Devereux Emmet Society

[TEPaul]

I realize it may be difficult to determine but if it could be documented when Devereux Emmet first received a fee for architecture it would be most interesting to know.

[JNC Lyon]

also NOT on the list is one that has received extensive coverae on GCA:
The Leatherstocking Course @ The Otesaga Resort in Cooperstown...

it's usually a "must play" each year for those within a relatively easy (self defined) drive...

Scott,

Leatherstocking is definitely a glaring omission from that list.  However, Emmet's role in Leatherstocking is not completely known, considering his original nine hole layout was completely redesigned in 1919 by himself, Len Rayner, and Stephen C. Clark.

[Robert Emmons]

Tom,
Huntington CC paid Dev in 1910 for design work , not sure about earlier designs...RHE

[M. Shea Sweeney]

Mike-

I believe Cherry Valley Club in Garden City, NY is missing.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Another lost Emmet is Queen's Valley Golf Club, formerly located between 72nd Ave. and Union Tpke. in Kew Gardens Hills, Ny.
He laid out the course with W.H. "Pipe" Follett and Carter's Tested Seeds was used for the construction. It's scheduled opening was on Decoration Day (Memorial Day), 1923.

[TEPaul]

"Tom,
Huntington CC paid Dev in 1910 for design work , not sure about earlier designs...RHE"


Robert:

Thanks for that info. I ask because I'm not aware that the USGA questioned Emmet's amateur status and if he was being paid for his architectural services right on along I wonder why they didn't question his amateur status as he seems to have been a good enough and active enough tournament player to have been considered by them to be a golfer of skill and reputation. I don't know that he competed in USGA championships, however, and that may've been the difference back then.

A good example of that may've been Tillinghast. He did compete in USGA championships for a time and his amateur status was questioned. For instance, I believe Tillinghast's best showing in a US Open may've been in Philadelphia in 1910.

Emmet did continue to play pretty good tournament golf though and up to quite an elderly age.

[Tim Martin]

Country Club of Farmington in Connecticut should be added to the list.

[Dave Falkner]

He was the club champ at St Georges for a number of years after it first opened

[mark chalfant]

Jim  Kennedy,

Thanks very much for posting the map of Queens Valley.  The use of angles, cross bunkers, and great variety from hole to hole are design themes and motifs that Emmet  embraced in many of his finest designs

Mark

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mark,
You're welcome.
Jim

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mark,

Here's an aerial of the 5th hole at Hob Nob Hill (AKA Fulton Estate course) in Salisbury. At the time of the photo the course was no more than 1 year old, so more than likely this shows an overhead view of an untouched Emmet.


The man was not afraid of using hazards.

[Neil_Crafter]

I think this is a great idea and best of luck to all concerned.

Speaking from the experience of our research group for The Alister Mackenzie Society UK, Cornish and Whitten's list is likely to be considerably incomplete and wrong in a few places. That is not a criticism per se, given the mammoth task they undertook, but a statement of reality. We combined the CW list, the Hawtree list in Colt & Co and the list in the Doak et al Mac biography book as a starting point. Since then we have added well over 50 courses Mac was involved in.

Good luck, and a worthwhile task to document Emmet's courses.

[Jim_Kennedy]

I think I read somewhere that Great Neck G&CC had a nine hole course by Travis. It appears that Emmet was hired to create 36 holes on the site in 1918. Nowadays it's all housing.

[JMorgan]

Marc,

As some people in the DG know I've spent the past five years on and off writing a book on Emmet and his family. When it will ever see the light of day is another matter, as I've been wrapped up in more pragmatic projects in the last year. For what it's worth, I'd be happy to help in any way I can with the formation of a society if you ever decide to go through with it.  Emmet was a complex cat, and it's impossible to separate his family history from his work and his family from the history of New York.

At the same time, it's a rather touchy subject because someone in this group -- and I suppose only for reasons of his fragile ego and lack of perspective, as sad and pathetic as it now appears to me time out of mind -- cut into several situations where I was happy to lend gratis restoration info and other historic knowledge to interested parties ... whatever gets you through the night I guess.  I'll just say now that the experience really turned me off from participating in further discussions on this site.


