We”re merely two weeks away from the playing of the 113th version of the United States Open Golf Championship. This time around, the National Open is being contested at the venerable East Course at the Merion Golf Club located in the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore. This will mark the 18th time that Merion has hosted a United States Golf Association national championship and it will be the fifth time that the Open has been played at Merion East.
The Merion Cricket Club was founded during the Civil War and it expanded to a golf club in 1896. The golf course was located in nearby Haverford and hosted the 1904 and 1909 U.S. Women”s Amateur. The club purchased the Ardmore property in 1909 and began plans to build a 36-hole complex at the new site. Top local golfer Hugh Wilson, a novice golf course architect who was formerly the captain of the golf team at nearby Princeton University, was brought on board to design the new courses. The East Course opened in 1912 and the West Course was completed in 1914.
The new Merion made an immediate splash and was rewarded as the host site of the 1916 U.S. Amateur. It was a most memorable event as career amateur Chick Evans won the Amateur to go along with his U.S. Open title from earlier that year. The 1916 Am was the place where 14-year-old Bobby Jones made his first national appearance, making the 36-hole cut and getting all the way to the quarterfinals of match play. The Amateur returned to Merion in 1924 and Jones captured the first of his five U.S. Amateur titles. Jones won the 1930 Am at Merion and it too was a historic moment as the victory finalized his version of the Grand Slam, having won the British Amateur, British Open and U.S. Open earlier that summer.
The U.S. Open visited Merion for the first time in 1934. Olin Dutra of Fresno carded a 72-hole total score of 13-over-par 293 to beat Gene Sarazen by one stroke. From the trivia standpoint, Dutra, who also won the 1932 PGA Championship, is perhaps best known as the man who gave Babe Didrickson Zaharias her first golf lesson.
The National Open revisited Merion in 1950, and once again the course was on center stage for another historically significant moment. Ben Hogan had just avoided death in a car crash some 16 months prior to the playing of the ”50 Open. He had taken the long path to recovery and rehabilitation and had rejoined the PGA Tour in early 1950. Playing on extremely damaged legs, Hogan was able to gut it out over the 72 holes of Open play. Going into the final hole of the final round, Hogan found himself tied for the lead with the most difficult 18th hole between him and an Open playoff.
Hogan hit a memorable 1-iron shot into the final green from some 200 yards out. He was able to two-putt for par and tie George Fazio and Lloyd Mangrum atop the leader board at 7-over-par 287. Hogan won the 18-hole playoff the following day to win the second of his four National Open titles. Hogan”s 1-iron shot has been one of the game”s more iconic photos, taken by Life Magazine photographer Hy Preskin.
Merion Golf Club had developed a reputation as one tough course as evidenced by the winning scores posted by Dutra and Hogan. The greens were diabolical, the doglegs were harsh, and the U.S. Open-style rough was penal with a broadleaf base. However, the facility itself was a claustrophobic 126 acres and the course itself could only be stretched out to 6,500 yards. In 1971, Lee Trevino beat Jack Nicklaus in an 18-hole playoff to win at Merion. Trevino and Nicklaus finished regulation play at even-par 280. Ten years later, Australian David Graham won his second major title, carding a 7-under-par 273 to beat George Burns and Bill Rogers by three strokes. Graham”s final round was nothing short of a clinic of brilliant shotmaking as he hit 13 out of 14 fairways, hit all 18 greens in regulation, and carded a 67, the low round of the tournament. Regardless of how well Graham played, he was only one of seven golfers to record under-par totals that week at Merion.
Yet the 1981 U.S. Open marked the beginning of the end for Merion Golf Club as a major championship venue. Merion”s 126 acres made it next to impossible to lengthen the course. There was limited room for spectators. There was very little room for corporate hospitality tents, press and media centers, and merchandise sales. It looked like Merion would join Philadelphia Country Club, Interlachen and Fresh Meadows as U.S. Open sites that have seen the game outgrow its course length.
Merion”s aggressive younger members still wanted the course to host the Open and it went so far as to apply for the 2003 National Open in the mid-1990s. They lost out to the underwhelming Olymipa Fields. Instead, Merion settled for the 2005 U.S. Amateur as a consolation prize. Meanwhile, the newer members decided to attempt to impress the USGA by putting on a dynamic U.S. Amateur as well as improving the course for a future Open bid.
The Merion members bought property adjacent to the golf course so that they could expand the East Course”s yardage by some 500 yards to close to 7,000 total yards. They thinned out hundreds of trees to enhance circulation and air movement. While it seemed downright improbable that an Open was in Merion”s future, the club did have two guardian angels at its side. USGA executive director David Fay and tournament set-up man Mike Davis were big fans of the course and its National Open history. As Fay was quoted as saying, “The USGA”s heart was in it.” Fay and crew determined that since the organization was making enormous sums of money from television rights, they didn”t necessarily have to seek out venues such as Bethpage and Torrey Pines that could accommodate 40,000 spectators. Merion hosted the 2009 Walker Cup Matches and the USGA was confident in its ability to once again host the United States Open.
The Merion Golf club hosts the 2013 U.S. Open starting June 13. Jack Nicklaus has been quoted as saying that “Acre for acre, Merion may be the best test of golf in the world.” Within the next 15 days, we”ll know for sure whether Merion Golf Club is a suitable course of history and tradition for the playing of our national championship, or whether the game of super-amped golf balls, blended metal woods, hybrids and belly putters has passed it by.
