Willie Dunn Jr.

Willie Dunn Jr. was a professional golfer and golf course architect, born around 1864 at Blackheath in London, England. His father Willie Dunn Sr. was a golfer from Musselburgh in Scotland, and his elder brother was Tom Dunn, himself known as a golf course architect. From about the age of thirteen he learned clubmaking under his brother, and he finished ninth in the Open Championship of 1883. From 1886 to 1888 he was professional at Westward Ho! in England, and afterwards he taught the game at Biarritz in France.

It was meeting the American businessman William K. Vanderbilt at Biarritz that took him across to America in 1893. After a summer of teaching at Newport Golf Club in Rhode Island he settled in the United States. At the first U.S. Open, played at Newport Golf Club in 1895, he finished second, two strokes behind the winner Horace Rawlins. He was joint third at the U.S. Open of 1897 and seventh in 1898.

His best-known work as an architect is Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island in New York State. The twelve-hole course Willie Davis had built there in 1891 is taken to have been extended to 18 holes by Dunn (the club’s own site gives the spring of 1895 as the date it became an 18-hole course). Shinnecock Hills was the venue for the second U.S. Open in 1896. At Maidstone Club, also on Long Island, he built the first seven-hole course in 1894, and in 1899 he laid out the nine holes of Cranford Golf Club in New Jersey, today’s Echo Lake Country Club. He designed the course at Ardsley Country Club in New York State as well, and from 1896 ran a clubmaking business there. After the turn of the century he took out patents on drivers and putters made of a material resembling plastic. He died at Putney in London in August 1952.

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