The Met Golfer - August/September 2010

Wee Burn, which hosted the MGA Senior Amateur in 2008, is one of the most highly regarded courses in Connecticut.

If he didn’t invent the practice, Emmet also was skilled at talking up a project. Witness the July 9, 1930, Schenectady Gazette: “Course Expert Is Elated Over New Course Site,” which described Emmet as having said that the land for the forthcoming Masonic Country Club—later re-named Mohawk Golf Club— “could be made one of the best in Eastern New York.” Mostly, though, Emmet spoke his mind. In February 1917, he thrust himself into the middle of a controversy about the USGA’s newly revised definition of amateurism, which had deemed Francis Ouimet a professional merely for selling sporting goods— and, it could be interpreted, might bar paid golf architects from competing as amateurs.

It wasn’t that Emmet needed course design
fees. Conflating architectural work and ama-
teur status, he argued, besmirched “the high
principles of business and professional honor.”
The idea that qualified, imaginative, well-
traveled men should be forced to work for free
to play as amateurs? It was “almost absurd,”
Emmet declared in a Golf Illustrated article
entitled “Should Golf Architects Be Rated As
Professional Golfers?”
“The only result of this foolish rule will be
to prevent a great many suitable men from
planning golf courses,” he wrote.

The following is a list of Met Area courses credited to Devereux Emmet as either original designs or redesigns: • Bethpage State Park (Green), Farmingdale, N. Y., 1924