Merion West Course Photos

[ian]

I went and walked Merion West with Eric and Tom at the end of a tour of many great courses. I was taken by how much fun Merion West appeared to be. It was short, but full of wonderful cross-slopes and grass bank. The course does not compete with the complexity of the East, but it makes you want to grab your clubs and just play for the shear joy that got you playing in the first place. No pretense, just play it as it comes.

Below is a series of photos to show of some of my favourite moments of the course.
186 yard downhill par 4, 3rd hole. Hole drops in shelves down to the green

The incredible and tough 399 yard par 4 5th. Fairway falls severely left to right.

The 6th, a beautiful 114 yard hole with a 50 foot drop.

The incredibly tight and uphill , 275 yard 7th hole

The green is all of 3,000 square feet and is surrounded with trouble

The incredibly uphill 8th, 231 yards, with a thirty foot deep bowl in front of the green

This is the 9th green and chipping collar that extends to the 10th tee

The approach shot on the 340 yard downhill 10th

The fairway bunkers seperating the 11th and 18th fairways

The green on the 382 yard 11th, a wonderfully bunkered green site.

The steep grass banked appproach to the 339 yard 12th. the green is raised and small making for an exacting approach.

(I hope I remember this right) This was the green rebunkered by Joe Valentine's son (name?), it is quite different but the bunkering is very interesting. The green appears very small due to the raised faces.

The 14th is a 414 yard par 4 where the player can either bounce the ball in from the left or take the chance with a steeper front slope on the right of the green.

The final approach to the 455 yard, par 5 16th. Green is very small and the bluegras bank is very steep.

The beatiful 136 yard, par 3, 17th hole. A wonderful drop-shot over the creek.

The final green on the 337 yard finisher. The entire hole is very uphill finishing with a plateau green.

The course is 2781, par 35, 2952, par 35. Course is short, but full of many fun holes. I dearly wish I could take my son there to learn the game with me.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Ian,

Pretty neat looking photos.

I could kick myself for not playing this golf course.

Tell me more about the canal like feature in your 4th photo.

[SPDB]

Pat -
The creek meanders in front of the (extreme) drop shot par 3 6th, and then continues on in front of the tee on the 7th. It then redirects and collects from the pond framing the left side of the fairway. Finally it comes back in front of the green. It's main function is that it presents the 7th from being drivable - without it, it certainly would be attainable.

Probably the best way to picture the hole is this:

Imagine if you were to tee off from the back end of the dogleg on 13 at Augusta. This hole plays much the same as that would, only there is no real bailout area to the right of the green over the creek.

And unlike its bigger brother, the West does have yardages on sprinkler heads.  


Thanks for the pics Ian, they look great. That corner of 6-7-8 makes for a lot of fun golf. The course definitely plays longer than its yardage.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Ian,
I thnk the West ccourse is a perfect place for anyone that wants to see the basics of golf course architecture work in any form.

You can get a lesson in routing, a lesson in using natural features, a lesson in simplicity, etc. etc. etc. The world needs about another 200-Merion West's.

People will say it is the perfect public-like layout, and that maybe somewhat true. I think it's just really cool golf architecture that has evolved as such. Here is a course I would like to hear of Matt Ward's opinion on, granted it may sound like I'm making trouble, I'm not. The West Course is a course where you could throw five maybe six clubs in a Moonbag and have an epiphany in your golfing life. Since I don't hit a drive all that far, I might keep it, or probably throw it out and put just a three wood; 5-iron; 7-iron, pitching wedge and a putter, and that would be all you would need. You could, after playing this course have a knowledge of more shots then you could ever imagined.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

I forgot to add that yes, it would be close to impossible to route a course like this nowadays with the creeks and all, but it still doesn't detract from how to TRY to work with them!:)

I'm including a picture of #6 which is a little closer then Ian's shot, but you can see how much the trees have grown up since I was there in 2000.

I can post more pictures to detail if needed.

[Tyler Kearns]

Tommy,
    Not only have the trees grown in, but that bunker in between the creek and the green has been filled in as well.

    This course would be a wonderful place to learn the game, and then fall in love with again and again after been beaten mercilously by the 7,000 yard brutes. How would on describe the greens at Merion West? I would imagine at a course this short, that the greens are exceptionally sporty.

Tyler Kearns

[wsmorrison]

Ian,

I love the West Course, very pure and simple golf.  Seniors who don't feel like getting beat up by the East Course enjoy playing here as do juniors.  I imagine it is a wonderful place to bring your young children and get them started in golf the right way.  You are right, the 13th hole was redesigned with added bunkers and mounds behind by Richie Valentine.  It is a different look but works well.  Bill Kittleman thinks every bit as highly of this course as the East.  An accurate history of the design and construction of this course is as yet not well understood.  Sorry I couldn't have walked the 2 courses with you that day.  Look forward to seeing you again.  When in Scranton?

Best,
Wayne

[Matt_Ward]

Tommy:

I have played Merion / West twice and concur with what has already been said. I also agree with you that having a few more courses designed like this would be a real benefit to adding to golf's appeal.

You see -- we can agree!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tyler,
I hhad seen that, as well as how much the downslope there has been "cleaned-up" quite considerably but didn't want to destroy the post--so to speak!

Personally, from the photos, it looks like the West Course has lost a lot of that rough at the edges feel, even though the trees are much more filled-in. Would this be correct?

[bakerg]

I agree with Tommy.  This looks like a great place to take a few clubs and go out and enjoy a great round of golf.

