Two of the most private and publicity-shy precincts on eastern Long Island are in Southampton, separated by about a quarter-mile of the Montauk Highway. One is the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, one of the oldest and most exclusive clubs in the country and host to this year's United States Open. The other is the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, an 800-acre peninsula that is home to some 500 tribal members.

At the beginning of the driveway leading to the golf club, there is a big sign that says, "Members Only." On the otherwise unmarked road leading into the reservation, there is a sign that says "Private" and "No Trespassing." At neither place are people very keen on talking to outsiders.

For more than a century, though, the histories of these two enclaves have been inextricably entwined. The golf club sits on land that was once owned by the Shinnecocks; it was built by Shinnecock laborers, and generations of Shinnecocks have worked there as greenskeepers or caddies.

The ties between the Shinnecock club and the Shinnecock tribe, and between certain members of each, grew so close, in fact, as almost to be familial. Since 1995, however, the last time the Open was played at Shinnecock, there has been a noticeable drifting apart; and the advent of this year's Open, which begins next Thursday, has deepened what amounts to a family quarrel.

First, the golf club replaced a longtime superintendent who had a distinguished tribal pedigree, and then, as the tribe sees it, the Shinnecocks were deprived of some United States Open revenue they had been counting on. Meanwhile, the tribe has alienated not only some club members but other Long Islanders as well by aggressively pressing to build a casino on Shinnecock land. Lance A. Gumbs, chairman of the board of trustees of the Shinnecock Nation, said last month, "We stopped being good little Indians, and that has made us into Public Enemy No. 1."

The Rev. Michael Smith, a Shinnecock who grew up on the reservation and is now the pastor of the Presbyterian church there, acknowledged that change was inevitable. "But," he said, "some of the newer club members don't have an appreciation of the depth and wealth of the relationship that has existed from the beginning of the golf course, from its inception."

Tribe and Club, Together From Beginning

Shinnecock Hills, which started in 1891, was the first American golf club to be incorporated, the first to maintain a waiting list and the first to build a clubhouse. The original 12-hole course was built by a Shinnecock work crew using horse-drawn road scrapers, and some holes incorporated old Shinnecock burial mounds as obstacles.

The course was expanded to 18 holes in time for the second United States Open, which was held at Shinnecock in 1896. Among the entrants were two teenagers who lived on the reservation: Oscar Bunn, then 19, who was a Shinnecock, and 16-year-old John Shippen Jr., a young black man, whose father was the pastor of the Shinnecock church there.

The day before the tournament was to begin, a number of the other players, mostly Scottish and English professionals, threatened to withdraw if Shippen and Bunn were allowed to play. The issue was not their youth, or their relative newness to the game, but their race.

After Theodore Havemeyer, then the head of the United States Golf Association, declared that the Open would be played even if Shippen and Bunn were the only contestants, there were no defections, and the tournament went ahead as scheduled. The Open in those days was 36 holes back to back, and in the morning round Shippen shot a 78, which tied him, with three others, for first place and made him not only the first black man but the first American player to lead a United States Open. Shippen's second round began well, but he came unglued on the par-4 13th and eventually carded an 11. His second-round score was 81, good enough for fifth place and a check for $10. Bunn finished 21st.

Smith now holds John Shippen Sr.'s pastoral post at the Presbyterian church. Smith's grandfather, George, was a greenskeeper at Shinnecock - not at the old layout, but at a new course that was created on club property in 1931 by William Flynn. Of all the golf course real-estate in North America, it most resembles the windswept links land of Scotland and England. "It's almost as if the Creator just dropped it down there and everything flowed naturally," Smith said.

In the early 1950's, Michael Smith's father, Elmer, was the club's first full-time superintendent. He became a legendary figure, famous for his grass-growing genius, his probity, his decency, his way of treating everyone, caddies and members, with the same respect. When he died of a heart attack in 1980, the club, hoping to keep the job in the family, offered it to his son Peter (Michael's brother), a Dartmouth graduate who had grown up working on the course. Peter Smith, who had never intended to fill his father's shoes, prepared the course for both the 1985 and 1996 United States Opens. After disappearing from the Open rotation for almost a century, Shinnecock Hills re-emerged as something of a revelation to much of the golfing world - a course of both exceptional difficulty and beauty.

In 1999 the club nudged Peter Smith aside, ending three generations and 44 years of the Smith family connection, and in 2000 it hired Mark Michaud, who had been the superintendent at Pebble Beach. Smith's departure from Shinnecock was a sore point with many at the reservation, and the pain deepened when in December 2002 he died of a heart attack at 47.

A spokesman for Shinnecock Hills said recently that Smith's history with the club was private. He insisted that the club continued to have good relations with the Shinnecocks and pointed out that two members of the tribe are employed there in key positions.

