When I walked the historic East Course a thousand times or
so as a Merion Golf Club looper from 1969 to 1981, I might have argued that I
knew every blade of grass on the iconic Hugh Wilson design.
Well, all those blades of grass I knew so well are gone. The
decision was made to dig up the turf in 2018 at a course that hosted the U.S.
Open for a fifth time in 2013 and replace, as I understand it, every last one
of those blades of grass.
Heard from a couple of golf aficionados in the area how odd
it was to drive by Merion and see nothing but dirt on the venerable old gal on
the Main Line. Grass had begun to grow again in the fall and a new and improved
East Course will spring to life again in the Ardmore section of Haverford
Township in 2019.
Golf Digest came
out with its biennial ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses in the
last week and, despite all the reconstruction, Merion retained its status at
No. 6 on the list, one spot behind the Pittsburgh area’s venerable Oakmont
Country Club, which hosted the National Open for a record ninth time when
Dustin Johnson earned his first major championship there in 2016. That’s 14
Opens for Pennsylvania just between Oakmont and Merion. Not too shabby.
Give Golf Digest
credit. Doing such a ranking is basically impossible, but the magazine gives it
its best shot. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with starting a few
arguments on the relative merits of golf courses all over the country,
especially in January when a lot of us in the northern tier of the country can
do nothing but yearn for spring and watch some golf televised from Hawaii.
You can say what you want about Twitter, but something like
America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses is guaranteed to ignite a national dialogue
among the golf course architect geeks who feel like their all-time favorites,
whether it be the ghosts of architecture past like Donald Ross, A.W.
Tillinghast and William Flynn or the design wizards of the modern day like Gil
Hanse, Tom Doak and the formidable team of Coore & Crenshaw, created the
masterpieces against which all others must be measured.
The top 10 is remarkably little changed since the last time
the magazine issued its ranking two years ago, led by Pine Valley Golf Club,
the legendary course carved out of New Jersey pine barrens halfway between
Philadelphia and Atlantic City by George Crump a hundred years ago.
The Golf Association of Philadelphia bragged on Twitter
Saturday that Pine Valley and Merion give it two of the top six on Golf
Digest’s list.
Pine Valley and Merion were both built in the second decade
of the 20th century, the golden age of golf course architecture if
the Golf Digest rankings are to be believed. Of the top 100, 37 were built from
1911 to 1929, 12 from 1911 to 1919 and then 25 more in the 1920s.
A student of golf course architecture during a PGA Tour
career that yielded 19 wins, including two Masters championships, Ben Crenshaw
– the Crenshaw part of the Coore & Crenshaw design team – would be the
first one to tell you that everything he does is influenced by getting a chance
to see and play all those classic designs.
Pine Valley does not play host to many USGA events. It quite
memorably staged the 1985 Walker Cup Match when playing captain Jay Sigel and
the United States edged a Colin Montgomerie-led Great Britain & Ireland
team, 13-11.
But nothing gets the pulse racing for a good player more than
a chance to play a layout that everybody agrees is one of the greatest golf
courses on the planet. When the Philadelphia Open was played at Pine Valley in
2012, anybody who thought they might have an outside shot teed it up in the
qualifiers. They simply wanted to play Pine Valley.
Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, is No. 2 on
the list and has, on occasion, swapped places with Pine Valley at the top.
Funny thing about the Alister MacKenzie-Bobby Jones masterpiece is how familiar
so many golfers are with every hole on the course, particularly the back nine,
because of all the drama they have witnessed playing out on their television
screens every April over the years.
The next seven spots on the Golf Digest top 10 remained unchanged from two years ago with the
Cypress Point Club third, Shinnecock Hills Golf & Country Club, site of
last summer’s U.S. Open, fourth, Oakmont fifth, Merion sixth, the Pebble Beach
Golf Links, site of this year’s National Open, seventh, the National Golf Links
of America eighth and Sand Hills Golf Club ninth.
The Fishers Island Club switched places with Winged Foot
Golf Club’s West Course to round out the top 10. Winged Foot was 10th
and fell back to 11th.
The Metropolitan Golf Association bragged on Twitter
Saturday that it has five of the top 15 and 17 in the top 100. Friar’s Head
Golf Club in Baiting Hollow on Long Island, like Sand Hills a Coore &
Crenshaw production, moved up to 15th. Friar’s Head has moved up in
the rankings each time since first appearing on the 2011-’12 list.
