Terms and conditions

Terms and Conditions of www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/ Below are the Terms and Conditions for use of www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/. Please read these carefully. If you need to contact us regarding any aspect of the following terms of use of our website, please contact us on the following email address - tmacgolf13@gmail.com. By accessing the content of www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/ ( hereafter referred to as website ) you agree to the terms and conditions set out herein and also accept our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to any of the terms and conditions you should not continue to use the Website and leave immediately. You agree that you shall not use the website for any illegal purposes, and that you will respect all applicable laws and regulations. You agree not to use the website in a way that may impair the performance, corrupt or manipulate the content or information available on the website or reduce the overall functionality of the website. You agree not to compromise the security of the website or attempt to gain access to secured areas of the website or attempt to access any sensitive information you may believe exist on the website or server where it is hosted. You agree to be fully responsible for any claim, expense, losses, liability, costs including legal fees incurred by us arising from any infringement of the terms and conditions in this agreement and to which you will have agreed if you continue to use the website. The reproduction, distribution in any method whether online or offline is strictly prohibited. The work on the website and the images, logos, text and other such information is the property of www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/ ( unless otherwise stated ). Disclaimer Though we strive to be completely accurate in the information that is presented on our site, and attempt to keep it as up to date as possible, in some cases, some of the information you find on the website may be slightly outdated. www.http://tmacteesoff.blogspot.com/ reserves the right to make any modifications or corrections to the information you find on the website at any time without notice. Change to the Terms and Conditions of Use We reserve the right to make changes and to revise the above mentioned Terms and Conditions of use. Last Revised: 03-17-2017

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Merion will add another chapter to its lore with the 2026 U.S. Amateur


