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If you live in New Jersey, as I do you, you needn’t be a golfer to have at least heard of Baltusrol Golf Club, in the same way that you needn’t be a music buff to have heard of Carnegie Hall or a corned beef aficionado to be familiar with Katz’s Delicatessen. The place is an institution: 130 years old; host site of 18 major championships; home to a 50,000-square-foot Tudor Revival-style clubhouse that ranks among the game’s most iconic structures. The club is so historic that in 2014 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark. All that’s missing from Balty’s c.v. is a Ken Burns film — and, who knows, maybe one’s coming.

Baltusrol has two excellent and challenging courses — the Lower and Upper, both of which were built by the legendary A.W. Tillinghast — which doesn’t make the club unique in this region of the country. The same can be said of Winged Foot (about 50 miles northeast); Westchester Country Club (not far from Winged Foot); Trump Bedminster (25 miles due west); and Philly Cricket (80 miles southwest); among others.

Here’s a fun wrinkle, though: the Balty membership gravitates not toward the higher ranked and more storied of the two courses (the Lower) but instead to the “other” option — the Upper. This isn’t to say that the club’s members aren’t proud of their more famous offering or that they don’t still enjoy testing their games out there; it’s just that if they’re sneaking out for a quick nine after work or playing a friendly Saturday-morning fourball, most members prefer to do so on the less bruising Upper.    

That’s truer today than ever thanks to a recent restoration by restorers du jour Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, who also helped return the Lower course to its Tilly-rich roots by way of a restoration job they completed in 2021. “The Lower had gotten a lot of the architectural changes in the name of hosting championships,” Hanse said at an event for the Upper’s reopening I attended earlier this year. “The Upper was this kind of sleepy little golf course that sat up there.”

Sleepy but deeply beloved! Whereas the Lower daunts you with length and imposing hazards (like the Sahara bunker complex on the par-5 17th), the Upper delights you with more variety in hole settings and designs, on account of its home in the side of a mountainside. (It delighted me, anyway; my summer round at the Upper was my favorite round of 2025.) Working off a trove of archival photography and maps, Hanse and Wagner extended greens to their original dimensions and removed trees to open sight lines but never strayed from Tillinghast’s original intent.

When I asked Hanse if he ever feels like he and his team can improve on a classic architect’s intent (no one’s perfect, right?), he said, “Obviously we modernize golf courses, we move bunkers downrange, we move tees back, et cetera, et cetera. But trying to ascertain why [a designer] did something or, ‘Was that a mistake?’ — it’s something we really try to avoid doing because it just leads to other conclusions that might not produce the best results from a restoration standpoint.”

One of — if not the — most interesting questions Hanse and Wagner faced along the way came at the par-4 14th, where the club, in the run-up to playing host to the 1936 U.S. Open, had added a second green. The original putting surface, which sits on lower land, occasionally would flood when rainwater rushed down the hill, so the club installed the second green as a back-up. At some point in the late 1950s, the club gave up on the second green, and in the ensuing years it was lost to the sands . . . well, dirt of time.

So Hanse started digging.

“When Gil started to explore the right green, he was able to find remnants of that green because back in that time period, they did not deconstruct; they just plowed things,” Matt Wirths, Baltusrol’s president, told me last summer. “He was able to see the old stratifications of the green, and he was also able to see the dimensions.”

What to do? Hanse was torn. “First, we decided to abandon the non-original green, the upper one,” Hanse said. “When we found the original contours of the lower green, the upper green was about six to seven feet above it, and we thought, ‘Well, these can’t coexist. They can’t sit side by side the way they are right now.’”

But then Hanse asked his shaper to dig some more. “We’re going to blow it up anyway,” Hanse recalls thinking. “Let’s just get all the dirt out of the way and see if we can find the original grade. And we did. And then that’s what appeared. It came back to the two [greens] being able to sit side by side beautifully.”

