Golf Course Architect Stephen Kay

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Certain parts of the country’s golfing landscape are just synonymous with particular golf course architects. Golf in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and you’ll likely be teeing it up at a popular Willard Byrd, Tim Cate or Dan Maples design. In New Jersey, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be playing a Stephen Kay golf course, or some other that he’s done some significant renovations upon.

A long-time instructor at Rutgers University’s renowned Professional Turf Management Program, Kay is the architect of Williamstown’s Scotland Run Golf Club and The Architects Club in Lopatcong. The Architects Club is what its name says, a course featuring holes inspired by Kay after most of the Golf’s greatest architects like Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast and C.B. MacDonald, Hugh Wilson, Alister MacKenzie, Walter Travis and St. Andrews’ Old Tom Morris.

Most recently, Kay opened his newest course, Old Bridge Golf Club at Rose Lambertson, or “The Rose”, in Middlesex County, which Golfing featured in our Spring 2024 issue.

The Rose features generous links-lined fairways with wetlands and ponds, sustainable irrigation, several Risk-Reward opportunities and sloping greens, including a rare Biarrittz green, an unique putting surface with a raised Back and Front portions with a deep valley right in the middle.

The Rose
Old Bridge Golf Club
Lambertson NJ

Raised in nearby West Chester County, New York, and a Jersey Shore transplant, Kay is, perhaps, most famous for his many, and fun-to-play golf courses in New Jersey’s golfing mecca, The Atlantic City Region. Among Kay’s most played tracks are three of AC’s favorites, Blue Heron Pines, Harbor Pines and McCullough’s Emerald Golf Links. Blue Heron and Harbor Pines, both classic tree-lined parkland-style gems, are located in Cologne and Egg Harbor Township, respectively, opened in the mid 1990s. McCullough’s, meanwhile, opened in the early 2000s, right across from Harbor Pines, is, like Architects, an inspirational layout featuring tree-less links par 3s, and Fours and Fives based on many of the world-famous British Open holes of Scotland, England and Ireland.

McCullough’s Emerald Golf Links
Egg Harbor Township, NJ

“Blue Heron Pines Golf Club located in Egg Harbor City New Jersey is a Stephen Kay designed that sits in the Pinelands of South Jersey approximately 25 minutes from Atlantic City. Stephen has designed a few other golf courses in the area including Harbor Pines and McCullough’s Emerald Golf Links,” said Bluer Heron’s PGA Director of Golf Wally Tittelmayer.

“The layout at Blue Heron Pines, Stephen designed is a very fair but challenging golf course. The course rolls and winds through the pine trees on the property. Each hole has its own unique character with no two holes liking similar, creating a fun and enjoyable round of golf.  He framed many of the par 4’s and 5’s using fairway bunkers to create great site lines off the tee and rolling fairways to provide the golfer an opportunity to position themselves for easier approaches into the greens. Most greens are well bunkered and water hazards come into play on a handful of holes. The nice feature is he has provided the golfer with the ability to run their shot onto the putting surfaces without a forced carry on most of the holes. Utilizing all the features of the land provided his routing is exceptional, with some dogleg left and dogleg right holes, variation in length on his par 3’s from the short #11 over a pond to the long and demanding #16 with a green that sits up on a hill and runs away from the tee shot. Overall, it is a fun layout for golfers of various skill levels with a ton of character and charm.”

Blue Heron Pines Golf Club

“The variety of golf in Atlantic City is really amazing,” said Kay. “South Jersey is such a great area to golf. It’s one of the best golfing destinations in the whole country. I feel very fortunate to have been a part of so many of its courses and to play and live here.”

Over the past three to four years, as well, Kay, a master course renovator, who’s rejuvenated venerated golf courses like The Brigantine Links, and Philadelphia’s Union’ League Torresdale Country Club( a Ross course formerly known as Frankford-Torresdale Country Club), has had a huge hand in modernizing two more of South Jersey’s classic courses, Hammonton’s Pinelands Golf Club, and Atlantis Golf Course, part of the ocean County Parks and recreation Department in Mystic Islands near Tuckerton. At Atlantis, a George Fazio design opened in 1962, Kay’s work in irrigation, resodding greens, tree removal and reshaping, and shrinking, the course’s many, and formerly penal, greenside sand traps making the course even more fun to play for County residents and visiting golfers alike.

“Stephen has done a tremendous job renovating our course,” said Atlantis’ supervising greenskeeper, Josh Moore. “ The improvements with the new bunkering and the greens he’s helped us with over the past four to five years has been phenomenal. He’s one of the most knowledgeable guys in turf and architecture I know.”

New Jersey, one of the original, and main, birthplaces of the Game of Golf, has had many of the Game’s greatest golf course architects build courses here, and Stephen Kay is one of the very best to do so.

www.KayGolfCourseDesign.com