U.S. Open: Ann Enstine has ruled women's golf at Shinnecock Hills for half a century

At some point on Sunday evening someone will walk up the fairway of the 18th hole at Shinnecock Hills toward that gorgeous old clubhouse on the ridge and be crowned a champion.

Few people know what that feels like.

But no one knows it better than Ann Enstine. She’s done it an astounding 33 times. Not at any of the six U.S. Opens that will have been played here by the culmination of this tournament but in the annual women’s club championships that she has dominated for the better part of a half century.

They used to hang her name on a plaque in the Jefferson Room inside that fabled clubhouse each time she won, but when she reached 30 victories in 2014 they gave up and just named the trophy after her. It currently sits in reverence in a case in that building where each and every golfer at this week’s tournament has passed by on their quest to have their own names engraved.

“I’ve been very blessed,” the undisputed Queen of Shinnecock told Newsday while standing just a few feet away from that fabled 18th green and watching the players in this week’s U.S. Open go past her. “It’s just so beautiful. This is such a special place.”

Besides her 33 titles at Shinnecock, the first in 1967, Enstine also won 12 at Southampton Golf Club and five at Meadow Brook Club in Jericho. She won at least one club title in seven different decades. The last, in 2023, gave her 50 for her career and it’s when she decided to stop playing competitively.

“I decided to retire and give somebody else a shot,” she said with a laugh. “I reached my goal. I didn’t think I was going to make it, but it worked out.”

What she hasn’t retired from is loving Shinnecock Hills. At 78 she still plays it regularly and this week she is the captain of the marshals at the 18th hole. She’ll have a perfect view of whoever winds up winning this tournament, just as she had each of the last four times the Open was here.

Enstine began playing golf as a young girl growing up in Southampton prompted by her father, Milton. He owned a fuel oil and gas station on Montauk Highway that his father, also Milton Enstine, had opened in 1913. Few people needed gasoline back then, obviously, but the older Milton would take his horse and cart out and deliver it to one local resident who happened to own a few automobiles. It was Henry Ford.

Ann Enstine worked at that station, too, but she also pursued golf. Oftentimes, as she became more accomplished in the sport, she would wrap up a day there and then come to Shinnecock Hills.

“I used to love to come up after dinner at night and just play a few holes, chip and putt,” she said.

Added Bob Joyce, the former head pro at Southampton and the man Enstine describes as one of her first real teachers in the game: “No one would out-practice her.”

It’s why so few could beat her.

When she first began playing here the course was a bit different than it is now.

“It was not as open,” she recalled. “We had a lot of non-important growth that over the years they trimmed out and opened it up a lot more.”

The golfers have evolved, too.

“What amazes me is how athletic they are,” she said. “They’re all big fellas. The game has changed. Now they hit it too far.”

So what is the key to winning at Shinnecock?

“You have to be patient with it,” she said. “And be patient with yourself. You are going to hit some squirrely shots . . . You have to stay in the fairways, avoid what we call the ‘hoo-hah,’ the stuff on either side. That first cut is really something. It’s too tough.”

Her favorite hole?

“The eighth is fun,” she said of the 440-yard par 4 nicknamed “Lowlands.” “Most of the trouble at Shinnecock is down the right side so if you avoid that you are usually in the fairway and have a shot. I draw the ball anyway so anything from the left side is a go. On that hole you really have to avoid the right side.”

The toughest?

“Right now it’s probably 10,” she said of the 415-yard par 4 called “Eastward Ho.” “It’s so hard to hold that green. You have to hit the very front of it to hold it and if you are a little bit long it’s gone, it’s over on the tee in the back. That’s a really difficult one.”

Her favorite Open memory here?

“I saw [1986 champion Raymond Floyd] hit a shot on 13, the pin was way up in the front, he came in and hit the front of the green and stopped it right where the pin was,” she said. “It was just an amazing shot. He has a great short game. He uses his feet. You watch him before he hits and he is almost feeling the shot with his feet. I always thought that was great.”

Who did she think had the best chance to win coming into this week?

“Cam Young,” she said, and not just because she used to be paired with his mother, from Sleepy Hollow, in many tournaments. “I’ve actually been trying to emulate his swing. He is a little bit more upright than I tend to be because I’m short. He is a little more upright. I thought, ‘Oh, that might help me.’ So I’ve been working on that. That’s helped. And he’s a good putter. I like his overall demeanor.”

Enstine said she likes to think along with the golfers as they trudge through the course that she knows so well.

“I watch the shots they are hitting and I think of where to hit it, how to hit it,” she said. “But they’re amazing. Their shots are so good. They have so much flight on the ball. The bunkers are no problem at all.”

And when one of them is lucky enough to make that march up 18 on Sunday evening toward golf immortality, Enstine will be watching and thinking along with him, too, and welcome him to the club. To her club.

“It’s just so great,” she said of that feeling.

At Shinnecock Hills, she knows that’s the one thing that never changes.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.