Tiger Woods' TGR Design will rebuild Long Island's closed Tam O'Shanter Club for the Armchair Collective

Tiger Woods and TGR Design will redesign the former Tam O'Shanter Club in Brookville, N.Y., on Long Island's North Shore. The Armchair Collective, a private club company that wants to link a national membership to a set of architecture-first courses, announced the project Monday and called it its Long Island flagship.

GOLF.com's post spells it "Tom O'Shanter." The club was Tam O'Shanter.

A course that has been closed for five years

The property has had a long and messy run, as GOLF.com's Josh Sens lays out. Tam O'Shanter opened in 1962, Robert Trent Jones Sr. remodeled it in 1968, and David Postlethwait redesigned it again in 1999. A developer bought the club in 2019 planning to build homes, then dropped the idea after arsenic turned up in the topsoil. The club closed in 2021 and nobody has played golf there since.

Two things reopened the door. Brookville changed its zoning code last year to allow for-profit golf clubs, and the Armchair Collective bought the 148-acre property in September for an undisclosed price.

What TGR is building

The Collective's announcement describes a completely redesigned 18-hole course, an indoor and outdoor golf performance center, a new clubhouse and member cottages. There will also be a 20,000-square-foot putting green modeled on the Himalayas at St Andrews, next to a building the club calls The Barn.

TGR Design's project page adds the design details. It's planned as a walking course with wide fairways and several ways to play each hole, ribbon-style tees so the course can be set up at different lengths, and fine fescue corridors around mature trees. The firm says the sandy soil should play firm and fast. The land was part of the Linden Estate, built around 1915, and the old farm buildings stay: the milk barn becomes a comfort station above the putting course, and another barn becomes overnight rooms. TGR puts the site 21 miles from Midtown Manhattan.

Membership will be by nomination only.

Timeline

Site prep and demolition are already underway. Course construction starts in 2027, next spring by GOLF.com's account. The club's name and conceptual renderings are due early in 2027.

"I have great memories of competing on Long Island, especially at Bethpage," Woods said in the announcement. "This region has an extraordinary golf course architecture tradition, and we look forward to contributing to that legacy with a course that players can enjoy for generations." The site is about 13 miles from Bethpage Black, where he won the 2002 U.S. Open.

TGR's busy fall

This is TGR's second new project in a week. Golf Digest notes it follows last week's report that the firm will build a links course in Northern Ireland, which GOLF.com says would be TGR's first course in Europe. The firm's finished work includes The Hay at Pebble Beach, Bluejack National in Texas and Trout National in New Jersey, and it's working on Bluejack Ranch in Texas with Beau Welling.

If you want to see a Woods design under tournament pressure before the Long Island plans come out, the PGA Tour is at El Cardonal at Diamante this week for the World Wide Technology Championship. It was his first finished course, and our course spotlight covers how it has played.