Merion Golf Club Where The Merely Famous Became Legends
In 1965, Sports Illustrated ran a cover story entitled “The Best 18 in America.” The magazine presented essays about the best “first hole” of any golf course in America; the best “second hole,” etc.
Readers were given a glimpse of 17 different great golf courses. Why 17 and not 18? Because the editors of Sports Illustrated decided that Merion Golf Club had the best first hole anywhere in America, and the best eleventh hole. The other 16 clubs only had one of their holes featured in the article.
About “1 Merion Par 4 360 Yards” they wrote: The perfect first hole should lure the golfer, should excite him, should test him just a little and should give him a good chance of walking away satisfied—he has, after all, 17 more to go. To fit this exceptional purpose, there is no better No. 1 in America than that on the East Course of famous old Merion … Originally organized as a cricket club in 1865 (annual dues $2), it added a golf course for a small group of members in 1896 and eventually thwarted bankruptcy by grudgingly expanding to its present membership of 666. But it never lost its character. It is today the kind of club where a member will rise in wrath at an annual meeting, as one did, and demand to know by whose authority a vine of honeysuckle was removed from an all-but-out-of-play fence on the back nine. The chairman of the greens committee answered that it was done by his authority, that’s whose, and in the fuss that followed he resigned. It is a club where change comes slowly, and what others call progress is viewed as more blight than delight.
This is what they had to say about “11 MERION PAR 4 378 YARDS” :
It is also the only course that could properly offer two holes for our Best 18. Merion’s first hole began this series (SI, Feb. 15), and now the 11th, the historic Baffling Brook, follows as appropriately as the white sand follows a well-played explosion from Merion’s bunkers.This hole deceives you right from the tee. You think you have adequate room for your drive, but less than 100 yards down the fairway the terrain drops abruptly to a lower level, and this level, which is not visible from the tee, abounds with bunkers and trees. Yet the exciting part is still to come. Far back in a shaded setting of oak, beech and gum trees, embraced front, right and back by Baffling Brook, is the green. There is almost no fairway between the driving area and the green itself, only a broad, rocky creek bed, with the water rippling through the middle of it. The longer the golfer studies his club selection for a high, biting pitch that must carry the creek, the stones and the wall in front of the green, the wider and deeper the brook becomes.The 11th first earned fame not for its difficulty but simply for its existence. It was the hole where Jones closed out his final match 8 and 7 against Eugene Homans to complete the Slam, and it was the last really competitive hole Bobby ever played.
Merion Golf Club, which is actually in Ardmore, Haverford Township, has hosted 18 United States Golf Association (U.S.G.A.) events; including six U.S. Amateur, five U.S. Open and four Women’s Amateur tournaments; Three USGA sponsored international team competitions also took place there; the 1954 Curtis Cup, the 1960 Eisenhower Cup and the 2009 Walker Cup.
In 1916, only four years after the course opened at its current location, Merion hosted the U.S. Amateur.
That event, won by Charles “Chick Evans,” featured a 14-year old Bobby Jones, competing in his first tournament outside the South (he was from Atlanta). Jones, who the press tagged “The Boy Wonder,” made it to quarter final round of match play, before losing to defending champion Robert Gardner.
Jones, and the U.S. Amateur came back to Merion in 1924. He celebrated his return by winning the tournament. It would be the first of his five career wins in the U.S. Amateur.
By 1930, no longer “The Boy Wonder,” Jones was on his way to becoming an internationally recognized figure. His fame was a precursor to Tiger Woods’ (who played in the 2013 U.S. Open, at Merion). Both iconic golfers were identifiable to people whose knowledge of the sport began and ended by being able to identify Bobby Jones, and two generations later, Tiger Woods.
Jones revisited Merion once more in September of 1930, to compete in and win in the U.S. Amateur. It was the last and the most heralded triumph of his illustrious career. By winning the U.S. Amateur at Merion that year, Jones completed what was then considered to be the first ever “Grand Slam” of Golf.”
In 1934 Merion hosted the U.S. Open for the first time.
Olin Dutra won the tournament and took home a whopping $1,000 of first place prize money. When Justin Rose won at the 2013 Merion-hosted U.S. Open, his winning check was for $1,440,000. Even adjusted for inflation and higher taxes, that would be more.
Once again, Merion hosted the U.S. Open, in June of 1950. Ben Hogan won it, in what has come to be known as The Miracle at Merion.
The previous February, Hogan was critically injured when the car he was driving was hit head-on by a Greyhound Bus. 16 months later, he recovered well enough to win the tournament; but not before being forced into an 18-hole playoff round with Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio. The win entitled Hogan to take home the winning trophy and the prize money, which by this time had quadruped to $4,000!
Merion also hosted the U.S. Open in 1971 (won by Lee Trevino) and in 1980 (won by David Graham).