Devereux Emmet: The Naturalist Who Built Long Island Golf

Devereux Emmet did not study golf course architecture in school. There was no school. He was a Columbia graduate, class of 1883, who spent two decades buying hunting dogs in the American South, training them on Long Island, selling them in Ireland, and wintering with a set of hickory clubs in the British Isles. He came home with two things: a list of every great hole in the British Isles, and the conviction that the land in front of him already knew where the golf course belonged.

Born in Pelham, New York in 1861, Emmet built his first course in 1897 and kept going until his death in 1934. Stymie carries 37 of his designs across eight states, from Keney Golf Course in Hartford to Belmont Hills Country Club in Ohio. Most are in New York. A few sources credit him with as many as 150 layouts worldwide once you count the courses that have been lost, rerouted, or absorbed into other clubs.

The Naturalist Approach

Emmet's defining trait was restraint. He worked in an era when earth was moved by horse and scraper, and he treated that as a feature, not a constraint. A contemporary said he "could not possibly conceive of any other use to which any piece of real estate could be put except to lay out golf links on it." When he walked a property, he was already routing it.

His designs leaned on wide fairways, varied bunker shapes, and greens that punished the wrong angle of approach more than the wrong club. Because his courses were built for hickory shafts and gutta-percha balls, the yardages look modest now. Nassau Country Club, built in 1896 in Glen Cove, still stretches past 7,100 yards from the back tees with a slope of 145, but most of his work sits in the 6,300 to 6,700 range. Length was never his weapon. Position was.

Garden City and the Long Island Spine

The work that put Emmet in the architectural conversation was Garden City Golf Club, opened in 1899 as a redesign of the original Island Golf Links he had laid out two years earlier. Garden City is currently ranked #58 on Golf Digest's America's 100 Greatest, the only Emmet course in the database with a top-100 ranking. Walter Travis later remodeled the greens, but the routing and the strategic skeleton are Emmet's.

From there, Long Island and the New York metro became his home territory. Cherry Valley Golf Course opened in 1907 a few miles from Garden City. Pelham Country Club followed in 1908 in his hometown. Leatherstocking Golf Course in Cooperstown opened in 1909 on the shore of Otsego Lake and remains one of the most photographed resort courses in the Northeast. Glen Head Country Club, Bonnie Briar, and Leewood Golf Club added Westchester to the portfolio in the 1920s.

Congressional and the Move South

In 1924 Emmet was hired to lay out both 18-hole courses at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. The Blue Course and the Gold Course have both been heavily reworked since, most famously by Robert Trent Jones Sr. and Rees Jones for major championship play, but the original 36-hole footprint at Congressional is Emmet's. That same year he brought on Alfred H. Tull as his associate, and in 1929 they formalized the partnership as Emmet, Emmet and Tull. It ran until his death five years later.

The Player Who Got Banned From His Own Championship

Emmet was an accomplished amateur. He reached the quarterfinals of the 1904 British Amateur at Royal St. George's, traveled to the great courses of the UK with Charles Blair Macdonald, and won the Bahamas Amateur at age 66. He was good enough that in 1916, the USGA created the "architects rule," barring practicing golf course architects from amateur championships. The rule was written in part because of him.

What His Courses Feel Like Today

Most Emmet courses are now public or semi-private daily-fee clubs. McGregor Links in Saratoga Springs, Capital Hills at Albany, and Mechanicville Golf Club stretch his work into upstate New York. Hampshire Country Club in Mamaroneck and Mahopac Golf Club sit close to the city. The greens tend to be small by modern standards, the bunkering varied, and the routing walkable. None of them feel forced.

That is the through-line. Emmet was a hunter, a traveler, an amateur champion, and a man who happened to be very good at reading land. He built courses the way he trained his dogs: by watching what was already there and shaping the work around it.

View all courses by Devereux Emmet on Stymie