Whether Hanse and the club would actually keep the old second green in play, though, remained an open question throughout the restoration; some members loved the idea while others were less enthralled, fearing it was too quirky or downright gimmicky.

One of the key deciding factors was that Tillinghast had an affinity for dual greens, so much so that he actually sketched out plans for a course in Atlanta in the 1920s with dual greens on every hole. Wirths said the Depression prevented the course from becoming a reality, but the plans alone were enough of an indicator that Tillinghast was more than OK with the unconventional design feature.  “That was one more log to the fire of actually keeping both greens,” Wirths said.

And keep them the club did. When you play your second shot into 14 today, the challenge — depending on which green is in play — can look very different from one round to the next. It’s novel, it’s fun and it makes you wonder if the game ought to have more dual greens.     

As for which surface is superior, the jury’s still out, which is fitting at a two-course club where members are used to making hard choices.

“I think we’re going to take a year to look at it and see how it plays,” Hanse said. “And then we can determine whether [the club swaps out greens] every other day or whether one green is more fitting for a championship than the other.”

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***

Gil Hanse is on the phone from his home in rural Nebraska. It’s a rare time when he’s actually there.

“It’s kind of depressing to talk about,” Hanse said, mixing sigh and laughter. “But I’m on the road something like 300 days.”

He pauses, seemingly trying to grasp the number, to comprehend the places he’s been and the golf courses he’s touched.

“Home is wherever we’re working on projects,” said Hanse, whose wife of 38 years, Tracey, is almost always wandering from place to place with him. “It’s a nomadic existence, but one that works for us.”

It can be overwhelming, especially when you consider all the iconic layouts that have Hanse’s fingerprints on them.

But, no, right now, he’s, in fact, distracted by an airplane overheard. He heard the noise, saw the thing circling and cannot quite figure out what it’s doing.

MORE THAN A THOUSAND MILES and a time zone away, there is an endless string of beeps as big machines crawl all over the place. The chirping never ceases — a sound that stretches across the sweeping, historic property at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J.

Hanse restored the Lower Course of this 36-hole A.W. Tillinghast masterpiece during the pandemic, and now all these big machines are helping him work his restoration magic on the Upper Course.

To an outsider, one who doesn’t grasp the work, detail and precision with which Hanse goes about building, shaping and restoring courses as one of the world’s foremost golf architects, this might seem like mayhem. But chaos seems to be the background music of Gil Hanse’s life.

“If you were here six months ago, it looked like a bomb went off,” said Kevin Vitale, Baltusrol’s general manager and chief operating officer. “There were 50 trucks.”

At one recent point of the Upper restoration, Baltusrol director of grounds Greg Boring said, Hanse had nearly 100 people working on the property. That doesn’t include the 25-30 people from Boring’s staff.

To others, it can be maddening, a bewildering puzzle that seems impossible to put back together.

“I’ve stood up on some of these vistas for nearly 40 years,” said Rick Shea, a longtime Baltusrol member and former president of the club. “I never saw what Gil would instinctively see.”

HANSE HAS STARTED FROM SCRATCH with original design projects. He has done a host of renovations. But his most noteworthy work comes with restorations, where the task is to find the original plan and bring it back to life.

Look at the stunning list of places that have entrusted him with unearthing the soul of their golf course — Merion, Winged Foot, Oakmont, Oakland Hills, Olympic and The Los Angeles Country Club, just to name a few. Each place had faith in him to rediscover the plan laid forth by Donald Ross or Alister Mackenzie or C.B. Macdonald or Seth Raynor and make it relevant to the modern game. At Baltusrol, Hanse went through the archives — more than 5,000 pieces of documentation — in search of Tillinghast’s intent, which had been scraped away over time.

“When you look at the aerials from the 1930s, this place did not resemble that one bit,” Boring said.

