ELMSFORD, N.Y. – Once upon a time, you could hardly swing a niblick in the Met Area without hitting a golf course architect. C.B. Macdonald, Walter Travis, A.W. Tillinghast, even Willie Park Jr. came to New York to further their design careers. Seth Raynor was nearby on Long Island, while Devereux Emmet was born in the city and a descendant of a founder of Tammany Hall, to boot.
But ever since, the architects are elsewhere. A few notables remain: Rees Jones and Stephen Kay were born locally and still live in New Jersey. And while Tom Doak was born in New York City and Gil Hanse on Long Island, both have long since relocated.
Hoping to prove that if you were made here you can make it anywhere is 40-year-old local Jeffrey Stein, whose career took a giant leap forward last year with the opening of Great Dunes on Georgia’s Jekyll Island. He and fellow architect Brian Ross channeled Travis – one of Stein’s design heroes – redoing nine holes “The Old Man” laid out in 1927 and adding an all-new nine by the sea: The completed public-access layout has received rave reviews for its use of linksland scrub and dunes, fealty to Travis’ styling, environmental sensibility, and reasonable pricing.
It was hardly Stein’s first time working on sandy, links-like soil, or his maiden restoration of a design heavyweight. His two decades building an architectural resume are filled with old masters as well as new classics, showcasing a versatility that he credits to growing up here: “Seeing the variety of terrain and the way the golf courses were laid out in the Metropolitan area has an effect on the way I see golf.”
Read more in the May issue of The Met Golfer.