FYI,
Here is H.W. Wind writing about Merion in the July 17, 1971 New Yorker:
"Most serious students of golf, if they were asked to name the two best courses in this country, would I thik, settle on Merion and Pebble Beach."
"...Hugh Irvine Wilson was quite possibly the finest golf architect ever produced in theis country. Wilson was an amatuer in the field but then a very high percentage of our truly distinguished courses have been the work of amateurs."
"When you think of it, it is logical that amateur architects should be responsible for so many of our best tests of golf, for where the professional architect is generally in a hurry to wrap up his present commission and get on to the next one and the one after that, the amateur stays behind, lavishing time and love on his baby until he eventually makes it into something memorable."
"In these operations, he had a valuable aide in Joe Valentine, the club's greenkeeper and an outstanding agronomist, who discovered, among other things, Merion bluegrass, a hardy heat-resistent strain of Kentucky bluegrass that has become one of the most popular American grasses, not only for fairways but for lawns."
"...where else in golf, which is so overproduced these days, do you find this? As Gene Sarazen remarked, beaming, the day before the tournament, 'Merion is just the same. Only the players are different.'"
"Many times during the Open, thoughts of (Richie) Valentine's father passed through my mind, and I was continually reminded of Hugh Wilson - how well his holes have endured, and how contemporary is the examination in golf he prepared so long ago."
There is also an interesting account about how Wilson and Valentine would use bedsheets to layout new greenside bunkers with one guy in the fairway using arm signals to tell the other which way to move the sheets.