The views from Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton are amazing - both on and off the course.

Make sure you're not anywhere but here in 2013. This is already projected to be a big year for American golf because it is the centennial of the native-born amateur Francis Ouimet's win in the U.S. Open over British titans Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. However, it can well be considered to be the best year ever on eastern Long Island because both the U.S. Women's Open and the Walker Cup will be contested here.

In what is a major coup for a relatively new golf course (it opened in 2006), the U.S. Golf Association has just announced that the Women's Open - which attracts the best female golfers in the world - has been awarded to the Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton. In addition, the Walker Cup - which is a match between the best male amateurs in the U.S. and Great Britain - has been awarded to National Golf Links, also in Southampton. It is reasonable to wonder how the transportation infrastructure in the Hamptons will handle all this activity, but we'll ponder that later.

This will be the first U.S. Women's Open ever held on Long Island and the first held in New York State since 1973.

The setting that women players will find in five years couldn't be more beautiful – almost 300 acres of hilly, wooded terrain that looks out at Great Peconic Bay. Sebonack's neighbors are two classic courses, National Golf Links, built in 1911, and Shinnecock Hills, created in 1891. The property was originally the estate of Charles H. Sabin in 1919, who built a 28,000-square-foot English manor house. Years later it was named 'Bayberryland' and was owned by the Electrical Workers Union #3, which used the site as a vacation camp. In addition to the manor house, there were 175,000 square feet of outbuildings - all have been torn down.

Avid golfer Michael Pascucci, owner of WLNY Channel 55, purchased the property in August 2001 for $45 million. His intention right away was to create a golf course that could stand alongside its prestigious neighbors. There are two history-making aspects of Sebonack Golf Club. One is it is an all-organic golf course, which has not been done before in the U.S. Pesticides are not be used, and the water used for irrigation is recycled.

The other bit of history? In a one-time-only collaboration, the architects of the course were Tom Doak, one of the hottest golf designers in the world now (Pacific Dunes in Oregon is already a classic), and the greatest player of all time, Jack Nicklaus. Their design has 15 of the 18 holes having water views and the original landscape has been altered as little as possible.

The clubhouse at Shinnecock Hills.

Just one detail about the care taken to preserve the site, quite a few trees had to be removed to open up the land to golf. But instead of just yanking the trees out and carting them away, each tree was lifted out of the ground and shaken so that the attached soil dropped off and was left behind.

The clubhouse just opened this spring. The greens are surrounded by lipped bunkers that have been described as "shaggy." The rough is uneven, so a bad shot could be punished severely. An interesting look is that the teeing grounds have been allowed to simply run into the surrounding rough.

Sebonack is a gorgeous golf course that is only going to get better with time, so even with the youth of the course it shouldn't be a surprise that one of the most important golf events of the year for professionals will be played there.

The Walker Cup is to amateur golf what the Ryder Cup is to professional golf. Some might argue that the Presidents Cup is now a bigger event than the Ryder Cup, but that simply isn't true. The Ryder Cup, founded in 1927 by Samuel Ryder and Walter Hagen, still has more prestige and takes in a lot more money, as we'll see when it is contested in Kentucky this September.

The Walker Cup is even older than the Ryder Cup, and it was founded in the Hamptons, so it will be coming home in 2013. It even has a connection to the Presidents Cup - it is named after George Herbert Walker, the grandfather of President George Herbert Walker Bush and great-grandfather of President George Walker Bush.

In 1919 and 1920, teams of U.S. and Canadian amateurs went at it in two matches. With Great Britain having recovered from its efforts in World War I, discussions began about having competitions between American and British teams. The president of the U.S. Golf Association at the time was George Herbert Walker. He was so enthusiastic that he developed a plan and offered to donate a cup.

In 1922, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews decided to send a team of amateur players to the States, and the first Walker Cup contest would be held that summer at Walker's home club, National Golf Links in Southampton. The captain was Robert Harris, and on his squad were Cyril Tolley, Roger Wethered, Colin Aylmer, C.V. Hooman, W.B. Torrance, John Caven, and Willis Mackenzie.

The U.S. team was captained by William Fownes, who had won the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1910. On his roster were Charles "Chick" Evans, Francis Ouimet, Jess Sweetser, Jesse Guilford, Max Marston, Rudolph Knepper, and a promising 20-year-old, Bobby Jones. The Americans won the match 8-4.

