Hole by hole yardages for Merion's 1930, 1950, and 2013 USGA events

[Mark Bourgeois]

Error: 1930 yardage is NOT US Open but US Amateur


1930 is Jones's two medal rounds in US Amateur, 1950 and 2013 are 4th rounds of US opens. (Thanks to Joe Bausch for 1950 images containing hole yardages.)

[Jason Topp]

I like the fact they kept the short holes short and lengthened the long ones.  It is the opposite of what many clubs do.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark,

I think your 2013 yardages are off.

Merion's yardage was 6,996.

I think the chart below reflects the 2013 yardages

MERION GOLF CLUB HOLE BY HOLE

 

Hole    1    2     3    4     5    6     7    8     9       Total
  Par    4    5     3    5     4    4     4    4     3       36
Yards 350 556 256 628 504 487 360 359 236     3,736


Hole   10   11   12  13   14  15   16   17   18      Total
Par      4     4    4    3     4    4     4    3     4       34
Yards 303 367 403 115 464 411 430 246 521     3,260

                                                                     6,996   Par 70

[DMoriarty]

Mark, thanks for putting this together, but if you look closely you might notice that something just doesn't make sense.  

Let me explain by example.   According to the list, in 1930 the 10th hole measured 335 yards.  Yet 2013 it measures 303 from the tips. So where did all that extra yardage go?  Did they shorten the course in preparation for the 2013 U.S. Open?  Of course not.

The problem is that Merion of old had always drastically overstated the yardage.

I am not sure it totally explains the discrepancy between the actual yardage and the stated yardage, but Merion had a stange way of measuring. In short, they did not use straight line measures.  Rather, they measured along the ground.  In 1924 the Green Section Record published an article by Alan Wilson (Hugh's brother) called “The Measurement of Golf Holes,” which discussed this methodology:

The question is constantly asked whether holes should be measured in an air-line or along the contour of the ground. For practical reasons the contour of the ground is usually the better method. In the first place it is much easier, and in most cases it gives a result almost identical with that of the air-line method. If the play is over rising ground followed by falling ground and then another rise, it is true that the contour method slightly increases the length, but as a large part of the play is uphill this seems entirely fair, because the hole plays long even as measured.   Of course, in certain exceptional cases the air-line method should be used. Let us take, for instance, a one-shot hole of, say, 160 yards in a direct line, played from a high tee over a deep ravine to a high green beyond. The air-line measurement would be 160 yards. If a contour measurement were used, following down into the ravine and up the other side, it might show a distance of 200 yards, which would be entirely misleading, as the contour of the ravine in no way enters into the shot. In general thenfor the sake of practical convenience, holes should be measured on the contour of the ground; but in the unusual case where the contour does not enter into or affect the play of the shot, the air-line method should be used.

What I find most interesting is this notion that if it is okay to overstate yardages on uphill or rolling terrain . . . "as a large part of the play is uphill this seems entirely fair, because the hole plays long even as measured."

It has been a few years and I don't have the exact numbers handy, but I went through the exercise of trying to determine by just how much Merion mis-measured in 1930, and if I recall correctly then Merion's yardages in 1930 were overstated by over a hundred yards. And it was worse at the time the course opened.  
 

[Jim Nugent]

Patrick, Mark said the 2013 yardages were for the 4th round.  So I'm guessing the USGA placed the tees a bit forward on some holes, as Mark's chart shows, making the total yardage a bit less as well. 

When the USGA measures the yardage for each round, do they take into account the pin placement as well as the tee?  That could make a difference of several clubs on the approach shot. 

David, very interesting.  Does #10 have a valley on it? 

Also, a general question about measuring.  Do modern measuring methods completely net out all contour, i.e. all hills and valleys?   

[DMoriarty]

David, very interesting.  Does #10 have a valley on it?

Not sure I'd call it a valley, but the tee is elevated up on the side of a hill, then the ground drops to Cobb's Creek, then the ground rises from there.

Not sure the answer to your other question.

[Mark Bourgeois]

My sources:
1930 - November 1930 Golf Illustrated article with Curtiss aerials showing Jones's two medal rounds; I don't know the source of the yardages given although the pictures do contain yardage overlays eg "300"
1950 - Joe Bausch's aerials showing 4th round
2013 - USGA hole setups as posted on Shack's site

I chose the 2013 4th round setup for apples-to-apples comparison to 1950 but perhaps the 1950 #s are the "official" yardages such as those Pat posted.

What's the group's opinion on which yardages I should use?

[DMoriarty]

The yardages listed for 1930 are what you are calling "the 'official" course yardages, and just looking at the numbers, this seems to be the case for the 1950 numbers as well.   So the numbers Partrick provides are probably best comparison to these two sets.   (Many of the '300 yard' designations on the 1930 Curtis aerials are not even close.)