Hudson National, No. 81 in the top 100, will host the
Metropolitan Amateur this year. And Sleepy Hollow Country Club in Briarcliff
Manor, N.Y. made its top-100 debut, landing at No. 89.
GAP’s only other entry in the top 100 is Aronimink Golf
Club, the Donald Ross original in Newtown Square where Keegan Bradley brought
his career back from the dead with a victory in the BMW Championship on a rainy
Monday in September. Aronimink fell from No. 78 in the last ranking to No. 85 in
the latest edition.
Aronimink will get a women’s major championship next year
when the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship comes to Delaware County and the PGA
Championship will return there for the first time since 1962 when the 2026
major is staged there. Originally scheduled to get the PGA in 2027, the event
was moved up a year as we hopefully observe the 250th birthday of
the United States of America not far from where it was born.
Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon Course, a
Tillinghast original, is just outside the top 100 in America’s Second 100
Greatest Golf Courses at 104 after moving up from 115th.
When the top senior pros came to the Cricket Club in 2016
for the Constellation Senior Players Championship, many of them just raved
about the course. They were very aware that the Philadelphia area is home to
more than its share of classic golf courses, they just seemed surprised that
not more had been made about the Cricket Club. A couple even said it was among
the very best they’ve ever played.
Laurel Valley Golf Club in Latrobe fell out of the top 100
from No. 95 to a notch below the Cricket Club at 105. Another western Pennsylvania
gem, Fox Chapel Golf Club, home to the Senior Players from 2012 to 2014, fell
to No. 160 from 147.
Merion’s East Course will return to the national spotlight
in 2022 when it plays host to the Curtis Cup Match. And don’t be shocked if the
East Course gets some kind of USGA Championship in 2030, which will be the 100th
anniversary of Bobby Jones completing the old calendar Grand Slam, adding a
U.S. Amateur title at Merion to the Amateur Championship, the Open Championship
and the U.S. Open titles he won earlier that year.
The ghosts are all around you at Merion. Justin Rose’s tee
shot on the final hole of the 2013 U.S. Open landed just a few yards away from
the marker commemorating Ben Hogan’s epic 1-iron shot on the 72nd
hole of the 1950 Open that got him into a playoff at 7-over 287 and ultimately
enabled him to cap a remarkable comeback from his car’s collision with a bus
that nearly took his life.
And there Rose was 63 years later, drilling a similarly
clutch 4-iron to the green at the 72nd hole enabling him to claim
his first career major championship at 1-over 281. I thought the USGA was a
little overzealous in its efforts to protect par at Merion in 2013, but the
golf course more than held its own against the very best players of the modern
age.
It is more than just a place where great players once roamed
and made history. It is a golf course that remains one of America’s best and Golf Digest ranking it among the top 10
in its America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses certainly validates that opinion.
The redesign at Merion is being overseen by Hanse, who also
refitted Aronimink earlier in this decade. Hanse’s specialty is bunkers and the
White Faces of Merion will enjoy the extra attention. The Golf Digest print edition
that includes America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses includes a list of the most
current redesigns among the 100 Greatest and Hanse heads that list with 12,
with one of his contemporaries, Doak, in second with 10.
Hanse, whose home base is in Malvern, not far from Merion
and Aronimink, also heads the list of current redesigns among the 200 Greatest
with 18. Doak is third on that list with 12, one behind Rees Jones. Fourth on
that list is Tom Fazio with 11. Fazio has the most designs among the 200
Greatest with a whopping 32.
Let’s face it, they’re not building golf courses at the rate
they used to. But updating the great ones we have while perpetuating their
legacy is important work, so give Hanse and the others props for what they’re
doing. I have complete faith Hanse & Co. will keep Merion the same and
better at the same time.
And now I’ll take a second to add my two cents along with
all those Twitter rants I’ve seen this weekend, but there’s no way there are
200 golf courses in America better than Stonewall’s Old Course, which will host
the BMW Philadelphia Amateur for the third time in June.
And it’s OK because it seems most of the people who get to
play Stonewall like to think of it as their little secret. And it’s not that
Doak’s work is underappreciated because he has nine courses among the 200
Greatest.
But come on. Since reviving my looping career in 2016, I’ve
walked it a few times. It is a muscular golf course and yet one of the
prettiest places you’ll ever see. Maybe next time. If all it is is a pretty
good foundation for the rest of Doak’s career, that’s not so bad. But it is
special.
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