From the dawn of the 20th century until the Depression, the tycoon’s must-have accessory was a personal golf course. Vaudeville impresario F.F. Proctor gamboled on his, much like philanthropist Harry Payne Whitney, U.S. Steel president Charles Schwab, and Piggly Wiggly store founder Clarence Saunders, who left caddies extravagant $5 tips at his private course in Memphis. Here is a sampling of the most lavish spreads:
William K. Vanderbilt II
The sometime president of the New York Central Railroad had an 11-hole course laid out at his family compound on Fisher Island, Florida, with each hole named after one of his yachts. Foursomes on the course at his Long Island summer home, Eagle’s Nest, included Charles Lindbergh, Errol Flynn, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Vanderbilt reportedly played members of the Rockefeller clan there for $50,000 a hole.
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H.F. du Pont
In 1928, the chemical-company scion commissioned an 18-hole course on the grounds of his 2,400-acre Delaware estate. While on the course with his personal pro, Percy Vickers, he would listen to broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera wafting from a rooftop speaker. One morning, a cousin called to set up a tee time, only to be told the course was full. “Who’s playing?” he asked. The reply: “Why, Mr. du Pont, of course.”
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Walter Annenberg
Denied membership at the Thunderbird Country Club in Palm Springs, California, the publishing mogul had an 18-hole course built at Sunnylands, his gaudy 350-acre desert oasis at the corner of Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra Drives. On the fairways of this weekend retreat, he hosted Ol’ Blue Eyes, the shah of Iran, and the disgraced Nixon, whom he once counseled: “Life is 99 rounds.”
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Otto Kahn
Oheka Castle, the railroad financier’s 109,000-square-foot turreted château, was set high on a man-made hill in Huntington, Long Island, New York. Completed in 1917, Oheka had its own horse racetrack, railroad station, and private golf club designed by renowned course architect Seth Raynor (Chicago Golf Club, Shore Acres). After Kahn’s death, the castle was sold to New York for a retreat for sanitation workers.
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John D. Rockefeller
The Standard oilman was 60 in 1899 when he first picked up a club, but he played nearly every day for the next 33 years. In 1901 he hired Willie Dunn, the original designer of Shinnecock Hills, to remodel four holes at his estate in Tarrytown, New York, into a 12-hole extravaganza. A year later, he bought a course in Lakewood, New Jersey, reducing the membership of Ocean County Hunt and Country Club to one.
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Albert Lasker
In 1925, blackballed from Chicago’s established clubs because he was Jewish, the advertising magnate had a 7,000-yard behemoth of a course overlaid on Mill Road Farm, his 480-acre estate in Everett, Illinois. He had been a campaign consultant to presidential candidate Warren G. Harding, a golf nut. A passion for the game was then considered a political liability, so Lasker advised the senator to lay off the links.
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