The Long Island Golf Association (LIGA) is a local golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

 association of 81 public and private clubs and courses that conducts competitive golf tournaments for Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

, Staten Island

Staten Island

Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...

 and Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 residents and clubs. The LIGA annually conducts 16 championships for its members and fields a team of the Islands' best amateurs to compete annually in the Stoddard Trophy triad matches against teams from New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 and Westchester

Westchester County, New York

Westchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...

.

History

The LIGA was organized in 1922 by some of the area's leading amateur golfers and industrialists. Founders including John Montgomery Ward

John Montgomery Ward

John Montgomery Ward , known as Monte Ward, was an American Major League Baseball pitcher, shortstop and manager. Ward was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Renovo, Pennsylvania...

, from Garden City Golf Club, the association's first President and a member of baseball's Hall of Fame, John N. Stearns Jr., of National Golf Links of America and Piping Rock, and Gardiner White of Nassau Country Club gave their active support for the fledgling organization. The LIGA has 37 founding member clubs in 1922, 11 of which are no longer in existence and 3 of which have changed locations. In its inaugural year, three championships were conducted: the Open

Long Island Open

The Long Island Open is a professional golf tournament played on Long Island, New York. It is sponsored by the Long Island Golf Association and was first held in 1922 at the Cherry Valley Club in Garden City, New York. Al Brosch won a record ten titles between 1939 and 1959, a record that stands...

at Cherry Valley Club, the Amateur at the original Lido Club and the Junior at Oakland.