshape club selection, precision matters more than brute length—fitting for a course whose 454-yard par-4 9th is frequently singled out among America’s top holes, and where the amateur mark of 64 was set in 1991 by former Men’s Champion Norman H. Chapman.