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The Magic of Merion
Returning to a historical gem
I
t’s time to cheer. A sporting body has put prestige before profi t, history before hucksterism, conventional golfi ng wis- dom and commercial imperatives to one side for the sake of a game’s history. T e United States Golf Association is staging its U.S. Open championship at a historic, iconic venue, even though some might have considered that venue expen- sive, old-fashioned and underpowered. T e return of the U.S. Open to Merion, outside Philadelphia, is not quite like the return of the Prodigal Son because the U.S. Open has been in this part of Pennsylvania four times (and so have 17 other USGA champion- ships). But it hasn’t been there for 32 years, and those who cherish the history of a game drenched in history feared it might never return. T at it has is cause to celebrate. Is there a more storied golf club in the U.S.
than Merion? Probably not. It was originally named after a cricket club, in itself a distinctive fact in a country where cricket ranks alongside Shove Ha’penny in a nation’s sporting con- sciousness. It does not have fl ags that fl utter in rippling winds to mark the target on each hole. Instead, each fl agstick is topped by a wicker basket, colored red on the outward nine holes, orange on the inward nine. T e club has a strain of grass named after it, and the sand in the bunkers has caused them to be christened “the white faces of Merion.” Merion is laid out on 112 acres, barely larger than the parking lot of many golf clubs. It has stud marks on the fl oor of its clubhouse, and on the 18th hole of the East course there’s a plaque for Ben Hogan and the famous stroke he hit with a 1-iron from that fairway, en route
8 BY JOHN HOPKINS
to winning the 1950 U.S. Open, 16 months after a car accident had nearly killed him. “By the early 2000s, the UGA was fl ush, thanks in large part to increased broadcast- ing rights fees,” David Fay, former USGA Executive Director, said, in explaining how the USGA could aff ord to return to a venue with an expected attendance of 60,000 fewer than other venues. “Soon we were to have a stable of corporate partners for even more revenue. And introducing public courses like Bethpage Black and Torrey Pines to the unoffi cial U.S. Open rota allowed us to bundle smaller-scale Open courses like Merion and Olympic with large–capacity sites. Our internal fi nancial plan- ning models were based on fi ve to seven year projections. We could aff ord to take a fi nancial hit every so often.” Most important, perhaps, is that Merion is the site of Bobby Jones’s victory in the 1930 U.S. Amateur, the title that gave him the fourth major championship of the year after the U.S. and British Opens and the (British) Amateur. T at was then the game’s greatest feat, and to win four majors in one calendar year remains its greatest, and so far not yet realized, challenge. T at achievement is now known as the Grand Slam and refers to the U.S. and British Opens, the Masters and the PGA Championship of the U.S., but in Jones’s day it was described as T e Impregnable Quadrilateral. “I knew that no American golf course could
be more to my liking than Merion,” Jones wrote in his book Golf Is My Game. “Besides being a good course, it was one for which I had come to have a good deal of sentimental aff ec- tion. It was at Merion in 1916 that I had fi rst played in the Amateur Championship. It was
there that I had fi rst won it in 1924. I could not have picked a more propitious setting for this fi nal event of the most important golfi ng year of my life.” Or, as Mike Davis, executive director of the
USGA, put it: “It’s hard to think of a moment in time in the United States that was more important than Bob Jones winning the Grand Slam at Merion. And back then, let us not forget the U.S. Amateur was a more important championship than the U.S. Open.” Yes, yes, yes. So much for history. But at
6,996 yards long with a par of 70, Merion is surely short by modern standards. At this year’s Masters, Augusta was nearly 500 yards
Grand Slam! Bobby Jones holds the Havemeyer Cup after winning the 1930 U.S. Amateur Champi- onship at Merion Cricket Club
longer and Whistling Straits, where the PGA was played in 2010, extends to 7,790 yards. How diffi cult can a course be that is less than 7,000 yards and, on occasion, may be played even shorter? What’s more, isn’t it cramped for space with Ardmore Avenue providing both a perimeter and a crossing point? Davis said that Merion was a blend of short
and long. He could have cited the four short holes as examples of a sentence that seemed to be contradictory. “T ree could be played at 230 yards; one is only 115 yards. When you look at the scorecard, people think, wow, it’s under 7,000 yards. T ere’s going to be more birdies at this U.S. Open than at any else in U.S.
COURTESY USGA ARCHIVES
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