Monmouth Beach was likely home to the first formal golf course on the Jersey Shore.* Just before the turn of the century, investors purchased the land that is now the borough’s Shorelands area from the widow of Hugh J. Hastings with plans to build a golf course.

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Gilded Age tycoons George Fisher Baker and Edwin A. Walton led the golf development efforts. The millionaires had acquired large chucks of the town. The vacant land along the grassy banks of the Shrewsbury River (also known as the “Chasey Farm”) would become a golf course with large clubhouse. In June 1897, they first leased and then acquired the 40-acre property paying $36,000. The wealthy men were all part of the Monmouth Beach Association formed in 1871 with a goal of creating an exclusive resort along the Jersey Shore. So influential were the two men, it was a toss-up as to which could be called the “summer mayor,” according to the Long Branch Daily Record in August 1902.

They were so successful that by August 1899, the Governor of New Jersey, John Griggs, was playing at the club as a guest. The course was also lengthened that year from 1,600 to 2,800 yards. By the 1900 season, the club had nearly 300 members. The first golf pro was Sydney Moore (later it was Thomas McCormick) and the first club president was T. K. Pembrook. Called the Country Club at Monmouth Beach — at first 9-holes then 18 — the course played north to the Shorelands point (now Circle Drive).

A July 1900 New-York Tribune report called the Monmouth Beach Golf Club, “one of the most successful organizations of its kind” on the Jersey coast with membership growing “every day.” A June 1901 Asbury Park Press story stated the club “takes first rank in representing wealth and society” and the golf made “Summer life one continuous whirl of pleasure.” The October 1900 Long Branch Daily Record offered it was “one of the finest courses along the Atlantic Coast.” During the ’01 season Benjamin Woolley was in charge of 50 caddies and Pierre Alexis Proal was the club president and its best player with a 2 handicap.

“The most important shot in golf is the next one.”
—Ben Hogan

“President’s Cup” golf tournaments for men and women were common and hotly contested during those early 20th Century summers. It’s possible that a real US President (William McKinley) played golf here in Monmouth Beach. Matches for the “Havemeyer Cup” and “VanDerhoef Cup” were also played. Louise VanDerhoef was a champion women golfer in Monmouth Beach. The MB Golf Club often competed against Sea Bright, which had its golf course in Rumson; George Lawson was the Sea Bright golf pro. By Summer 1902, other club amenities included two tennis courts, croquet, ping-pong tables, and practice putting green and putting clock.

Former longtime borough Public Works Commissioner Bruce Bradley said his father, Bill, played the course. Willard Jessup, a summer resident who tutored the four sons of Colonel Barbour (one would become a US Senator, another a Harvard-trained zoologist) also played this all but forgotten shore links. Golf in Monmouth Beach was “abandoned” before the 1904 season. The reason being tennis was becoming more popular.

The green and white clubhouse, the former “elegant mansion” of Hugh Hastings (known as “Willowhurst”), was located at the northern high point of Navesink Drive (near today’s Center Road). It burned in a spectacular February 1901 fire (“the glare of the conflagration lighted the sky for miles down the coast,” according to the Asbury Park Press) but was rebuilt for $3,000 the next year by George Baxter of Long Branch. The new clubhouse had men’s and women’s locker rooms, a large reception hall and a nine-foot piazza on both sides. Later known as the Jones house, it was again badly damaged in a September 1961 fire.

Hugh J. Hastings

Eventually, the golf course property was sold off to the Monmouth Beach Land Company in 1911, which mapped out Shorelands for private housing. Anne Tull bought the first lot.

The first real development of this cozy river area began with Hastings, a wealthy NYC newspaper owner and national Republican Party activist, who came to America from Ireland in 1831. Starting in 1873, Hastings bought 33 acres for $75,000 — mostly in and around the Shorelands area. Hastings had acquired the house from Jordan Wooley, a former Monmouth County sheriff in 1862. After being thrown from a horse-drawn carriage while on Broadway in Long Branch, Hastings died in Sept. 1883 at age 63 (among his pallbearers were: President Chester Arthur, Jay Gould, General Thomas Eckert and William H. Vanderbilt). Hastings Place in town is named for him.

Source: New York Times, July 1897 and August 1901.

* The Deal Golf & Country Club claims it started in September 1898.

Old Monmouth Beach Golf Course clubhouse off Navesink Drive (once know as Olsen’s Hill) on Shorelands, 1910.

Entrance to the golf course, around 1900. J. Walter Spalding, co-founder/owner of Spalding Sporting Goods, was an active golf club member and sponsored trophies for matches played there. Spalding got started in the golf business opening London and Scotland club-making factories in 1900.

Hugh Hastings estate, 1890s. Burned in February 1901, Eugene Winship was the club superintendent and for many years was secretary of the ritzy Monmouth Beach Country Club; he died in January 1924.

Look Like Links — Shorelands aerial image, 1920 — MORE INFO.

Details about the Monmouth Beach Golf Club. Long Branch Daily Record, June 1901.

Monmouth Beach links — going to 18. Long Branch Daily Record, November 1900.

Everybody at Monmouth Beach plays golf. APP, June 1900.

MB Golf clubhouse wrecked, Asbury Park Press, February 1901.