Tentative pub date: Fall '11

[Adam Jessie]

It doesn't look like anyone has mentioned Salisbury CC in Nassau County NY. Now called Eisenhower Park Red Course which hosted the 1926 PGA Championship as well their share of Senior PGA Tour’s Commerce Bank Championships. I don't know how much Emmet is left but is always in good shape for pushing through 40,000 rounds annually.

AJ

[Tom MacWood]

I'm a little surprised Chris Blakely has not chimed in...he has been the most dedicated Emmet admirer over the years.

[John Mayhugh]

Whatever the Devereux Emmet Society dues are I hereby guarantee that I will pay yours even if there are different levels and costs! What do you want to be---the president, the vice president, a founding member or an associate member? If you want to be the president then I will just see to it that Mark is the Czar of the Devereux Emmet Society or the Chairman of its Board of Trustees (both or either of which is essentially the Top Banana and all that sort of thing).  

Hear, hear.

[DMoriarty]

I am organizing a Devereux Emmet Society to honor this underappreciated golf course architect. I will be publishing a quarterly newsletter and plans are in the works for a spring meeting to celebrate his work.

Mark, that sounds like a terrific idea.  After about a decade of him being mercilessly mocked around here it is about time he got some positive attention.   

I've seen a few articles he wrote about about various topics relating to golf (such as the amateur question) but am curious about what if anything he ever wrote about his ideas on golf architecture.   Do you know of anything?

[TEPaul]

"After about a decade of him being mercilessly mocked around here it is about time he got some positive attention."


As I sometimes do on here I checked whatever that GOLFCLUBALTLAS.com facility is that let's any of us view what the contributors online are looking at and I noticed Moriarty was viewing (and apparently posting on) a thread on Devereux Emmet from about seven years ago (2003).

Apparently his remark quoted above was a result of that thread. I would encourage him or anyone else to check out that thread to determine if that thread or any other thread about Devereux Emmet EVER constituted the mocking of the man or his architecture, and for a about a decade, as Moriarty implied! I think they may actually find the humor about him had only to do with a photograph of him once wearing a funny suit and hat!!

Nice to have you back on here again, Moriarty, after apparently a voluntary hiatus---you are a real positive influence on this website. I can't speak for the rest on here, but all I can tell you is I've sure missed your uniqueness.    

[DMoriarty]

I've seen the photo and if your juvenile sniggering ever was funny the humor surely has worn thin over the past decade.  What might have started with a joke about a photo devolved into endless monotonous mockery and oftentimes the mockery has been coupled with an extremely dismissive and negative opinions about his work.

I don't want to take the thread to far afield, but here are a just couple of typical examples of many to choose from.      

 

What I do think GCGC should do, though, is restore that 16th hole, all of it, completely to Travis and do away with anything Emmet did there either before Travis got involved with the course or after Travis died. That would definitely include that effeminate bunker Emmet snuck in greenside left at some point on #16 after Walter Travis died from smoking too many stogies.

I already proved last night on a couple of threads relating to Travis and Emmet and GCGC that Travis's architecture was virile and manly. And I also proved beyond a boa feather of a doubt that everything that little gay will-'o-the-wisp "Dev" Emmet did at GCGC was homosexual architecture. Is that what you want, homosexual architecture, at GCGC in your non-researched rapid quest to restore to some year because there's a lot of photos of that year?

Restoring to a year just because you think there were more photos of that year is not a great idea in an architectural context. Restoring to what was best is, though. The last time I heard, photographers were capable of taking some pretty good photos in the 1920s too, so I wouldn't be all that concerned about just the photographic aspect of GCGC's restoration. Check out your GCGC tournament history. 1936 surely wasn't the only year GCGC held a major tournament. There were Met Ams, State Ams and even a Walker Cup in the 1920s.

Actually the 1936 US Amateur finals at GCGC was one of the worst displays of golf in US Am history. The weather and wind was so bad, things blew done all over the course and what happened on #16 green, tragically, was very likely responsible for the beginning of the end of your beloved stymie! Is that what you want to restore to? The wind was so strong it blew things down all over the course. If that light little "Dev" Emmet had still been around in 1936 he probably would've blown away too!