   At some point in April will be the 50th anniversary of my first loop at Merion Golf Club’s East Course.
   Somewhere during those early years at Merion, I happened on to a pile of reprints from something called the USGA Golf Journal and grabbed one. It was an article written by one of the great figures in the history of the USGA, Joseph C. Dey Jr., in advance of the 1966 U.S. Amateur, which had been held at the East Course just a few years earlier. It was titled simply “Merion.” Dey was the executive director of the USGA from 1934 to 1969.
   Somehow, through all the moving days – and there’s been at least 10 – I’ve managed to hold onto that reprint. Now it’s almost like a time capsule. Back then it was an introduction to just some of the grand history that had occurred on the East Course in the first 54 years of its existence to a teen-ager who would go on to a long career in sports journalism.
   The four-page reprint included a large version of the iconic Hy Peskin photo of Ben Hogan’s epic approach to the 18th green on the 72nd hold of the 1950 U.S. Open. The shot by Hogan, who less than two years earlier lay in a Texas hospital room clinging to life after the car he and his wife were riding in was hit head-on by a bus -- enabled him to par the hole and get into a playoff with Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio, which he won.
   Think about it. That U.S. Open was only 16 years earlier when Dey wrote his article. The 1930 U.S. Amateur, which Bobby Jones won to complete the old Grand Slam – The Open Championship and The Amateur Championship across the pond and the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur – in one year had occurred only 36 years earlier. A picture of the 11th hole at the East Course, where Jones completed his 1930 U.S. Amateur win, graced the cover of the reprint.
   There were a lot of people in attendance at that 1966 U.S. Amateur who had seen Jones win the 1930 U.S. Amateur, had witnessed Hogan limping to victory in that 1950 U.S. Open.
   The USGA announced last week that the U.S. Amateur will return to the East Course at Merion in 2026, 60 years after my little time capsule from Joe Dey was written.
   It looks like 2026, much like the Bicentennial year of 1976 was, will be a busy sports year in the Philadelphia region. If the United States gets there, Americans will observe the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence that year. Even on Google, there seems to be an argument as to whether it will be called the sestercentennial or the semiquincentennial. Neither rolls off the tongue as easily as bicentennial did in ’76.
   The PGA of America originally awarded the 2027 PGA Championship to Aronimink Golf Club, but when somebody realized that 2026 coincided with America’s 250th birthday, it shifted things around to give Aronimink the PGA in 2026, 64 years after the Donald Ross gem hosted the PGA Championship in 1962.
   Other than going sledding there in the winter and pressing my nose against the fence when word got out in the neighborhood that Bob Hope and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower were playing a round of golf, it was the 1966 U.S. Amateur when Merion’s East Course first really landed in my consciousness.
   For one thing, my older brother Pat, the first of four McNichol brothers to loop at Merion, had a bag. He caddied for Jack Lewis, a Wake Forest standout who, after a brief PGA Tour career, returned to his alma mater to coach the Demon Deacons. My memory is that Lewis finished in the top 10.
   Wikipedia informs that it was the first U.S. Amateur broadcast live. In 1966, it was the neatest thing in the world to watch an ABC broadcast from a golf course a mile away from my house.
   It was a weird stretch in the history of a tournament largely contested at match play when it was a 72-hole stroke-play event and it was won by Canadian Gary Cowan in a playoff with future PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman.
   It was always the championship that Beman let get away. He had a five-shot lead in the third round when he drove it out of bounds on the 15th – when Sergio Garcia, among others, couldn’t keep it on the golf course at 15 during the 2013 U.S. Open, I couldn’t help but keep thinking of Beman – and made triple bogey.
   Even with that, a bogey on the final hole would have given him the championship, but he made a mess of the 18th hole, carding a double bogey to let Cowan catch him and force a playoff.
   Cowan would come back five years later to capture his second U.S. Amateur Championship – again while the event was 72 holes of medal play – at Wilmington Country Club’s South Course. Pretty sure he’s the only player to win two U.S. Amateur championships at Golf Association of Philadelphia courses.
   Joe Dey’s article on Merion included a picture of the defending champion, Bob Murphy, yes that Bob Murphy, who would go on to a successful PGA Tour career and was one of the early on-course commentators on golf telecasts. Murph got himself in the hunt at Merion as well.
   There is also a photo in the reprint of Jack Nicklaus teeing off on the first hole at Merion in the 1960 World Amateur Team Championship. The greatest player in history of the game went 66-67-68-68 for an 11-under 269 total in leading the U.S. to victory. “Golf has known no finer hour of skill,” Dey wrote.
   I didn’t get to cover the next two U.S. Amateurs at Merion. In 1989 I was the sports editor at The Mercury in Pottstown and in 2005 I was the sports editor of the Delaware County Daily Times – they don’t like to admit it at Merion, but the East Course’s compact 127 acres lie in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township, yeah, Delco.
   I had other duties that made it impossible to do the tournament justice and we had some pretty good options coverage-wise. Not that I completely stayed away.
   My favorite memory of 1989 was a matchup – my memory was that it was in the quarterfinals – between Aronimink’s Jay Sigel, America’s second greatest amateur golfer after Jones, and Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s David Brookreson that could just as easily have occurred in a Philly Amateur final.
