When someone asks a question like John Shimp did on this thread I'm never sure if they're referring to the old Links Golf Club in Long Island or the Links Club in Manhattan or both.
Obviously they were essentially one and the same club in the beginning but in later years it was pretty hard to tell. There certainly was a connection in later years but apparently not like there had been in the beginning when it was founded by Macdonald and a number of the very same people he was connected to with other clubs and golf clubs he was involved with on Long Island----eg NGLA, Piping, Lido and The Creek.
My father belonged to The Links Golf Club probably from the 1950s until it was sold and went out of existence, probably in the late 1980s or so. But the Links Club in Manhattan most certainly still exists.
And there always was a clubhouse at The Links Golf Club on Long Island even though it was just a rather small old Long Island farmhouse with a barn nearby. The members mostly used it only on Sundays (they had an unbelievable Sunday lunch). You could go in it on other days and perhaps get the memorable old caretaker, Bert, to give you something to eat and he sure could give you something to drink.
The pro shop, if you could call it that, was actually in the barn.
In those days, from the 1950s until it went out of existence two men were believed to basically run and pay for the operating expenses of the Links Golf Club, Mr. Whitney and Mr. Paley, although that was a bit more of a story than actual fact.
My father would play the Links Club occassionally and always with the same people----Knott, Grant and Choate. One summer me and another friend of mine from Boston, Dan Bacon, used it numerous times through out one summer. There was generally almost no one there-----we would basically play it alone. My father never used The Links Club in Manhattan even though he belonged the Links Golf Club. If he also belonged to the Links Club in Manhattan he either just never went there or was unaware that he belonged to that too. It was probably the former since the worst thing that could ever happen to him in his opinion was to have to go into New York City.