Matter of fact, the wind and rain was so bad in the 1936 US Am I'm quite certain that was the very time Emmet's effeminate little bunker greenside left on #16 filled up with water creating a wetness problem there for the rest of time leading to the creation of the pond there in the 1970s. Of course, seeing as the pace of getting things done at GCGC is so glacial the fact that it took the club about 35 years to replace Emmet's bunker with a pond is not surprising!

But the important thing is to get ALL the architecture out of that golf course that fag Emmet did and restore to the course ALL the architecture of a real man---Walter John Travis!

Tom MacWood and Paul Cowley:

Well, I'll be damned and go to hell---you both make very fine points there!

And because you have that will certainly cause me to change my mind about what I've been saying. The "Big World" idea of golf and golf architecture ("Golf and golf architecture is a great big thing and there really is room in it for everyone") is the most important thing of all--certainly far more important than the removal of things such as "faggot bunkers" that require limp-wristed recovery shots!

So you've convinced me to change my mind--congratulations. I think things like "faggot bunkers" and other homosexual appearing golf architecture features do have a place in the "Big World" theory and should continue to be built, preserved and in some cases even restored---just not at that "Real" man, Walter J. Travis's golf course and "all-men" golf club---GCGC!

Anyway, the "joke" went way to far and for way to many years.

[TEPaul]

"I've seen the photo and if your juvenile sniggering ever was funny the humor surely has worn thin over the past decade.  What might have started with a joke about a photo devolved into endless monotonous mockery and oftentimes the mockery has been coupled with an extremely dismissive and negative opinions about his work."



David Moriarty:

I can absolutely assure you that your take on that joke about Devereux Emmet's photograph neither was or is my opinion of the man or his career in golf course architecture. I say that here and now as I have in the past with total assurance. Therefore, if you want to continue to push the point that you have on here I believe that says a whole lot more about your point and purpose on this website than it does about my opinion of Devereux Emmet and his golf architecture.

And frankly, if you had a modicum integrity and honesty with and of the discussion of Emmet on here you would link that entire seven year old thread on Emmet that you just quoted from ONTO THIS ONE to show this entire website what the contributors to that thread thought about it and said on it!!

But that is not your way of doing things on here, Moriarty; and it shows, as it always has, what your MO and point and purpose is on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com---and I for one want everyone to see why it is not good---not good at all.

You can do better Moriarty; I'm convinced of it. When will you begin?

[DMoriarty]

I've no intention of arguing the point with you Tom.  Anyone curious about what you've written about Emmet over the years can search "Emmet" along with "gay" or other similar terms.   In fact, they could just put in "Emmet" and search for your posts, as most of your mentions include derogatory comments about his orientation and/or his architecture.

And I did link the thread.  In the description of quoted text.

[TEPaul]

"And I did link the thread.  In the description of quoted text."




David Moriarty:

Thank you for explaining that. I'm quite confident that others on here who were not on this website in 2003 will recognize the intent and tenor of that thread and that it was not at all what you indicate and imply about Devereux Emmet but was merely generated by and about that humorous photograph of him in a white suit and funny hat.

[Kris Shreiner]

David,

A happy Thanksgiving Day to you sir, and holiday cheer all 'round to the GCA treehouse! Please let us refrain from the recounting of small, perhaps amendable moments of some poster's past. Surely, you have a few of your own, my friend. Let us embark on a "better course" as the New Year dawns shortly.

Continued spewing of negativity does little to enhance the discourse. Hard as it may be, let us try and give it a rest. To point to others' comments, as justification for continuing our own descent in to uncivil behavior, only validates our own shortcomings. None of us is perfect...we all can vow to improve our own effort. I know my approach will be in that vein.
Cheers

[Mike Sweeney]

Before Mark takes on creating detente between posters or figuring out the sexuality of private men who have been dead for 75 years  , perhaps we can refocus on Mark's updated course list with the help of many here:

http://devereuxemmetsociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/devereux-emmet-course-list.html

Anything still missing?