The biennial ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses
by Golf Digest showed up in the inbox
this week.
It is, by its very nature, an impossible task, but give the
magazine credit for at least giving it a shot and, in the process, recognizing
just how many great layouts there are in this golf-mad country of ours. The top
100 get a few paragraphs of background as well as panelist comments and some
pretty cool images from each track. A couple of days later, the second 100
showed up, basically just in list form.
The big headline from the magazine’s standpoint was Pine
Valley Golf Club, the George Crump and H.S. Colt gem in the pine barrens of
South Jersey, overtaking Augusta National, the creation of Alister MacKenzie
and Bobby Jones in Augusta, Ga. that hosts the Masters each April, in the No. 1
spot.
The 7,101-yard, par-70 Pine Valley layout has been No. 1 in
the past, so it’s no big shock to find it at the top of the list again. When it
hosted the Philadelphia Open in 2012, it was the most coveted tee time for Golf
Association of Philadelphia amateurs and Philadelphia Section PGA
professionals. The great Jay Sigel was the playing captain when the U.S. won
the Walker Cup Match over Great Britain & Ireland in 1985 at Pine Valley.
Just about anybody who was anybody in the early days of golf
course architecture in the Philadelphia area, including Hugh Wilson, who
designed Merion Golf Club’s famed East Course, helped out with the design at
Pine Valley. Also in that group was Merion’s first greenskeeper William Flynn,
who is among the group of great American golf course designers.
It’s a pretty exclusive course, but if you ever really want
to get a look at it, the public is invited to watch the Crump Cup each summer.
Playing it is another matter and you better bring your big-boy game if you’re
going to tee it up there. It’s not the No. 1 course in America because it’s
easy.
As for the 7,435-yard, par-72 Augusta National, because so
many of us watch the Masters each spring, there’s no course so universally well
known. Each year it’s, well he still has 13 and 15 to play, so he might get
back in the hunt.
Pennsylvania has two courses in the top 10 and, regardless
of the order, nobody ever argues about the inclusion of Oakmont Country Club in
suburban Pittsburgh and Merion Golf Club’s East Course in the Ardmore section
of Haverford Township among America’s best.
This year the 7,254-yard, par-71 Oakmont is fifth and the
6,592-yard, par-70 Merion is sixth.
Oakmont, the Henry Fownes design, hosted the U.S. Open for the
ninth time last summer and Dustin Johnson was a deserving winner. Some Open
venues come and go, but the USGA always comes back to Oakmont. It’s really
hard, but really fair.
I have a particular affinity for Merion, having walked the
East, oh about 1,000 times as a youngster and a young adult as a proud Merion
looper. The aforementioned Hugh Wilson did the original design, but I think
it’s clear that Flynn was more than just a greenskeeper. I believe his genius
is evident in a lot of the little touches that make Merion so great, especially
the bunkering.
The place just oozes history. Jones, Hogan, Nicklaus,
Trevino, just to name a few. They played the BMW Philadelphia Amateur there for
the first time in 62 years last summer and, as so often happens at Merion, it
produced a classic finish with Michael McDermott, a Merion member, defeating
one of his best friends in golf, Jeff Osberg, on the last hole of the scheduled
36-hole final.
I’m glad Merion got another shot to host an Open in 2013,
its first in 32 years. I thought they overdid the setup a little so as to
protect par, but the East once again produced plenty of drama. Phil Mickelson’s
stunning eagle at 10 will be remembered just as much as his tee shot sailing
over the short 13th that led to a killing bogey a half-hour later.
Justin Rose did his best Hogan impersonation with his approach to the 18th
to nail down his first major championship.
Here are two excerpts from the panelist comments on Merion:
“Every shot matters at Merion. The yardage on the scorecard
is simply a distraction and not an indication of the test on every shot. A
miss, on any shot, results in significant penalty.”
“Simply the best course for a variety with the flow of short
and long holes, doglegs and straight holes, uphill and downhill. Just a
spectacular inland course.”
The introduction for Merion says the USGA likely won’t wait
another 32 years to bring the Open back to Merion. Well, 2030 would be the 100th
anniversary of Jones completing the Grand Slam of his day, winning the U.S. Amateur at
Merion after victories in the British Amateur, British Open and U.S. Open. I
like Merion’s chances for a 2030 Open if the membership is still willing.
