The 2013 U.S. Open will be held this year at the Merion Golf Club located in Haverford Township, Pennsylvania. This will be the 5th time that Merion has hosted the U.S. Open Tournament. Merion has held 18 USGA Championship Tournaments more than any other golf course. I will to try to recapture a little history about the course and some of the classic championships held there.
Merion Golf Club is a private golf club located just west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The club has two courses: the East Course, and the West Course. The East Course has been consistently rated by Golf Digest among America’s greatest golf courses, and will host the 2013 U.S. Open.
The Merion Golf Club dates from 1896, when members of the Merion Cricket Club (founded in 1865) opened a golf course in Haverford, Pennsylvania. In 1910, the membership decided to build a new course and chose 32-year-old club member Hugh Wilson, a Scottish immigrant and fine player, to design it. Merion East opened in September 1912, and the original course was closed. The West Course, also designed by Wilson, opened in May 1914. The Merion Golf Club did not officially separate from the Merion Cricket Club until 1941.
Hugh Wilson had never designed a golf course, so he went on a seven-month trip to Scotland and England to study British courses. Several features of Merion East are derived from famous British courses, not the least of which is Merion’s distinctive Scottish-style bunkers. Merion Wilson’s layout covers only 126 acres of land, a very small area for a golf course. It was ranked seventh in Golf Digest’s “America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses” in 2005, and Jack Nicklaus has said of Merion East, “Acre for acre, it may be the best test of golf in the world.”
Merion has held 18 United States Golf Association (USGA) championship tournaments, more than any other course. The first two, the 1904 and 1909 U.S. Women’s Amateurs, were held at the original Haverford course. The first USGA men’s tournament held at the East Course was the 1916 U.S. Amateur, won by Chick Evans. This was also the first time Bobby Jones appeared in a national championship; he was 14 years old. Jones would win his first U.S. Amateur in 1924, also held at Merion.
In 1930, the U.S. Amateur returned to Merion in late September. Earlier that year, Bobby Jones had won the British Amateur, British Open, and U.S. Open, so anticipation was high to see if he could complete the sweep of all four major championships of the time. Jones won the the medal in the stroke play qualifier and cruised through the first four rounds of match play, to the final 36-hole match against Eugene Homans on Saturday. After the morning round, Jones was comfortably ahead by seven holes, and when both players pared the 11th hole Jones had an 8 & 7 victory. Less than two months after the tournament win, Bobby Jones retired from competitive golf at age 28.
Merion’s 1950 U.S. Open was the site of Ben Hogan’s comeback, 16 months after a head-on collision with a bus which shattered his pelvis and nearly killed him. On the 72nd hole (and 36th of the day), in extreme pain and facing a shot of over 200 yards into the wind, Hogan needed a par to force a playoff, as he had just bogeyed the long par-3 17th. From the fairway, Hogan hit a superb shot which stopped on the distant green well within two-putt range, and made his par. Hogan then defeated Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio in an 18-hole playoff on Sunday to win the tournament.
Following David Graham’s win at the U.S. Open at Merion in 1981, it was felt by many that the relatively short course of about 6,500 yards , small course area of 111 acres (which limits gallery size), and lack of grounds to hold corporate tents would preclude Merion from holding a major again. However, following some land acquisition nearby and lengthening of the East Course to nearly 7,000 yards, many of these concerns appeared to be addressed. After successfully hosting the 2005 U.S. Amateur, the USGA awarded the 2013 U.S. Open to Merion.
On the East Course, all of the pins are topped with wicker baskets instead of the usual flags. As one story goes, when Hugh Wilson was in England studying their golf courses, he happened upon local sheep herders and their flocks. These shepherds held staffs that they used for herding, and the staffs all had wicker baskets at the top. In those baskets, they kept their lunch for the day so that no animals could get into it. Wilson decided to use the idea at Merion, though the exact origin has never been fully verified. One effect is that the baskets are visible no matter which way the wind is blowing – but they do not give the golfer any indication of wind direction at the green. They have been used since at least 1916, and are featured in the club’s logo.
Up until around 1980, the wicker baskets were made on site by a member of the grounds crew staff. Since then, a woman, whose name and location are purposely kept anonymous, creates the current baskets. Anyone who wins a USGA event at Merion receives a wicker basket top. Wickers are destroyed if the wicker baskets are broken. The golf course assistant superintendents collect the wickers every night, so they will not be stolen. The wicker baskets will be used in the 2013 U.S. Open.
Hopefully we will have another memorable U.S. Open to talk about in the years to come after this one in completed. If history stays true to form maybe we will be talking about how Tiger Woods got back into the Major victory circle and continued his march towards Jack Nicklaus’s record. Only time will tell.
By ‘History with Halle’
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