Baltusrol has hosted 18 major championships, seven U.S. Opens among them (second to Oakmont, which hosts its 10th in 2025). In 2023, after the Lower Course restoration, it hosted the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. The PGA Championship will return for a third time in 2029. With that in mind, Hanse was charged with digging through the minutiae and uncovering the Baltusrol that Tillinghast intended when he embarked on this massive project, which marked the first simultaneous design and construction of 36 holes in this country.

“It’s like a sense of stewardship, trying to preserve, protect, restore elements that have been either lost or altered over time on the courses of these great architects,” said Hanse, who takes on only three new projects a year. “So it’s something that we embrace going in — researching and studying.”

He pored over the endless documentation acquired over decades by Baltusrol’s exhaustive history committee. He talked to members, who knew the place far better than he ever could. Then he laid out a plan.

“It was really our responsibility to the club and our responsibility to the original architect — they are going to be the guiding forces behind everything we do,” Hanse said.

Hanse made his intentions clear — the work at Baltusrol would be about Tillinghast, not Hanse. It’s his hallmark principle in restorations.

“Right from the get-go, he said it’s going to be a sympathetic restoration, and we’re going to go back to Tillinghast’s design and design intent,” said Matt Wirths, Baltusrol’s president and master restoration plan committee chair. “That’s what attracted us to Gil. He said it was Tillinghast’s name on the scorecard, not his.”

This wasn’t just about restoring two historic golf courses. It was also about making sure all 36 holes were positioned for years to come — through better drainage, the installation of an HVAC system for greens called PrecisionAire and the acknowledgement that technology will forever impact how a golf course plays. It would be ready for major championships, but so too would it be pristine on a random Tuesday in the middle of the summer after it rained for a week straight.

All these people and machines were working to establish the future while still adhering to the past.

“The restoration was about getting back to our true DNA, and what A.W. designed and to hopefully have a path to keep us there for a long time,” said Ryan Fountaine, Baltusrol’s director of golf.

The two courses have distinct personalities. The Lower Course is more noteworthy to the public; the Upper Course is the favorite of the membership.

“[The Upper] has hosted a major before, but it just doesn’t have the space to handle the crowds now,” Vitale said. “If it could handle the crowds, there would be a major on the Upper.

“When Gil took the job, he said something along the lines of ‘I am going to enjoy working on the Lower, but I can’t wait to get to the Upper.’”

Hanse quickly seconded that assessment.

“The changes on the Lower were more substantive and the Upper was closer to Tillinghast’s vision,” he said. “But I think embellishing or improving those subtleties on the Upper are going to be truly impactful to the way the outside world views the Upper.”

The word “topography” kept coming up, how the hills and terrain and undulations made the Upper a shotmaker’s course.

“It’s just a better piece of ground,” Hanse said. “I think the holes on the Upper are more striking than the holes on the Lower. I think [the par-5] eighth green, the way it sits up there, is one of the most beautiful compositions I’ve seen Tillinghast do.”

Hanse went about his work, first on the Lower Course, then on the Upper Course. Uncertainty can be uncomfortable, especially with so much at stake — history, tradition, reputation, money.

“On the Lower there were a lot more questions,” Boring said. “We were new to this. We didn’t know. [The membership] thought it knew what was going to happen. Then they played it and experienced it and were pleased and happy with it. When it came to the Upper, it was, ‘Go repeat what you just did.’”

Still, despite having experienced how Hanse worked and falling in love with the finished product on the Lower, if the membership had questions during the restoration of the Upper, it asked.

“My experience has been that there’s no stupid question,” Wirths said. “Gil always takes the time to explain his methodology and the rationale that forms his opinions. It’s because we value that rationale, methodology and opinion, that it was really for us to deliver that messaging to our membership, as opposed to us telling him what we wanted. The toughest thing is to go in with a blank slate and defer to an expert.”

That doesn’t always happen. At Baltusrol, they let Gil Hanse be Gil Hanse.

“We don’t have the expertise, he does,” Shea said. “We are welcome to have our own opinions, but it’s his call. He is the person we’ve asked to guide us. Very early on we had a couple things that came up, and the procedure became clear to us: Gil was going to make the call.”

