What Is It About Merion?

[Phil Benedict]

There are four Merion threads on the first page of this board.  (One may inquire, why am I adding a fifth?)  With no scientific verification I would venture that Merion gets more play here than any other classic era course.   What is the explanation for such intensity of interest in what is no doubt a great course but only one of many great classic era courses?  Is there something about the architecture that sets it apart from the others?  Is there more intrigue surrounding its origins?  Is the Philly crowd taking over GCA?  Just joking about the Philly crowd.

I admit that I may be in the minority here in not knowing that much about the course, but I think we need to get Ran out there to do a profile or at least a My Home Course.  Something along the lines of George Pazin's brilliant hole-by-hole on Oakmont would do the trick.

[George Freeman]

Phil,

Which Oakmont write-up are you talking about?  Was the one in "courses by country" done by George Pazin?  I thought Ran did all of those?

Thanks!

[Phil Benedict]

George did a hole-by-hole analysis, each a separate thread of its own.  May be hard to find because it's so dispersed but it is a true GCA classic.  Merits a lifetime achievement award.

Ran's profile is first class as well, as always.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Not sure its Merion, per se.  Think Ron Whitten and Bethpage Black.

I read these threads and also see the emotion involved between golfer and course, or perhaps golfer/architecture buff and image of course or image of long dead gca.  I would have said historian, but I think they try to distance themselves a bit emotionally to keep perspective, which doesn't happen on a hobbyist forum very much.

I fully expect Mike Young to jump in and use this as evidence that many of the defenses here of old dead guys and their courses simply can't be objective and truthful, because there is already so much mythmaking and legend going on around them that the truth is not necessarily the main goal for all.

And, I would tend to agree with him if he did.

As to Crump, is Tom Mac reporting -sympathetically IMHO- the surroundings of his death any more or less tacky than laughing about the prime of life drinking, carousing, bankruptcies, etc. of some of the other golden age guys?

My feeling is that they and their images are now a part of history, and they are historical figures that are "fair game."  And, given how much myth they probably tried to build up about themselves through writings, etc., some de-mything might be in order.  That said, I doubt there is a lot of connection between their lives and work.  Creative people have come with all different personality types, including being quite dull in other ways.  And as to drinking, carousing and bankruptcy, they had a lot of company come the 1920's and 30's, just as they would have company now.

[Britt Rife]

I admit that I may be in the minority here in not knowing that much about the course, but I think need to get Ran out there to do a profile or at least a My Home Course.  Something along the lines of George Pazin's brilliant hole-by-hole on Oakmont would do the trick.

A few weeks ago I started a thread essentially begging for the same thing.  As a matter of fact, the way I found this site a few years ago arose from an attempt to find a hole-by-hole description of Merion on the internet.  I found Myopia Hunt Club instead, but that was OK (funny, GCA.com no longer has that old Myopia review).

[Bill_Spellman]

    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

[RJ_Daley]

Well done Bill.  Thanks for a wonderful heartfelt accounting of the Merion experience through your eyes. 

[Ash Towe]

Bill,
Many thanks for your post.  It is one of the best descritions of why people love the game and what a course can bring to ones life.

[Mike_Cirba]

Bill,

Wonderful.

[Dan Herrmann]

Amen to Golf House Road.  I think it's the best view of one of the world's best you can get from off the property.

[Mike Sweeney]

Is the Philly crowd taking over GCA?  Just joking about the Philly crowd.

No, you were on the right track. It is a Philly thing.

Take for instance The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins, it used to sit in Jefferson Hall at Jefferson Medical College in Philly where Dr Gross trained. It is a world famous painting.



From Wiki:

"After its purchase for $200 at the time of the Centennial Exhibition, the painting was housed in the College Building of Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia until it was moved in the mid-1980s to Jefferson Alumni Hall. On November 11, 2006, the Thomas Jefferson University Board voted to sell the painting for $68 million to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, now under construction in Bentonville, Arkansas. The sale would represent a record price for an artwork made in the United States prior to World War II.[3]

The proposed sale was seen as a secretive act[4] that many from Philadelphia believed betrayed the city's cultural legacy.[5] In late November 2006, efforts began to keep the painting in Philadelphia, including a fund with a December 26 deadline to raise money to purchase it and a plan to invoke a clause regarding "historic objects" in the city's historic preservation code. In a matter of weeks the fund raised $30 million, and on December 21, 2006, Wachovia Bank agreed to loan the difference until the rest of the money has been raised, keeping the painting in town at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts."

_________________

Please find me anywhere else where a bank would loan $38 Million (even in a good market) against future fund raising?

Now add in the whole throwing snowballs at Santa at Eagles games and you end up with a weird mix of civic pride mixed with over the top passion and a little chip on their shoulder for being located between New York and Washington.

Now of course, none of them down there can see it, but as a former Philly kid living in New York, trust me it is there! 

By the way, here is a very good picture essay:

http://www.golfarch.com/Merion/

[Dan Herrmann]

It sure is a Philly thing.  I've only lived in the metro-Philly area since 1993, and I've come to absolutely love the area.  It seems to have the best qualities of many other places, all rolled into one.   

I was in working in the Buckhead area of Atlanta for about a week last month, and I couldn't wait to get home.

Only thing that drives me nuts about the place is how we all freak with the slightest mention of snow. 

[wsmorrison]

Dan,

After another 15 years, the Phillies, Eagles, Sixers and Flyers, if they have'nt already, will drive you nuts as well.  Especially those Phillies! 

[Joe Bausch]

Regarding this 'Philly rep', I have to share a story from a month or so ago that relates a bit to golf.  All those photos I posted of Southern Dunes were taken with a fellow from Canada that was added to my threesome.  Lo' and behold, it was Bill Friday, the rather famous NHL/WHA referee.  I'm a fan of hockey so I was thrilled to hear his stories for 4 1/2 hours.  He reffed the last WHA game as well as the first game.  The first game was in Philly at the old Convention Center.  They had a promotion for the game with 5000 orange hockey pucks given out to fans.  Well, after the last skatearound before the game, the Zamboni came out to resurface the ice and somehow part of the rink collapsed in the corner.  Nobody really knew what to do.  You couldn't possibly cancel the first game of the new WHA season, could you?

Well, after much discussion and delays, Friday took charge and said he wasn't going to ref a game with yellow police tape cordoning off part of the rink!  He gives the signal to the PA guy to announce the game is canceled.  Of course, you know what happens next:  many of those orange give-away pucks came raining down on him!

[TEPaul]

"Is there more intrigue surrounding its origins?  Is the Philly crowd taking over GCA?  Just joking about the Philly crowd."

Phil:

No, I don't think there is any intrigue at all surrounding the origin of Merion. The reason Merion has gotten so much play on here is probably because it's the course that has had some of its architectural attribution questioned the most from some not from Philadelphia. It could be they feel there's some intrigue surrounding its origins. Some of us from Philadelphia do not believe that's true even admitting it's not that easy to figure out in minute detail from any course of that era who exactly did what and where on a golf course. But if someone thinks or is trying to imply C.B. Macdonald's name should be attached to Merion as its architect or one of them, we would very much disagree with that and we feel the accurate historical records from the club backs that up.

Pine Valley's architectural attribution went through somewhat the same examination by people from elsewhere a few years ago.