Like a well-reviewed character actor
who never quite gets top billing, Emmet, often in conjunction with design
partner Alfred H. Tull, worked consistently in the first three decades of the
century—and produced consistently
strong work. Among his highlights:
Leatherstocking Golf Club, in Cooperstown (1909); Salisbury Golf Links,
now the Red Course at Eisenhower
Park (1914); Wee Burn CC (1923),
Bethpage State Park’s Green Course
(1924), Seawane Club (1927), and his
masterpiece, Congressional CC (1924),
which sitting president Calvin Coolidge
played on opening day. Emmet also
oversaw the construction of many Seth
Raynor designs and, as noted, played a
key role in the National Golf Links:
During one of his annual winter visits
to the British Isles—where he would sell
the hunting dogs he had brought back
from the South and trained—Emmet
surveyed for Macdonald many of the
famous holes that the designer would
use as his inspiration.
Too much of Emmet’s portfolio is
underappreciated, and too much of it
has been lost. Pomonok Country Club
in Flushing, N.Y., host of the 1939
PGA Championship, was disbanded
and replaced by a housing project.
More commonly, his designs have been
altered in the name of progress. It is
something Emmet foresaw in his own
lifetime.
“Millions and millions of dollars
have been spent on golf courses, and
millions more in changing them,”
Emmet once wrote. “Most of these
mistakes have been made by club committees assisted by golf professionals.”
In the late 1920s, Emmet survived
serious car and horse-riding accidents.
“I am severely crippled but it does not
stop me from working or playing golf,”
he informed his old Columbia classmates in the winter of 1933. Emmet
died of pneumonia following a short illness on December 30, 1934, at the old
Garden City Hotel. Thirty-nine years
later, the famed structure, longtime
host to Vanderbilts and Pierpont Morgans, declared bankruptcy and was
razed—an indignity that led local residents to band together to form the
Garden City Historical Society. Emmet
could use similar protection. ■
