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Golf Course Trades Runs my St. George’s Article

THE SPECTACLE BUNKERS AT THE PAR-3 17TH. PHOTO COURTESY OF ST. GEORGE’S

Golf Course Trades did a magnificent job with my latest piece: St. George’s Golf and Country Club, a true Devereux Emmet faithfully restored by Gil Hanse.

St. George’s shows that you don’t need 7,500 yards and forced carries over water to defend par, you need curvaceous greens with terrifying false fronts. You need tilted fairways and uneven lies to promote shot-shaping. And you need an asymmetric routing to keep players off balance. From the article:

“When Emmet was designing, golf architects were not handcuffed by the hackneyed “Doctrine of Symmetry” (where you MUST have two par-3s and two par-5s on each loop of nine). Rather than force a routing upon the land, Emmet let the terrain dictate the routing, providing an accurate reflection – not interpretation, but reflection – of what the land gave him. There are no par-3s in the first six holes (4-5-4-4-4-5) then four in the next nine holes (3-4-3-4-3-4-4-4-3) before the magnificent 4-3-5 finish.

The 6,230 yards course plays about 350 yards longer because it’s a par-70, not 72, but never feels overly long. Instead, the golf must carefully think his way around the course to avoid cunning cross-hazards, fierce false fronts at several greens, and deep bunkers everywhere.”