Hey, you don’t ask Picasso to paint you a picture and tell him what colors to use or select the grocery list when Wolfgang Puck invites you over for dinner.

“It’s inspiring to watch him work,” Boring said. “He knows what he wants. He’s very demanding with what he wants. But he never has to show he’s demanding with what he wants. We basically went through $40 million worth of projects in the last five years. I’m anti-drama. And if you’re anti-drama, you want Gil Hanse running the operation. Gil’s not about ego. There is not a person who has a bigger name, and you would not know it.”

Every once in a while, a member will be wandering the property and do a double take. Could it be?

“He’s hands-on,” Boring said, highlighting one of the qualities that makes Hanse in such high demand. “Everybody is amazed when they see Gil on a bulldozer. I’m like, what do you think he does when he comes here? He’s not pointing fingers and telling people what to do. If Gil’s happy, it’s because he’s in a dozer.”

THIS COMING MAY, nearly seven years after he was contracted to bring Tillinghast’s intent back to life, and five years after the work started, the heavy lifting from Hanse and his team will be done.

Wirths said it took him a year or so to relearn the Lower. He expects, given the nuances of the Upper, it might take him and the membership a little longer this time around.

“A year to relearn the course, and it will take about two or three years to learn those greens,” he said. “Or, at least, that’s the excuse I’ll use.”

Still, the biggest adjustment might not be with the eyes, but with the ears. One by one, they laugh at the question: How happy will they be when the work is done, when the beeps are silenced, when the property is quiet?

“I made the mistake of having this conversation with Gil and said, ‘It’s been great to have you here, but it’ll be great when you’re gone.’ I probably shouldn’t have said it that way,” Vitale said. “I said it as a joke. I think we are going to be the [object of] envy by having two golf courses at this level.”

That is the end game with anyone who signs up to have Gil Hanse dive into history.

“We are going back to our roots,” Vitale said. “We aren’t doing something that is changing us, making us different. We are going back to what made us who are in the first place.”

For Hanse, a man who travels so much, who is entrusted to do his work on so many hallowed pieces of ground, is it hard to just walk away when the job is complete?

“Somebody once said Ben Crenshaw’s line is that he cries at shopping mall openings,” Hanse said. “I’m not quite that emotional. But yes, because we spend so much time on our projects, they’re all very personal. The other part of it is the relationships you build with the people, the leadership at the club, the leadership on the staff. Those are things that are going to stay with me for the rest of my life.

“When we leave this property, the courses seen by these members will be the closest to what Tillinghast created for any generation of members since the courses debuted. There’s a great deal of pride and satisfaction in that.”

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Curious about how GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the World list comes together? This behind-the-scenes conversation with our expert course raters shines a light on the process. The group discusses the most important trends and surprises from this year’s list. Which course just missed the cut? How did the pandemic impact the rating process? Will another course ever challenge Pine Valley for the top spot? GOLF Architecture Editor Ran Morrissett, course raters Thomas Brown and Simon Holt, and GOLF Senior Editor Sean Zak share their insights.

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There are no shortage of regulars on GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the World list — in fact, it’s nearly all regulars. But that’s not to say there’s no churn or fresh faces. This time ’round, seven newcomers made the cut, and in the coming days were going to introduce (or reintroduce!) you to each of them. Here’s a closer look at No. 57 on the 2021-22 ranking: Baltusrol Golf Club’s Lower Course in N.J.

No. 57: Baltusrol (Lower)
Springfield, N.J.
A.W. Tillinghast (1922)

For decades, Baltusrol had what it took to run headache-free major championships. After a 2020 restoration by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, it has that plus so much more. Of particular note, thanks to the reinstallation of some of A.W. Tillinghast’s most imaginative bunkering schemes: one of the game’s finest driving tests is fully back.