Still, though, even if you use the numbers mentioned by Patrick, you won't be comparing "apples-to-apples."

I hate to confuse the issue, and I do understand and appreciate what you are trying to do, but unfortunately those old measures just aren't reliable.   Merion has grown much more than what the scorecard says.  To do an accurate comparison one would have to locate the tees in existence then and remeasure.  This would be a pain but it could be done off of Flynn's old blueprints which mark the line of play.  

Take No. 5 for example. Using Flynn's plans and measuring according to his line of play, No. 5 looks like it was about 410-415 yards. (The hole was listed at 436 yards.)  Comparing to 2013, the hole has been lengthened by 80-85 yards.

Another approach would be to measure the distance from the back of the old tees to the back of the new tees.  This would tell you how much as been added.  The Flynn plan and the old aerials help identify the old tees.  Again, using No. 5 as an example,  ere is google earth showing the approximate tee in existence in 1930 (confirmed by the Flynn drawings and old aerials) and the new tee.  The yellow line is 86 yards.   Just using the scorecards gives a distance of 70 yards.

Whichever approach is used, it probably makes sense to apply a little common sense when it comes to the limitations of the property.  
-- I mentioned No. 10 above.   There is no way that No. 10 is 32 yards shorter today than it was in 1930, because of the limitations of the property.
-- Likewise regarding No. 16. It was listed as 435 in 1930, then 445 in 1950, but then only 430 in 2013.  No way it is 15 yards shorter now than in 1950.   Given the limitations of the property, it could not have been 15 yards longer then, and at best it is about the same length as now.  My guess (from working off of the Flynn plan) is that it was about 420 in 1930.  Looking at the scorecard, 10 yards were added before 1950.  But it wasn't loner in 1950 because of the limitations of the property.
-- Chances are this would also apply to the other holes where the yardage has apparently shrunk, and everywhere where the amount of change on the scorecard is less than the distance between the old tees and new.

A pain in the butt to consider, but if you want an accurate point of comparison then you've got to take the different approach to the measures into consideration.

[Jim Nugent]

David, any educated guesses on your part as to the true total distance for Merion in 1930? 

[DMoriarty]

Jim,  I haven't gone back and measured each hole, so it is hard to say with any degree of certainly, but if I had to guess I'd say the yardage is off by at least 150 yards and probably closer to 200 yards when compared to today's measures.  At a glance, certain holes seem well off while others seem accurate.

Most of what I have looked at in the past concerns the original course, which was off by significantly more than in 1930.  
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No. 12 is another good example where we can figure out the discrepancy just by looking at the listed yardages and the location of the old tee.  According to the blueprints from 1924 and 1934, there was no tee back behind the long tee, yet the hole was listed as 415 yards in 1930.  In 2013, from the back tee (which stretches the hole another 30 yards) the hole is only listed at 403 yards. So the 12th hole seems to have gained 30 yards on the ground but lost 12 yards in the listed yardages!
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Mark,  Speaking of the 12th hole, where did you come up with that 416 figure?  The official 403 figure seems right and I cant see how they'd have found another 13 yards.  Did they put a temporary tee box in a back yard?  

Also Mark,  I made a mistake in my post above.  The Flynn map to which I referred is dated 1934 not, 1930 and it reflects some changes made after the 1930 Amateur.  So if you decide to go through this excercise you should cross check with aerials as well as Flynn's drawing(s) from 1924.

[Mark Bourgeois]

David,

Re the 12th I think you mean 419 not 416 but hey, what's a few paces between friends? 

The 419 figure I took from Shackelford's posting of the USGA's hole notes and locations for the 4th round. That extra yardage I think comes not on the tee end but on the green end. These distances I think represent actual (centerline linear) tee to hole yardages.

On Sunday that hole was 30 paces on; green depth is 37 paces. So from Sunday's tee to the middle of the green would have been 407. If 403 is the "standard" yardage I suppose that means the tees were placed 4 yards back of standard. Or maybe they rounded up on the green end and the tee was placed 3 yards back. Make sense?

I take your points to heart especially regarding the 1930 numbers. As for 2013 we can either take the average ("official") numbers such as Pat posted or the actual numbers used in the 4th round. Which one we pick depends on how we define comparability across the decades but the real lesson I take away is we can't really specify the length of a hole with a precision down to the yard (or five). Well, we can, but we have to recognize a hole's and a course's length can vary from day to day owing to the flexibility officials have in setting up a course.

I'm not sure at this stage if I will rerun the numbers. This was a first step in a bigger analysis I'm hoping to do over the coming weeks and months. Once I have gotten that done I think / hope the numbers we'd like to have will fall out easily.

[Mac Plumart]

Any data on fairway widths?