Hall of Fame

Region: Long Island (Garden City)
Hometown: Pelham, N.Y.
Deceased (1861–1934)

Devereux Emmet was one of the first American-born architects of golf's Golden Age — a gentleman sportsman who turned a privileged life of travel, hunting and competition into a body of work that shaped New York's golf landscape more than almost anyone of his era. Across a career spanning roughly 1897 to 1933, he laid out more than 150 courses worldwide, and nearly fifty in New York State alone.

Born in Pelham in 1861 into a prominent family of Irish descent — his mother a painter, his great-grandfather the Irish patriot Thomas Addis Emmet — Emmet graduated from Columbia and married into the family that founded Garden City. For two decades he lived the life of a sporting gentleman, buying hunting dogs in the American South each spring, training them on Long Island through the summer, selling them in Ireland in the autumn, and wintering in the British Isles, where he fell in love with golf. On one of those winters he measured and sketched the great holes of Britain for his friend Charles Blair Macdonald — work that fed directly into the creation of the National Golf Links of America, where Emmet served on the famed three-man design committee and was a founding member.

Emmet was an accomplished player in his own right. He reached the quarterfinals of the 1904 British Amateur at Royal St. George's and, remarkably, won the Bahamas Amateur at the age of 66. His competitive career even left a permanent mark on the rules of the game: after he and his son Devereux Jr. won the 1916 father-son tournament at Sleepy Hollow, the USGA instituted its "architects rule," barring course designers from competing as amateurs.

As an architect, Emmet was a naturalist. Working in the era of hickory shafts and horse-drawn scrapers, he fit his courses to the existing land rather than bending the land to his vision — wide fairways, bold and quirky mounding, deep grass-faced bunkers positioned to exact a penalty, blind shots played over robust natural landforms, and green sites that each carried their own personality. He admired and freely reproduced the game's great template holes; "You cannot go wrong with a Redan hole," he liked to say. Above all, his courses prized fun, strategy, choice and surprise.

His debut, the nine-hole Island Golf Links (1897), grew into the Garden City Golf Club (1899) — a layout Macdonald himself would soon rank among America's two greatest championship courses, and a cornerstone of the early American game. From there his work spread across the Empire State: Leatherstocking in Cooperstown (1909), the Red Course at Eisenhower Park (1914), St. George's Golf & Country Club (1917), McGregor Links near Saratoga (1921), the Green Course at Bethpage (1923), Schuyler Meadows near Loudonville (1927), the Seawane Club (1927), Bedford Golf & Tennis (1928), and Huntington Crescent (1931), among dozens of others. His reach extended well beyond New York — the National Golf Links, the original course at Congressional near Washington, Wee Burn in Connecticut, and layouts in Bermuda — and in 1924 he brought on Alfred H. Tull, making him a partner in 1929 in the firm of Emmet, Emmet & Tull.

Devereux Emmet died on December 30, 1934, in Garden City — within a mile of the course that launched his career nearly four decades earlier. Though suburban expansion and later renovations claimed some of his layouts, those that survive remain intelligent, characterful tests, and his standing among Golden Age architects has only grown with time. As the original designer of Garden City, a creative force behind the National Golf Links, and the most prolific golf course architect New York has ever produced, Devereux Emmet earns his place in the New York State Golf Association Hall of Fame.

Devereux Emmet's Architect Highlights

• Career spanning roughly 1897–1933; more than 150 courses designed worldwide, nearly 50 in New York State
• Original designer, Garden City Golf Club (1899) — grew from the nine-hole Island Golf Links (1897)
• Member of the three-man design committee and founding member, National Golf Links of America (with C.B. Macdonald and H.J. Whigham)
• Quarterfinalist, 1904 British Amateur (Royal St. George's)
• Winner, Bahamas Amateur (at age 66)
• Won the 1916 Sleepy Hollow father-son with Devereux Emmet Jr., prompting the USGA's "architects rule"
• Formed Emmet, Emmet & Tull with Alfred H. Tull (associate 1924, partner 1929)
• Selected New York courses: Garden City GC, Leatherstocking, Eisenhower Park (Red), St. George's G&CC, McGregor Links, Bethpage (Green), Schuyler Meadows, Seawane, Bedford G&T, Huntington Crescent, Engineers, Nassau, Pelham, Rye, Rockville Links, Powelton, Cherry Valley, and many more
• Beyond New York: National Golf Links committee; Congressional CC (Blue), Maryland; Wee Burn, Connecticut; courses in Bermuda
• Recognized as one of the first American-born pioneers of Golden Age golf course architecture