An interesting side note that gives hope to golf writers everywhere. Bernard Darwin had accompanied the British team so that he could report on the match for the folks back home. When Harris, the captain, fell ill and couldn't play, Darwin was invited to take his place. The scribe went out and defeated the American captain, Fownes, 3 and 1.

Ask a golfer what are the top 10 or 15 greatest courses in the U.S. and most of them would cite Pebble Beach in California, Pine Valley in New Jersey, Pinehurst in North Carolina, Shinnecock Hills on Long Island, Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, Banyon Dunes in Oregon, and a handful of others. Perhaps the least well-known great course is National Golf Links.

George Herbert Walker

Some golfers would be hard-pressed to say where this course is. A few might venture that because of the "National," it is in the Washington D.C. area. "Links" implies a coastal area - somewhere, and this is more accurate. National Golf Links is adjacent to Shinnecock Hills. Over the last 97 years it has been in relative obscurity because of being overshadowed by its Shinnecock sister and because of the wishes of the membership.

That the course is routinely listed as one of the top 10 to 15 in the country is due initially to its creators, Charles Blair Macdonald and Southampton native Seth Raynor. Most reports say that Macdonald was a Scotsman, but actually as a boy he was sent by his wealthy father from Chicago to be schooled at St. Andrews University in Scotland. There he learned golf - from old Tom Morris himself - and when he returned to the States he was determined to grown the game there as a player and an architect.

Macdonald designed the first 18-hole course in the U.S., the Chicago Golf Club course in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1893. The following year, six golf clubs - Yonkers, Shinnecock Hills, Newport, The Country Club, Chicago, and St. Andrew's - joined together to create America's own governing body, the United States Golf Association. That September, Newport hosted 20 players in a two-day stroke-play tournament that was supposed to determine the best golfer in the U.S. When the 38-year-old Macdonald didn't win, he convinced the organizers that it had not been a true championship event.

The members of St. Andrew's agreed to try again the next month, with a match-play event. Macdonald won the first two matches and celebrated until 5 o'clock in the morning with the visiting Stanford White (architect of Madison Square Garden). He caught a couple of hours' sleep, and then rushed to the golf course. He won the morning round 2 and 1 despite a horrible hangover. At lunch, to cure his headache and at White's urging, Macdonald downed a bottle of champagne.

In the afternoon finale, Macdonald weaved from hole to hole, yet amazingly was tied at the end of 18. But in the first playoff hole he ran out of gas and sent his drive into a farm field next door. Incredibly, Macdonald later convinced the powers that be again that the event had not been a legitimate championship.

The following year the six clubs joined forces to create an official "United States Open" and hold it at Newport. The 36-hole event in 1895 was won by an Englishman, Horace Rawlins, with a 173 total. Rawlins was just 19, and only Johnny McDermott won the Open at a younger age (by only a few months). Willie Dunn was runner-up, and Macdonald wasn't anywhere near first place.

The National Golf Links of America was incorporated in 1904, and the company hired Macdonald to build it a course. Three years later, he found a 205-acre site along Sebonack Neck that fronted both Peconic Bay and Bull's Head Bay. He declared that it was "a God-endowed stretch of blessed seclusion."

The 17th tee at National Golf Links of America.

Macdonald and the engineer Raynor set to work on the land that very much resembled a Scottish setting. An important goal was to keep the dense growth of bayberry, huckleberry, and blackberry bushes (which exist in abundance to this day). The official opening took place in September 1911 with an invitational competition won by Harold Hilton, who had just won the U.S. Amateur Championship.

Word traveled fast across the U.S. and to Great Britain that a legendary course had been born. Architects from around the country visited National Golf Links to take notes on how to create a class golf course. This was accelerated when Ouimet won the 1913 Open which provoked a boom in course construction.

The clubhouse at National Golf Links was built in 1912. It has a tremendous location - atop a hill that overlooks Peconic Bay, and beyond is the North Fork. In the library is a life-size statue of Macdonald, which he had commissioned and then billed the membership for it. He built a home on Bull's Head Bay and until his death in 1939 he continued to make improvements to the course. His grave can be found in the Sacred Hearts Catholic Cemetery in Southampton; among his neighbors are Seth Raynor and actor Gary Cooper.

I have had the privilege of being at National Golf Links, and if you ever have the opportunity to see Scotland on Long Island, please don't hesitate. Having the Walker Cup return to Southampton 91 years after it was first played here will be a treat indeed.