Perhaps the best example comes at the 5th, a straightaway par-4 that plays to a well-placed green high on a ridge. Three re-installed centerline bunkers perplex the golfer standing on the tee. To go right, left, short or long, that is the question! From the member tee, the 5th measures just under 400 yards and is as good a hole of that length as exists in this country. That’s important, as such holes – a driver and, say, a 6-iron — are the backbone for membership play.

Additionally, the green expansions have yielded intense, new playing interest. Indeed, if you want to appreciate an architect’s design chops, see what he does on flat land. Three stellar green complexes are found today on the flatter portion of the property, namely those at the 9th, 12th and 16th. Variety is back on the menu at Baltusrol, but the course also has retained its championship grit.

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Not every golf course can be built on perfect sand or soil. But by choosing to invest in the land their courses are built on, some clubs are making big moves up our Top 100 list. Ran Morrissett, Thomas Brown, Simon Holt and Sean Zak explain.

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The post A tale of Tillinghast: The persona behind the greatness of legendary architect A.W. Tillinghast appeared first on Golf.

Start by locating Mamaroneck on a map: leafy New York suburb, just north of Manhattan, and home to Winged Foot Golf Club, host of the 2020 U.S. Open. Now push outward in expanding circles, up into Connecticut, east onto Long Island, across the Hudson River into New Jersey. The geographic territory you’ve traced, with a radius of roughly 100 miles, contains a couple dozen Top 100 courses, a greater concentration of such designs than you’ll find in any patch of the planet of comparable size.

This unmatched constellation includes works by Donald Ross, Charles Blair Macdonald, Seth Raynor and William Flynn, among other giants of golf ’s Golden Age. But for quantity of layouts within this cluster, one architect outstrips all the rest. He is the author of Winged Foot’s East and West courses and the undisputed titan of the tristate area: A.W. Tillinghast.

And the northeast was not his only stomping ground. Between 1911, when he cut the ribbon on his first course, Shawnee Country Club, in Pennsylvania, and 1936, when he completed Bethpage Black, his triumphant swan song on Long Island, Tillinghast is credited with contributions to upward of 260 courses across the country and into Canada, though Tillinghast biographer Philip Young says that his subject actually had a hand in many more. Prized at the time, his prolific output has only gained prestige. If you take away the Masters, held every year on the same Alister Mackenzie design, Tillinghast tracks have staged more modern-day majors than those of any other course designer after Ross.

As an architect, Tillinghast contained multitudes; some observers argue that a defining feature of his courses is the lack of a defining feature. As a personality, he was hard to pin down, too. Born into wealth in Philadelphia, Tillinghast walked in aristocratic circles but fancied himself a man of the people and lived up to that image as a vocal advocate for public-access golf. At times a tweedy figure of Victorian reserve, Tillinghast cut a raffish society profile. He was a gambler and a gadabout, drawn to high-living and high-proof libations. As hard as he could drink, he worked even harder, the artistry of his projects often matched by their ambition. Outsize in his character and his career, Tillinghast is tough to capture in a single snapshot. But with the national championship returning for the sixth time to his most acclaimed layout, Winged Foot West, it’s worth fleshing out a sketch of him. A look at five other notable Tillinghast projects within striking range of Winged Foot offers different angles on the man and the imprint he left behind.

Go Big or Go Home

Baltusrol Golf Club SPRINGFIELD, N.J.

In 1918, when Tillinghast signed on to work with the club, Baltusrol already had a golf course—a two-time U.S. Open host, no less. And Tillinghast, an accomplished player in his own right, was well acquainted with it; it was where he lost to eventual champion Chandler Egan at the 1904 U.S. Amateur. Now the club wanted its 18 reworked. Tillinghast pushed for something bolder: Scrap the one course and build two in its place. In its scale and price tag, it was as audacious a proposal as the game had seen. But as a salesman and a showman, Tillinghast possessed “P.T. Barnum–like powers of persuasion,” says biographer Young. “If he really wanted to convince you of something, he could.” Baltusrol bit. It was later said that Tillinghast was the first architect ever to be given an unlimited budget. But that claim had the whiff of urban legend. And it was not the case at Baltusrol. In fact, he was given $100,000, which he blew through on his way to spending nearly twice that much to produce the club’s Upper and Lower courses. It was a grand achievement, and Tillinghast referred to it in grandiose terms: He took to calling himself the “creator” of Baltusrol. No doubt the work bolstered his renown. Among those who noticed were members of the New York Athletic Club, who had their own ambitious project in mind. They were looking for an architect to build 36 holes at a Westchester County club they would call Winged Foot.

