COVER STORY
08
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By Design
legend
Return
to a
This year’s US Open at Merion’s historic East course represents
the culmination of fifteen years work by the USGA, the club, and
ASGCA members Tom Fazio and Tom Marzolf. Adam Lawrence
reports on how the seemingly impossible was made reality
F
or many years, David Graham’s US Open victory
at Merion in 1981 seemed as though it would
be the last chapter in the history of the famous
old course’s relationship with American golf’s greatest
championship. Merion East, went the perceived wisdom,
was too short to challenge modern-day professional
golfers, and, perhaps even more critically, the 125 acre
property on which the course sits was way too small to
accommodate today’s Open.
Well, for once, perceived wisdom was wrong.
ASGCA Past President Tom Marzolf, along with his
mentor, Tom Fazio, ASGCA, has been the club’s consulting
architect since 1999. In that time, the two Toms have
overseen a transformation of the course, extending
it beyond the limits observers thought possible, and
returning the bunkering to the patterns and styles of
1930 and Merion’s greatest moment–Bobby Jones
still-unmatched Grand Slam of US and British open and
amateur championship victories in the same year.
“We began working at Merion in anticipation of the US
Amateur that the club had been awarded for 2005,” says
Marzolf, speaking a few weeks before the Open. “At that
point, the return of the Open was a distant goal at most.
When we started working there, the course was 6,480
yards. We’ve added many, many tees over the years–the
first go around, we added ten back tees and picked up a
lot of length. The US Amateur was played at 6,840. Since
the Amateur and the Walker Cup, we’ve added more back
tees, and the golf course will be just shy of 7,000 yards.
“The club decided it wanted the course to be returned
to the 1930 era. We were told to put the bunkering
back on the ground as it was in 1930. They had these
pictures of Jones playing the course from 1930, and
those excellent photos enabled us to literally hold the
photographs up and work the bunkers back to exactly
how they were in that era!”
Although extending the course to this extent demanded
creative thinking on behalf of both architect and club, the
sub-7,000 number is in itself something of a statement.
For several decades, 7,000 yards was regarded as the line
beyond which a course was seen to be a long, tough test.
Now, championship courses are routinely 500 yards or
more longer; in fact, Merion will be the first sub-7,000 yard
US Open course since Shinnecock Hills in 2004.
Merion East
