How good is Sankaty Head?

[Carl Nichols]

We're heading to Nantucket this weekend to visit some friends and celebrate their anniversary and ours.  I'm not bringing my clubs, and golf doesn't appear to be on the agenda -- is Sankaty Head worth making a big effort to play? 

[PCCraig]

Yep. It's pretty good and a neat experience. If you don't plan on going back anytime soon it would be worth checking out.

[Howard Riefs]

A very good course that I'd definitely recommend playing.  A photo tour from a few years ago:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,50511.0.html

[Charlie Gallagher]

I've played it dozens of times as I have a couple of friends who are members. It is one of New Englands best courses, in my opinion. If you can get on, I would definitely take your clubs. If the SW wind is up, the back can be quite a challenge. Lots of fun and a very efficient routing.

[Pete Lavallee]

is Sankaty Head worth making a big effort to play? 

I wouldn't know, we made all the arrangements to play there last year as the web site says the public is welcome in Oct. Imagine how shocked my wife and I were when we bagged out flight, due to a low ceiling and scrambled to get the ferry from Hyannisport. Although we had a tee time we were told that the course is open to outside play only after Columbus Day, sorry for the misinformation!

[Brad Tufts]

I always wondered about that Pete...I was surprised the literature always said after 10/1 when it can be pretty darn mild for a while in the fall.

Sankaty is easily the top course in my home state that I have not yet played ...sorry Worcester, Nantucket, Hyannisport, Cohasset, and Vesper since the renovation.

[Walter Bart]

Certainly one of the best in Mass highlighted by the difficult 430 yd tenth and  listed in G Peper's " The 500  Worlds Greatest Golf Holes."    I play there almost every October, usually with a member. Open to the public after Columbus Day. A great time to be on the island if you can appreciate the wind, which is almost always a factor, and some really crisp autumn  air, and very few tourists.   A good walking course, too.

Vanity Fair in August, I believe,  had an interesting article on Nantucket coastal erosion. Cited the relocation of the lighthouse on the 5th hole back from the cliffs and the possibility of some land near the 4th being used for a new access road.

[Howard Riefs]

Certainly one of the best in Mass highlighted by the difficult 430 yd tenth and  listed in G Peper's " The 500  Worlds Greatest Golf Holes."    

I didn't think much of #10 the first time I played it as the NE wind was at our back, shortening the hole significantly. The next day, a 25 mph wind was out of the SW and the hole played a good 2 shots more difficult.

Vanity Fair in August, I believe,  had an interesting article on Nantucket coastal erosion. Cited the relocation of the lighthouse on the 5th hole back from the cliffs and the possibility of some land near the 4th being used for a new access road.

You're correct.  Here's the excerpt:

Meanwhile, the erosion of the bluff in front of the Sankaty Head Lighthouse became so pervasive that, in 2007, it was moved 405 feet, at a cost of $4 million, to a spot just off the edge of the fifth hole of the tony Sankaty Head Golf Club.

...

With the northern end of Baxter Road itself now threatened by erosion, the town is under a legal obligation to continue to provide access to the dozen or so homeowners who live wedged between the bluff, the lighthouse, and the fifth hole of the Sankaty Head Golf Club. The town must also provide basic services to those homeowners. A proposal considered in May by the Nantucket Board of Selectmen involved taking by eminent domain a road near the fifth hole of the golf course. ... Understandably, that isn’t the club’s preference, and the cost to compensate it for the land, plus installing sewer, water, electric, phone, and cable-TV services, might be as much as $15 million.

http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/08/end-of-malibu-nantucket-erosion