   Hundreds of local golf fans skipped out of work early to watch two of their favorite sons go at it in the U.S. Amateur at Merion.
   Chris Patton, the large man with the incredibly deft touch, won that one for Clemson. His son Colby is a sophomore on the 2018-’19 Clemson men’s golf team.
   I managed to watch one of my favorites among the many high school golfers I covered over the years, Adam Cohan, the 2002 PIAA champion at Radnor High, play a few holes in qualifying for match play in the 2005 U.S. Amateur at Merion. Cohan, in the midst of his college career at Georgia Tech, just missed match play, the biggest culprit a drive out of bounds by a foot on the 15th. “Ever hear of Deane Beman?” I asked him.
   An Italian, Edoardo Molinari, the brother of the 2018 Champion Golfer of the Year Francesco, got on a remarkable putting roll in the afternoon round of the scheduled 36-hole final and defeated Dillon Dougherty, 4 and 3, to win that one.
   “It is something that the U.S. Amateur Championship is going back to Merion,” Molinari told the USGA in a release announcing the sites of the U.S. Amateurs from 2021 to 2026. “Winning the most prestigious amateur championship was one of the best moments of my career. It is wonderful that the USGA goes back to such historic courses like Merion, Oakmont and Olympic Club that played a great part in many U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open championships.
   “Every player will truly appreciate going back to those courses and whoever wins at Merion will enter a very exclusive list of champions, including Bob Jones and Justin Rose.”
   As Molinari referenced, the choice of Merion for the 2026 U.S. Amateur will cap a run for the event at five of America’s iconic courses with the Pittsburgh area’s Oakmont Country Club hosting it in 2021, Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J. in 2022, Cherry Hills Country Club near Denver in 2023, Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn. in 2024 and The Olympic Club in San Francisco in 2025. The six sites were all announced by the USGA Thursday.
   This year’s U.S. Amateur will be played at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina with match play being contested at Pinehurst No. 2, another Donald Ross classic.
   Dey’s love for the game and for Merion are apparent in the article he wrote in advance of the 1966 U.S. Amateur.
   “The charm and the quality of Merion cannot be captured in figures,” Dey wrote. “It looks as if it had simply grown out of the gently rolling landscape, as indeed it has, for the last 54 years. Its daily condition is usually championship condition. From the first drive, it calls upon the golfer to control the ball to prescribed areas rigorously guarded. Its putting greens, rather large for an old course, have pace and are subtly contoured, requiring close reading.”
   There was no golf played on the East Course in 2018. The course was literally dug up. I’m told grass was starting to grow again in the fall and famed golf course architect Gil Hanse, who is based in Malvern, was tasked with improving the course while maintaining its timelessness.
   Hopefully, I’ll get a look at it when the Curtis Cup is staged there in 2022. It felt like visiting an old friend when I was there for the 2009 Walker Cup, the 2013 U.S. Open and the 2016 BMW Philadelphia Amateur.
   At one point in Dey’s piece, he hands the baton to Herbert Warren Wind, the great golf writer whom Dey quotes for the space of quite a few paragraphs as Wind chronicled a lot of the history of the making of Merion. Hugh Wilson has always been credited as the designer and, although an amateur at golf course architecture – nobody called it that back then, it was just building a golf course – Wilson gets his props from Wind.
   Wind also describes how fortunate Merion was to enlist Joe Valentine as its greenkeeper. He was succeeded by his son Richie Valentine, who was the greenkeeper when I showed up at Merion in 1969. Richie Valentine had a lot to do with the agronomy program at Penn State becoming a factory that pumped out talented greenkeepers all around the country.
   Dey concluded his piece by writing: “The players in the 1966 Amateur Championship will be surprised by their first sight of woven wicker baskets instead of flags on top of the sticks marking the holes. There is an apocryphal story about use of similar baskets on some early courses in Scotland; it is said that shepherd-golfers marked the holes by placing their lunch baskets atop their crooks.”
   Knowing what I know now, it is odd that neither Dey nor Wind credited Merion’s first greenkeeper and Wilson’s construction superintendent, one William Flynn, with having a hand in creating the classic that is the East Course. The more I see of Flynn courses – Cherry Hills, awarded the 2023 U.S. Amateur, is a Flynn as is Shinnecock Hills, site of last year’s U.S. Open – the more I think Flynn had a lot more to do with the finished product of the East Course than he is given credit for, not so much the routing, but the green complexes and the bunkers.
   And what about those wicker baskets, which were incorporated into Merion’s logo – fairly iconic in its own right – by former Merion head pro William Kittleman, putting his degree in architecture from Yale to work. Turns out Dey was right to call the shepherd story apocryphal.
   Apparently they, too, were the brainchild of Flynn, who thought he just might get a whole bunch of golf courses to change from flags to wicker baskets. Didn’t happen, but the wicker baskets have certainly become a part of the lore at Merion, even if they didn’t turn into a windfall for Flynn.
   There is still talk that the U.S. Open may come back to Merion in 2030, which, of course, would be the 100th anniversary of Jones completing the Grand Slam. It was a herculean effort – by the club, by the USGA, by Haverford Township, by the Philadelphia golf community – to pull off the Open in 2013, but pull it off they did.
   It is the history, you see, that keeps the USGA coming back to Merion. It was a lesson I first learned when I found that Joe Dey reprint nearly 50 years ago and it just keeps unfolding year after year.







No comments:

Post a Comment