In between Augusta National at No. 2 and Oakmont at No. 5
are the 6,524-yard, par-72 Cypress Point Club on northern California’s Monterey
Peninsula at No. 3 and the 7,450-yard, par-70 Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on tip
of Long Island.
MacKenzie and Robert Hunter did the design at Cypress Point,
one of several courses in the Pebble Beach area that appear in the top 100, and
Shinnecock, which hosts the U.S. Open in 2018, might be Flynn’s best work.
At No. 7 is the 6,828-yard, par-72 Pebble Beach Golf Links,
a Jack Neville and Douglas Grant design. No. 8 is the 6,957-yard, par-72
National Golf Links of America, another Long Island course designed by C.B.
Macdonald.
At No. 9 is the 7,089-yard, par-71 Sand Hills Golf Club in
Mullen, Neb. It is the most recently built entry in the top 10, but from all
reports the course in the middle of nowhere is a masterpiece by Bill Coore and
two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw.
Rounding out the top 10 is the 7,258-yard, par-72 West
Course at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y. It is the first of many in
the top 100 by another of America’s masters of design, A.W. Tillinghast.
Speaking of America’s masters of design, the first of the
many works of Donald Ross in the top 100 appears at No. 13 with the 6,836-yard,
par-72 Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla.
I’ll mention a couple of Los Angeles layouts because each
will host one of the USGA’s biggest amateur events in 2017. The 7,236-yard,
par-71 North Course at Los Angeles Country Club and the 7,040-yard, par-71
Riviera Country Club layout are 23rd and 24th,
respectively in the ranking.
George C. Thomas Jr. designed L.A. Country Club North, which
will be the site of the Walker Cup Match this year and the Open in 2023 and
Thomas and W.P. Bell designed Riviera, which will be the site of the U.S.
Amateur this year.
Delaware County’s second top-100 entry is the 7,190-yard,
par-70 Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square. A Donald Ross original, Aronimink
was a hit with the PGA Tour players when the AT&T National was staged there
in 2010 and 2011. The PGA Tour returns to Aronimink in 2018 when the BMW
Championship, the next-to-last playoff event, is played there.
The only other Pennsylvania course in the top 100 is the
7,327-yard, par-72 Laurel Valley Golf Club in Ligonier. Dick Wilson designed
the course, getting some input from The King, Arnold Palmer, who was one of the
founding members.
Early in the second 100 courses, at No. 115, is Philadelphia
Cricket Club’s 7,119-yard, par-70 Wissahickon Course, a Tillinghast original
that has been restored in recent years to more of its original look. The
seniors who teed it up in the Constellation Senior Players Championship, a PGA
Tour Champions major, last spring raved about the Cricket Club.
The Cricket Club membership has been generous with its
Wissahickon and Militia Hill courses in recent years, hosting the PGA National
Professional Championship and the Philadelphia Open in 2015 and the Philadelphia Section PGA Championship was held there last summer. The BMW
Philadelphia Amateur is scheduled to be staged at the Cricket Club this year and
the USGA will stage the 2020 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship there.
At No. 147 is the 6,696-yard, par-70 Fox Chapel Golf Club,
another course in suburban Pittsburgh. Seth Raynor and Charles Banks designed
Fox Chapel, which had a three-year run as the home of the Constellation Senior
Players Championship from 2012 to 2014.
Just making the cut in the top 200 at No. 195 is the
7,334-yard, par-71 South Course at Wilmington Country Club in Delaware. It is
the work of another of America’s master designers, Robert Trent Jones.
I’m sure Golf Digest
is besieged with complaints each year about somebody’s favorite course not
being included in its list. So I’m going to go ahead and quibble that
Stonewall’s Old Course certainly deserves a spot in the top 200, probably in
the top 100.
It’s not like they ignored Stonewall’s designer Tom Doak. His
6,633-yard, par-71 Pacific Dunes course at the Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon is
a lofty 18th on the list.
I got a chance to tour the Old Course several times in 2016
as I reprised my looping career. Echoing the comments that appear with so many
of the top 100 selections, there is simply not a bad hole at Stonewall.
The course probably improved its cachet with the playing of
the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship. Just about anybody I encountered that
week couldn’t say enough good things about the course. It will be another two
years before the rankings appear again, so consider this the first salvo in the
campaign to give Stonewall a look for the next time around.
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