One question though.  Does the West course not use the wicker baskets that the East course uses?  It looks like flags in the pictures above.  Is there a reason for this?

[wsmorrison]

bakerg,
I don't think they ever used baskets on the West, totally unique to the East.  I'm sure they're not easy to make and also the super-seniors can probably see the flags easier.

[ian]

I was wondering if there were many people who would now go to see or play this course now they know about it.

My second question is would anyone want to change the course if it their course; or would they be adament it stay as is, concidering how hard the East course is.

It caught me off guard, and I was left wanting badly to play it. It makes such a huge contrast to the East and left me really amused how they compliment each other.

[Mike_Cirba]

What happened to the bunkers there?

The pic of the bunkers between 11 & 18 made me feel nostalgic for the Merion I knew, but not much of the rest.

What the heck are those things along the 9th green??!

I hear that cart paths are probably next.  

Ahhh...progress.  

[SPDB]

Mike - what are you talking about?

Those bunkers betw. 11+18, with their sharp and clean top lines bear no resemblance to any Merion bunkers past or present. If it weren't for the wisp of the broom, you could just as easily mistake them for Thomas bunkers.

Look at Tommy's pic. the shadows clearly indicate no sand flash. (on the west)

[Mike_Cirba]

Sean;

I see a LOT of things in there that are indicative of Merion's former bunkers, even without the broom.  They are certainly not grassed faced, even if the top edges are a bit sharp.  

Mostly, it's the internal contouring of the bunkers which mold to and emulate the surrounding contours and landforms.  

Tommy N. used to have a pic of the bunkering between 11 & 12 on the East course that is very similar.  Perhaps if he can dig it up?

Tommy can you hear me??  

[SPDB]

You mean the one that had a tree growing into it?

I've never responded well to the expression "internal contours" of a bunker. It's a term of art, and not a very useful one at that.

Can you explain it to me?

[TEPaul]

I hate to tell you fellows but I just walked by the bunkering between #11 and #12 on the East two days ago (walked the whole course) and it looks remarkably similar in an architectural sense to the photo above of the bunkering between #11 & #18 on the West except there's a bit more in the way of that puffy cape (that clearly shows in that photo of the West above) in the set on the East and the edging on the East's set is far more randomly edgy and longer in a grassy sense than that clean edged look on the West!

That puffy cape in the photo above is the way much of the new bunkering looks now but the grassing is starting to look really good--much longer and far more "edgy". The only real difference between the look of the West and the look of the old East bunkering is the edging coming over into the sand on the East now is more built up.

If anyone wants to see bunkering on the East that's better than anything out there--better, in fact, by far, than the old East bunkering (except maybe in the late 1930s) just take a look at the 3-4 bunkers in the high right side of the quarry on #16. Those are really gorgeous natural looking Wilson/Flynn style bunkers (with that style's fully evolved grass look that has none of that surround puffiness)!

Those ones are the only ones on the East that were created in-house and within the last year or so!!

[SPDB]

Tom, i was under the impression (fairly solid one at that), that those bunkers were fazio's, and done at the same time as all the clearing of the trees on the right.

Please excuse Mike, he doesn't have a solid grasp on which Merion bunker style he likes. First its scruffy, now apparently its clean.

[TEPaul]

"I've never responded well to the expression "internal contours" of a bunker. It's a term of art, and not a very useful one at that."

SPDB:

Actually it is a good expression and one that sort of shows that when one thinks they know a lot about architecture they just might find they don't. When Gil Hanse mentioned the following to me not that long ago (sort of about some of the things he'd learned from Kittleman) it really did amaze and impress!

Internal contours of bunkering today and really at any time could be sort of anything an architect wanted them to be but not if your into things regarding bunkering and naturalism that the likes of Bill Kittleman is into.

You see natural bunkers, that is the real natural bunker formations that man did not make--or natural dunse shapes from which the whole idea of bunkering often evolved from actually has an ARCHITECTURAL FORMULA that is NATURE'S own!

Water, wind and weight (sand weight) combines in the natural world to create formations that are Nature's own architecture--and involves Nature's own architectural formulae. The entire process is one of building and evolving slowly to the eventual point of devolution!

The contours of that process--Nature's very own contours of sand is worth studying in a golf architectural sense and well worth recreating and emulating to create natural looking man-made architecture.

But there are other bunker contour techniques involving things such as Nature's own "angle of repose" that can be found all over nature from tree bases and the undersides of branches off trunks that happen to be one of Nature's maximum sort of Darwinian strengthes.

Some architects such as Kittleman have studied Nature's ways and shapes (contours) of evolution to devolution and recreated its contours in golf architecture such as the contours of bunkering.

So, yes, the expression "internal contours" of bunkering if it's being used to express the contours found in Nature really does mean something--and it actually means even more than just architectural art!  

[Mike_Cirba]

My, my Sean;

The original bunkers at Merion had so much more to admire than scruffiness.  Not everyone of them had scruffy lips, anyway...many, like the large on on the 4th fairway, was cut pretty sharp.  

What bunkers do I like?

Why, big puffy one's of course.    

[TEPaul]

"Tom, i was under the impression (fairly solid one at that), that those bunkers were fazio's, and done at the same time as all the clearing of the trees on the right."

SPDB:

Those ones were done in house--they were done by Merion's crew! That's coming from Merion's Green Chairman and if he doesn't know why or how would some of us?

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Mike, Unfortunately for some reason I can't get my disk of Merion East back nine photos to open.