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.
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