Breaking the Mold

Somerset Hills Country Club BERNARDSVILLE, N.J.

Like Charles Blair Macdonald, Tillinghast spent formative time in Scotland. But unlike his fellow American designer, he did not return from the British Isles bent on reproducing what he’d seen. Where Macdonald was the king of architectural homage—Road holes, Cape holes, Punchbowls and the like—Tillinghast mostly turned his back on tributes. Though he did have a penchant for repeating certain features (he proudly claimed to be the father of the “double-dogleg”), those signature touches were his own. More traditional templates held little interest for him—unless, he said, the land cried out for them. Somerset Hills was a rarity, a site where Tillinghast heard that call. The course, which consists of two contrasting nines—the front side meadowy, the backside wooded—has been hailed as a museum piece for its striking display of templates. On the par-4 13th hole, a Principal’s Nose bunker—a nod to St. Andrews—sticks its sandy schnoz out of the fairway, roughly 60 yards in front of a Biarritz green. The 16th, a midrange par 3 with a sloping green guarded by a deep bunker, evokes, for some, an Eden hole. (Others dispute this.) Most notable is the long par-3 2nd, which plays over a valley to a green that tilts down and away from its daunting front-right point of entrance. It’s a Redan, and many say it surpasses the original at North Berwick. In Tillinghast’s hands, it wasn’t imitation; it was emulation at its most inspired.

Playing the Trifecta

Ridgewood Country Club PARAMUS, N.J.

In one of many magazine articles he authored, Tillinghast described the ideal setting for a golf course as sandy, contoured seaside land. Yet unlike Mackenzie, Ross and others of his era, he was never given a world-beating coastal site. That he made hay farther inland, often coaxing greatness from mundane locales—Winged Foot is widely seen as a prime example of an A-plus course on C-plus terrain—stands as one of many testaments to Tillinghast’s genius. Another of his talents was rising to the challenge of his clients’ demands. In the case of Ridgewood, the mandate he was given was a first of its kind: Not only did the club want three separate nines—a rarity in itself—it wanted three nines of equal caliber, without a red-headed stepchild in the bunch, all slated to open at the same time. On top of that, because the trio was meant for mix and matching, each nine had to work back to the clubhouse. “That’s six holes starting or ending from essentially the same point,” Young says. “The difficulty of the entire project is astounding.” It had never been done, but Tillinghast did it, working up, down and along the property’s wooded ridge, spreading artistry evenly around the grounds. The balance he achieved is punctuated by the fact that when big-time tournaments like the Barclays are held at Ridgewood today, the East, Center and West courses each contributes anywhere from five to seven holes.

A Study in Contrasts

Quaker Ridge Golf Club SCARSDALE, N.Y.

For a succinct, spot-on assessment of another of Tillinghast’s major works, take a spin through time to the 1974 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, where Jack Nicklaus was asked if he believed that the host site was the finest layout in the world. “That may be,” Nicklaus replied. “But there is quite a golf course down the street.” Across the street, more like it, no more than a short par-4 away. First opened for play in 1918, Quaker Ridge was overhauled by Tillinghast seven years later, so its vintage is similar to Winged Foot’s and its parentage is the same. But as with many siblings, the two properties have vastly different traits.

