Westport Longshore Golf Club

Overview: Westport Longshore Golf Club is a public municipal 18-hole course on the Longshore Club Park waterfront in Westport, Connecticut. The current USGA record lists the blue tees at 5,895 yards and par 69. Long Island Sound supplies the setting, but the course is not a wide-open links: tree-lined corridors, small well-bunkered greens and a compact routing make accuracy the central requirement. The holes are short enough to invite strategic choices, yet the coastal wind and changing lies can quickly turn a seemingly simple approach into a demanding shot. The best round here comes from controlling position and accepting that the shortest route is not always the safest one.

History: Longshore's golf history reaches back to the 1920s. Local historical reporting associates the original design with Orin Edward Smith, with the first nine holes opening around 1930 and the second nine following in 1931. The course later became part of the Town of Westport's Longshore Club Park and was substantially remodeled in the 2000s under architect A. John Harvey. Town records also document later bunker improvements intended to preserve the course's playability and character. The present course therefore combines an early shoreline layout with municipal stewardship and modern work that has refined its greenside hazards without erasing its compact coastal identity.

Did You Know? Longshore can play to different pars by tee and player category: the USGA lists par 69 for the blue men's tees and par 73 for the white women's tees. That unusual scorecard relationship shows how the same short routing changes character through its teeing system.