On the way home from New York to Philly yesterday Wayne Morrison and I stopped off to see our old buddy Adam Jessie, former Shinnecock first Asst who took over last January at this 1916 Devereaux Emmet course. I asked and he said it was fine to put a thread on here about it.
I came from Long Island and I'd never heard of this course which really surprised me. St George's is just another good reason why this website and golf architecture should know more about Devereaux Emmet not just because his architecture is so good but also because he was so early in the first era of good American architecture (for starters I would really like to know how long Emmet remained a non-paid amateur golf architect).
Gil Hanse did a bunker restoration on this course in maybe the last five years.
The first thing that strikes you is the topography of this course both small and large topography, how radical some of it is and how the holes are strung through it in a bunch of pretty gutsy ways.
The next thing that strikes you is Emmet's mounding and combined moundy, ridgy, flat-bottomed coffin style bunker complexes of all kinds of flat-bottomed sand shapes and angles.
There's definitely enough quirk and architectural quirk on this course to suit the most ardent architectural quirkster. And there're three or four or five or six or so holes I guarantee you that you'll never forget. Every one of those ones makes you really want to hit shots on them.
The course has one green as close to a fairly well traveled public road as I've ever seen in golf, and if that weren't enough even with a good drive you'd be lucky to see even the top of the flag.
#4, named Matterhorn has a beautiful perpindicular ridgeline fairway with the potential to be one of the best looking "skyline" fairways I've ever seen. The green is unusual and has some of the most unusual mounding and bunkering totally covering the front of it I've seen anywhere, including a narrow, blind sunken flat-bottomed coffin bunker immediately in front of the green. And when you ride around this one you can definitely see you do not want to go over this green!
A good bit of the flanking fairway bunkering on the course was designed to be shared by parallel holes and one set has faces going both ways.
Adam thinks the fairways should be expanded right up to those shared hole fairway bunkers and he's absolutely right about that.
A couple of the greens are miniscule, topped off by #17 that's very short and plays across a huge really deep pit to a green you wouldn't want to miss by much.
My recommendations were to open up into fairway grass areas that could kick the ball around or approach areas that can kick the ball onto some of the greens from the sides at the end of some radically topographical holes, a few of which are semi to totally blind to the approach.
The course should lose all its numerous cedar trees other than perhaps a dozen.
A lot of the greenside bunkering is really interesting in that it demands that the golfer go a pretty long way out of it to get to some green surfaces and not necessarily because the green surfaces have shrunk
(If I remember correctly Tom Doak mentioned in his book "The Anatomy of a Golf Course" this architectural idea appealed to him).
If you happen to play the ball to the back of the short par 5 18th green and the pin is on the front, I'll guarantee you this green is one you'll never forget either.
As much as any I've seen St George's represents golf and golf architecture "of an era", and in that early era in America New York's Devereaux Emmet may've done it as well or better than anyone.