Ken,
If Oakhurst Links is still in the same location as its 1884 origin, it would appear to be the oldest club in continuous existence on the same site.
The oversight with Foxburg is probably due to its location, it is pretty remote...as is Oakurst, I guess. Those New Yawkers like to boast so it is no surprise they don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Wayne,
The course at Oakhurst did sit dormant for many, many years before being restored in 1994. Original location, but certainly not continuous use.
I did find the following from Encyclopedia Britannica Online:
"The South Carolina and Georgia Almanac of 1793 published, under the heading “Societies Established in Charleston,” the following item: “Golf Club Formed 1786.” The Charleston City Gazette and Daily Advertiser of September 18, 1788, reported: “There is lately erected that pleasing and genteel amusement, the KOLF BAAN.” However, this perhaps pointed to the existence of an indoor facility for the Dutch game of kolf, a variety of the French jeu de mail mentioned above. Later notices dated 1791 and 1794 referred to the South Carolina Golf Club, which celebrated an anniversary with a dinner on Harleston's Green in the latter year. Although these fragments constitute the earliest clear evidence of golf clubs in the United States, the clubs appear to have been primarily social organizations that did not survive the War of 1812.
The first permanent golf club in the Western Hemisphere was the Royal Montreal Golf Club, established in 1873. The members played on Fletcher's Fields in the city's central area until urban growth compelled a move of some miles to Dixie, a name derived from a group of Southern refugees who arrived there after the U.S. Civil War. The Royal Quebec Golf Club was founded in 1874; the Toronto and Niagara, Ontario, clubs in 1876; and the Brantford, Ontario, club in 1879. In the meantime, golf was played experimentally at many places in the United States without taking permanent root until, in 1885, it was played in Foxburg, Pennsylvania. The Oakhurst Golf Club in West Virginia, which later became the Greenbrier Club, is said to have been formed in 1884; and the Dorset Field Club in Dorset, Vermont, claims to have been organized and to have laid out its course in 1886, although in both instances written records are lacking. The Foxburg Golf Club has provided strong support for the claim that it was organized in 1887 and is the oldest golf club in the United States with a permanent existence. Foxburg also claims the oldest American golf course.
Golf as an organized game in the United States, however, usually is dated from the founding of the St. Andrew's Golf Club at Yonkers, New York, in 1888. Its progenitor was John Reid, a Scot from Dunfermline who became known as “the father of American golf.” Reid, on learning that fellow Scot Robert Lockhart was returning to the old country on business, asked him to bring back some golf clubs and balls. This done, Reid and his friend John B. Upham tried them out on February 22, 1888, over an improvised three-hole layout. That fall, five men formed the club, and in the spring they moved to a course in an apple orchard. There, it is said, they hung their coats and a jug of good Scotch whisky in a convenient apple tree, and they subsequently became known as the “Apple Tree Gang.” The club made its final move in 1897 to Mount Hope in Westchester county, New York.
Other early courses included Newport, Rhode Island (1890); Shinnecock Hills on Long Island (1891); and the Chicago Golf Club (1892) at Wheaton, Illinois. The Tuxedo Golf Club in New York, founded in 1889, met the Shinnecock men in 1894 in what has been assumed to be the first interclub match in the United States. The Newport club staged an invitational tournament for amateurs in September 1894, and in October the St. Andrew's club promoted a similar competition. These were announced as championships, but that was questioned because the events were each promoted by a single club and on an invitational basis. It was from the controversy roused by these promotions that the United States Golf Association (USGA) was instituted in 1894. Its aims were to organize the U.S. Amateur and Open championships and to formulate a set of rules for the game. The founding fathers, two from each club, were from St. Andrew's, Shinnecock Hills, Chicago, the Country Club at Brookline, and Newport. The U.S. national championships—the Amateur, the Women's Amateur, and the Open—were inaugurated in 1895."
Ken