This weeks US Open is being held on the East Course at the Merion Golf Club outside Philadelphia. Designed predominantly by Hugh Wilson, the course opened in 1912 and remains one of America’s most treasured golfing jewels. It’s sad, therefore, that the golfing elite assembled to fight out this major championship won’t get to experience Merion in all her architectural glory. Not that many of the players will notice.
They say a 140-character tweet can reveal much about ones personal tastes and sensibilities, and so it is with golf professionals. Last week former world number 1 Luke Donald tweeted that...
What Merion will really show is that length isn't a pre-requisite for difficulty. A great example for modern architects to study.
— Luke Donald (@LukeDonald) June 6, 2013
It reminded me instantly of a tweet sent last November by one of Donald’s peers and Ryder Cup teammates, fellow Englishman Ian Poulter. Poulter arrived at Kingston Heath on the Melbourne Sandbelt to play the Australian Masters tournament and after his first practice round tweeted…
Kingston Heath is totally awesome. Someone please tell modern day architects we don't need 8000 yard tracks they're not enjoyable. Best yet
— Ian Poulter (@IanJamesPoulter) November 14, 2012
Both men were clearly impressed to be challenging for a trophy on a golf course that wasn’t excessively long. That’s where the similarities ended.
Poulter was effectively saying that golf courses don’t need to be long to be great. Donald, by contrast, was saying they don’t need to be long to be difficult, which is certainly true. All clubs need to do is grow their rough 5-6 inches long and narrow their fairways to anorexic widths. Urging modern architects to study the Merion set-up this week would be madness, given the surest way to turn people off this great game is by making it too difficult for them.
Thankfully there are still great old courses like Kingston Heath out there, and others, like Merion, that revert to true character once the circus that is the professional tour passes through. The true mark of Merion’s quality is not how hard it ends up being for the professionals this week, but how enjoyable the average member and visitor finds it when things return to normal.
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