Theodore Havemeyer, a wealthy sportsman whose family owned the American Sugar Company, played the game of golf on a trip to Pau in the south of France in 1889 and returned to his summer home in Newport excited about its future.

He convinced a few pals from the summer colony's social elite, men such as John Jacob Astor IV, Perry Belmont, and Cornelius Vanderbilt II - to purchase the 140-acre (0.57 km2) Rocky Farm property for $80,000 and establish the golf club in 1893.

[3] At the time of the club's founding, Newport was at the peak of its prestige as the favorite summer colony of America's wealthy elite.

The city had thus established one of America's earliest golf clubs since the sport was played almost exclusively by the rich when it was first introduced to the United States.

Whitney Warren designed the classic, Beaux Arts style clubhouse on a largely barren farm overlooking Brenton Point in 1895.

A. W. Tillinghast, famous for such designs as Winged Foot, Baltusrol, Bethpage Black, and the San Francisco Golf Club, was hired in 1923 to remodel the course layout.