As a former employee at Merion, my comments are more the emotional side as opposed to the architectural side, at which I am a 30 handicapper, but here goes.
The best definition I can come up with is "intimacy". The first tee, the little putting green, the veranda, the golf shop,the locker room with the best showerheads in the world, and bag storage area are all within spitting distance of each other. It is driving to work at 7:00 am in my MGB with the top down and going in the back way past the driving range, and seeing the course in the morning dew and thinking to myself that I had the best job in the world. It is a lunch of Snapper soup and a Windsor sandwich on the veranda before teeing off ten feet away from where I just dined. It is Jones and Hogan and Trevino and Nicklaus and Dorothy Porter. It is Bobby Cruikshank bouncing a ball off of the rocks on #11, throwing the club in the air, and having it come down and whack him in the head. It is the three courses in one-the first six, the middle seven and the back five where you better hold onto your rear end. It was old George at the West Course. It was finding a first edition copy of "The Mystery of Golf" by Haultain by the light of an oil lamp in the Men's grill in the middle of winter. It was Kittleman walking in one day, and coming to a dead stop he looked at me and stated that there were now 8 billion people on the face of the earth and six billion were pinheads. It was Richie Valentine never answering a question unless it involved fishing. It is the intimacy and confinement of Ardmore Avenue cutting through the course and creating a teriffic mental and physical hazard on #2. It is the wall of the barn underneath the bunker on #3. It is the 4th hole creating a difficult second shot because it is (a) blind, and(b) slightly left of where you think it is. It is Cobbs Creek winding through the fifth hole. It is the difficult 6th with it's awkward tee shot and long 2nd shot. It is the breather, or so you think, when you play 7 through 13, while stopping on the 11th tee to look at the Bobby Jones monument. Then comes the walk past the clubhouse, up the hill to 14, where it gets real tough. It is Golf House Road on 15, the quarry on 16, and of course the walk out of the quarry on 18 to the top of the hill where Hogan hit his 1 iron.
Emotional, yes. It is a time in my life that I will always cherish and never forget.
One Sunday we held a mixed event on the East Course, and the night before I took Bill Dow's clubs back to the golf shop from the driving range. I forgot to take them out of the car, drove home, and drove our other car to work the next day. No one could find Bill's clubs on Sunday, and then it hit me. I made the trip home and back in record time and got Bill's clubs to him after about six or seven holes. I can't describe my embaressment, but when I got to Bill, he couldn't have been nicer. He even spoke to me after that. Mr. Dow is a gentleman's gentleman.
Lastly it is playing golf with Chip Oat, a childhood friend and my Best Man. Those rounds were and are special. I hope we can do it again. There is more, but maybe later