Growing up in central Pennsylvania and then the Philadelphia suburbs, there’s really one golf course that everyone wants to play:
Merion East.
I went to high school not 15 minutes from the club. I played numerous junior events at the East’s lesser-known sister, Merion West. And my brother even worked there as a caddie.
I wasn’t living in my home state in 2021 when I would have had an opportunity to qualify for the Pennsylvania Amateur at Merion. Suffice to say, the chances kept eluding me.
But last month, ahead of this week’s U.S. Amateur, the stars finally aligned for me to play the most famous course in Philly.
It was well worth the wait.
A round at Merion is a complete experience. If you come from the West on Ardmore Ave., you drive right along the 2nd hole, just a small push off the fairway and then turn right before the 13th tee. You’re greeted by one of the most iconic short par-3s in golf, where Phil Mickelson’s career grand slam chances were dashed in 2013.
Once you drop off your clubs, you can head straight to one of golf’s most famous locker rooms. On this day, there was a team of locker room attendants who not only saw us to our lockers but were also not shy about striking up a conversation about the club, Philadelphia or just making sure you were set to have a good time.
The hospitality didn’t stop with the locker room guys. The bartenders, the pro shop staff, the caddies and servers were all top-notch as long as you followed one simple rule: “No cover under cover”… That is, remove your hat under any covering.
The Merion clubhouse is a classic former farmhouse that the club recently renovated, and you can watch GOLF’s tour of the building in the video above.
After a short program and lunch, it was time to head out to the course. My round began on the par-5 4th, Merion’s longest hole.
Merion East is infamously short by modern standards. Just under 7,000 yards all the way tipped out. The “back tees” on the scorecard for member play are closer to 6,600, but for media day, they were moved up a ways, likely to preserve some of the back tees for the U.S. Am.
Nevertheless, I teed up my ball and blasted my tee shot out to the right.
Big mistake!
From where I played, I only had a narrow sliver of fairway to fit a driver in between the rough and the massive cross bunker that cuts the 4th fairway. I found the rough, and we spent a few minutes actually trying to locate it. Once I did, all I had was a short iron to hit over a tree and then land the ski jump of a fairway before a small creek that guards the green.
I got club on the ball, but I quickly discovered this was rough like I hadn’t seen in a long time. I was fortunate to play Oakmont, Pennsylvania’s other perennial U.S. top-10 golf course, 13 years ago when I was 15. That may have been the last time I played rough like that.
The ball cleared the tree and I thought it would be in the fairway, but there were no fliers out of this rough. My 8-iron, despite feeling well struck, flew only about 140 yards, about 30 yards less than I expected, and stayed right of the fairway.
Lesson learned! Take extra club out of the rough!
I made par on 4 by muscling a wedge onto the green, just barely carrying the water. Made bogey on 5 after missing the fairway and ill-advisedly leaving my approach hole-high right on the severely right-to-left sloping green.
Somehow, my ball found a small sliver of rough between the fairway bunkers and tall fescue on No. 6, but this time, I learned my lesson from earlier. From 168 yards, into a slight breeze, I grabbed a 6-iron, probably two clubs more than I would normally take, and tried to hit a fade out of the thick rough.
This one carried. I flew the ball just short of pin high and it rolled out about seven feet past the cup. I made the putt. A birdie out of the rough on one of Merion’s hardest par-4s!
The next two holes at Merion are both short par-4s. No. 7 is just over 360 yards and has a downhill tee shot before going back up to the green. No. 8 is 350 yards and is all downhill to a blind green from the tee. You might expect several players to drive the green this week.
If you’re going to score at Merion, these are two of the best places to do it.
On 7, I played my approach from a fairway bunker to about 25 feet past the pin. This is where my caddie Austin explained that the grain of Merion’s greens has lots of influence. The putt looked like it would snap to the right, but the grain moved back toward me and left, toward the famous 11th green and Cobbs Creek, allowing it to hold its line. I played it just outside right. It went in.
I decided to try and drive the green on 8 as the tee was set up only about 300 yards from the front. I ended up in a small ditch right of the green, but it wasn’t a bad leave and I chipped up and made another birdie.
I was two under after five holes.
If you’re thinking the proverbial “Oh S***!” moment where I fall back to earth is coming, you’d be 100 percent right. Merion started showing that it doesn’t need length to be brutal.
On the par-3 9th, I made bogey after hitting my tee shot in a bunker. On the short par-4 10th, I drove the ball in a greenside bunker, but had to play to an extremely narrow green. I made double.
The 11th hole at Merion is the place where Bobby Jones won the 1930 U.S. Amateur, completing the Grand Slam. Jones also doubled No. 10 in the final round before earning a conceded par on 11 to close out Eugene Homans 8 and 7 in the 36-hole final.
I didn’t have the same rebound.
No. 11 is another short par-4 with the fairway ending roughly 70 yards short of the green. On the left is a deep bunker with a small peninsula of green wrapping around behind it. The pin was on that tiny peninsula.
From the fairway, I thought there was some green behind the pin, so I took aim with a gap wedge, hoping to land the ball just past and pull it back. I airmailed the surface and had almost nothing.
Another double bogey.
Same score on No. 12. Then I bogeyed 13 and finally recovered to par No. 14.
As if I needed more punishment, on 15, I drove it in the fairway, just short of the green, hit a nice chip shot to 15 feet and promptly putted the ball off the green back to where I chipped from.
Unfortunately, we only got in two more holes before a thunderstorm ended our day before we got to 18 tee.
So I didn’t get to play the last, or the first for that matter, but I got a full test of what Merion really is.
This week at the U.S. Amateur, plenty of players will find that out too. It may look enticing on the scorecard, but the short holes can sneak up on you at a moment’s notice.
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