Michael Smith said of his brother's departure from the club: "You hear different stories. Some folks say that the course wasn't in the condition they wanted it to be in. That was one of the legacies that Peter had to live down from my father. My father was a very frugal man, so he saved the club tons of money. He would use equipment until you couldn't start it anymore. So they got spoiled. They were accustomed to maintaining a golf course on a shoestring budget."

According to figures from Golf Digest, which every two years ranks the top courses in America on a number of criteria, including course condition - something that members of high-end clubs tend to fret over - the Shinnecock Hills conditioning rating had been slipping at the end of Peter Smith's tenure, and went up again as soon as Michaud arrived. Shinnecock Hills now outranks its next-door neighbor and rival, the National Golf Links.

In 1986 and 1995, the U.S.G.A. paid the Shinnecocks to use reservation lands for United States Open parking, and the money - $90,000 in 1995 - was something the tribe was looking forward to this year. Last winter, however, the U.S.G.A. decided instead to lease fields from a local farmer for parking. Steve Worthy, the U.S.G.A.'s director of operations at Shinnecock, said the U.S.G.A. had issues with the parking in 1995, foremost among them that the tribe made available five separate sites, and not one contiguous lot, which complicated the scheduling and routing of shuttle buses. There were also reports of vandalism and of one incident when a man, returning late to the lot, was accosted by some Shinnecocks who demanded that he pay ransom for his car.

Gumbs, the chairman of the Shinnecock trustees, said last month that he objected to the way the tribe found out about the new plan. "I picked up The Southampton Press and read that they wouldn't be using us," he said. "That in itself was a slap in the face. You couldn't pick up the phone?"

Gumbs also said that he thought the U.S.G.A.'s decision was politically motivated. "We feel it was a backlash based on the casino issue," he said. "Sitting in our shoes, how else are we supposed to look at this except that it happened at a time when we've come out of the box and are trying to make ourselves economically self-sufficient? It's a little too coincidental."

The casino issue is an immensely complicated one, much debated not only on Long Island but in Albany, where Gov. George E. Pataki has declared himself opposed. The complications start with the fact that the Shinnecock Nation, though it has treaties with New York State, is not federally recognized. A judge from the United States District Court, however, has agreed to hold a nonjury trial to address the tribe's status as a sovereign nation. His verdict could short-circuit the federal process and hasten the day that many Long Islanders dread - when their already crowded highways are choked with cars full of gamblers.

Dennis Suskind, a Southampton town councilman who, together with George Guldi, then a county legislator, tried to broker a compromise between the tribe and the U.S.G.A., sees no connection between the parking issue and the casino threat. "What does the U.S.G.A. care about the casino?" he said in a recent phone interview. "They could care less. They come here once every 10 years, and then they leave."

In a phone interview, Guldi, whose family has connections with the Shinnecocks going back to the 1920's, said: "When you boil it down, what it is is just American racism, pure and simple. They're not white enough."

Signs That the Rift May End

By the end of last week, as preparations for the Open intensified, some partial healing appeared to have taken place. By renting land to caterers and hospitality tents - part of the vast army of camp followers that now swarms around any major golf event - the tribe hoped to make up a good bit of the lost parking revenue. The U.S.G.A., meanwhile, invited Shinnecock children to participate in a junior golf event on Tuesday and had agreed to donate to the tribe some of the wood, carpeting, stairs and gravel left over after the tournament.

"They've put forth an honest effort," Gumbs said. "They've acknowledged that they didn't handle everything appropriately, and they've gone a long way toward ending the rift."

The U.S.G.A., he added, had even welcomed his request that the tribe be allowed to perform a ritual prayer ceremony at the club on the morning before the tournament opened, but then permission was denied by Shinnecock Hills. "I don't understand that," he said. "I don't understand that at all."

The U.S.G.A.'s Steve Worthy said that the club and the U.S.G.A. had concerns about the ceremony. "There's a matter of precedent here," he said. "The U.S. Open doesn't have an opening ceremony, and we didn't feel this was the right time or opportunity."

In spite of everything, Michael Smith is still looking forward to this year's tournament. He will be rooting not for any particular golfer but for the course. He said he still recalled the night before the 1986 Open, which was won by Raymond Floyd with a score of one under par.

"I was just kind of out there by the clubhouse on the ninth green," he said. "I was standing out there looking and it was an absolutely gorgeous site. The sun set purple and orange and everything was quiet."

Off to his right he imagined he saw his brother and Charlie Thom looking out at the golf course. Thom, another Shinnecock Hills legend, was the pro there from 1906 to 1955, and even after he retired he lived in a little cottage near the 14th tee.

"They had these smug looks on their faces," Smith went on, "kind of saying, 'They think they're going to conquer our course, but you and I know better.' "

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