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history. One of the characteristics of Merion’s greens is that there is not a characteristic that applies to all of them. You’ve got big greens. You’ve got small greens. You’ve got greens that slope from front to back and from back to front. You’ve got greens that have plateaus and undulations. T e 18th green might remind you of a green at Pinehurst No. 2 in that it’s almost humpbacked. T en you’ve got the 11th, which is pretty fl at. T ere are some bunkers here that are so deep you get down in them and you can’t see the fl agstick or wicker. You want to avoid at least half of the bunkers. T ey are hazards. And as for Merion’s fi nish, well, if those aren’t the hardest fi nishing holes in a U.S. Open, I don’t know what they are. T e width of the fairways varies from 24-25 yards to 30-35 yards. T e course requires more pre- cision than most other U.S. Open golf courses. You really have to work your ball.” “It’s an old-fashioned layout on a small
piece of property and obviously not very long,” Graeme McDowell, the 2010 U.S. Open champion, said. “T e fi rst three holes have some kind of length and the last fi ve holes are brutal. But the middle of the course is very scorable, slivers of fairway, a few blind tee shots and the fairways have been moved around a bit and repositioned.” In case another witness to the diffi culty of this course is needed, listen to Jim Murray writing in the LA Times: “T e funny-looking, cramped, scruff y little old golf course that looks like a dotty dowager’s attic turned out to have a she-wolf locked inside. T e next thing you know you’re picking teeth out of your mouth with what’s left of your knuckles.” Lee Trevino, U.S. Open champion at Mer- ion in 1971, said: “If the USGA gets blessed and there’s no rain the fi rst two weeks of June, it will be the hardest U.S. Open course these players have seen. T e problem is the fairways, which can be 22 yards wide, pinch down even more near the green. T ey aren’t big doglegs but they bend just enough to make you relax a little, and that leads to serious problems. If it’s dry, the balls will run off into the rough. When that happens, hitting those tiny greens will be a nightmare. T ey’re the smallest greens in championship golf, and if they’re fi rm — again if there’s no rain — the players won’t be able to hold them from the rough.” “I look at Merion as two diff erent golf courses,” Webb Simpson, the reigning U.S.
10
Open champion, said. “If you drive it well you have nine potential birdie opportunities in the fi rst 13 holes. And the last fi ve are maybe the hardest we have ever had at a U.S. Open. What I remember about Merion is that the second you think you have an easy hole, an iron and a wedge say, is the second you prob- ably will make a mistake. “If someone is wondering what Merion is
about, you need to go to the 11th hole,” Simp- son continued. “It is a perfect Merion hole. It’s not that long. I would say about 400 yards but you have a blind tee shot. T e choice of club from the tee is going to be a 230 to 250 yard club. But the green has water in front of it and all the way around the right side. If you drive it in the fairway you’ll have a wedge to the green and an easy birdie chance. But if you drive into the rough you are not going to be able to go for the green because you won’t be able to clear the water so an easy par 4 turns into a quick bogey. T at’s Merion.” At Merion in 1971, after a punishing
four rounds over a course that had been lengthened by rain and had fairways as nar- row as church aisles, Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus tied on 280, even par. Trevino, who playfully chucked a rubber snake to Nick- laus on the fi rst hole of the playoff , went on to win. His caddie, a young man named Tom Tadeo, was pleased to hear that Tre- vino would reward him for his work with “three big ones.” Tadeo thought Trevino meant $300. Trevino meant $3,000. “In each man’s lifetime there are certain
periods of time, special places and events associ- ated therewith, which will stick in their minds forever,” Trevino wrote in a letter to the club historian. “If I were smart, right now I would say the most memorable date, place and event was the day I got married. But I never laid claim to being too smart. (And besides, Claudia won’t read this.) T erefore I am going to say that June 17th through 21st, 1971, the Merion Golf Club and the 1971 U.S. Open Champi- onship are the most memorable. T ey were the beginning of a great season for me.” In the 1981 U.S. Open, David Graham
gave a remarkable demonstration of skill un- der pressure, playing a last round of 67 to win without missing a fairway and only one green, and that by a few feet. Only fi ve players broke par that year. T ose who didn’t were disap- pointed, though not so disappointed as Yul
The beginning of a great sea- son: Lee Trevino wins the 1971 U.S. Open at Merion
Brynner, who was performing T e King and I in Philadelphia at the same time and rented a house outside the city thinking it would be in a peaceful sylvan glade. He opened his curtains the fi rst morning to see hundreds of people milling about. Unbeknownst to him, his house adjoined the golf course. Unlike the Baltusrol, Oak Hill and
Winged Foot clubhouses, which look like the homes of hedge fund billionaires, Merion’s is understated and reeks of history. “It’s like a New England inn,” a visiting golfer recalled recently. “Many of the rooms have low ceil- ings, some have sloping fl oors and many are not very big. It is intimate. It’s lovely.” T e club has a library that may be among the best of any private club anywhere in the world, a place full of digitized photographs and newspaper cuttings, examples of the club’s distinctive wicker fl ags, the clubs Hogan used in 1950, notes of the work done by superintendents down the years. T e locker room has an upper and lower level. As at Pebble Beach three years ago, a two-story tent will act as a locker room for the profes- sionals during the Open. Herb Warren Wind, the great golf es-
sayist, once wrote of Merion: “It was good just to gaze at the unchanged white, pillared clubhouse with its black shutters and its old- fashioned green-and-white striped awnings over the side veranda, and to watch the players drive off the tree-shaded fi rst tee a mere step away from the veranda. Where else in golf, which is so overproduced these days, do you fi nd this? As Gene Sarazen remarked, beaming, the day before the [1971] tourna- ment, “Merion is just the same. Only the players are diff erent.”
John Hopkins, who has written about golf since 1970 and was golf correspondent of both the Sunday Times and T e Times, is the recipient of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism, presented by the PGA of America.
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