At Winged Foot, where Tillinghast was given a flat expanse and asked to build a beast, the architect obliged by building some of the world’s most fearsome greens, rising from the fairways, bold, defiant. Quaker Ridge, by contrast, has much calmer putting surfaces but the land itself is far more lilting. A former Quaker Ridge head professional was fond of saying that at Winged Foot you made bogey from the fairway—you have to be deadeye with your approaches—where at Quaker you made bogey from the tee. On this more rollicking terrain, Tillinghast deferred to the contours as he found them. His light touch reflected his conviction that you shouldn’t try to manufacture nature when nature had already done a fine job on its own.

Power to the People

Bethpage Black FARMINGDALE, N.Y.

Golf courses as “mankillers.” Credit Tillinghast with that coinage and that concept, which he fleshed out in an article of the same name. The original “mankiller,” he wrote, was Pine Valley, his pal George Crump’s acclaimed layout in New Jersey. It could break you physically with its shot-making demands, even as it shattered your heart with its beauty. Tillinghast dreamed of spawning such a creature.

In the mid-’30s, at Bethpage State Park on Long Island, he got his chance. All the better, as he saw it, the Black Course was a man-killer for the Everyman. Monied by birth—his father owned a successful rubber goods company—Tillinghast was keen on extending the game’s reach beyond the wealthy. That most of his commissions were for private courses was more reflective of the era than of his leanings.

Travel

In his writings and other pronouncements, the high-living course designer proved himself a champion of golf for all. Bethpage married his abilities and his interests. The job required a massive effort on par with his ample ambitions: He was hired to build three courses, the Black, Red and Blue, and overhaul a fourth, which became known as the Green. According to Philip Young, never has a single architect had a hand in so many courses at one site at one time. Of the bunch, the Black Course was Tillinghast’s baby, and a brawny one at that. He took special pride that it was also a muni, a fitting closing act in an astounding career, a man-killer destined to endure.

Flag Hunting

Tillinghast, Ross and Macdonald and his disciples went wild in the tristate (NY, NJ, CT), creating, arguably, the most astonishing cluster of marquee courses in the world — and this map doesn’t even include the titans on the tip of Long Island: Shinny, National, et al. Hit a drive from any highway here and it might find a Top 100 fairway. *map key below*

A.W. Tillinghast

1. SOMERSET HILLS CC Bernardsville, N.J.

2. BALTUSROL GC Springfield, N.J.

3. RIDGEWOOD CC Paramus, N.J.

4. BETHPAGE BLACK Farmingdale, N.Y.

5. WINGED FOOT GC Mamaroneck, N.Y.

6. QUAKER RIDGE GC Scarsdale, N.Y.

7. FENWAY GC Scarsdale, N.Y.

8. PARAMOUNT CC New City, N.Y.

Donald Ross

9. PLAINFIELD CC Edison, N.J.

10. MONTCLAIR CC Montclair, N.J.

11. MOUNTAIN RIDGE CC West Caldwell, N.J.

12. SIWANOY CC Bronxville, N.Y.

C.B. Macdonald, Seth Raynor and/or Charles Banks

13. FORSGATE CC Monroe Township, N.J.

14. MORRIS COUNTY GC Morristown, N.J.

15. ESSEX COUNTY CC West Orange, N.J.

16. PIPING ROCK CLUB Locust Valley, N.Y.

17. CREEK CLUB Locust Valley, N.Y.

18. BLIND BROOK CLUB Purchase, N.Y.

19. SLEEPY HOLLOW CC Scarboroughon-Hudson, N.Y.

20. WHIPPOORWILL CLUB Armonk, N.Y.

21. CC OF FAIRFIELD Fairfield, CT

22. YALE GOLF COURSE New Haven, CT

Notable Others

23. GARDEN CITY GC Garden City, N.Y. (Devereux Emmet/ Walter Travis)

24. DEEPDALE CC Manhasset, N.Y. (Dick Wilson)

25. WYKAGYL CC New Rochelle, N.Y. (Tillinghast/Ross/ Lawrence Van Etten)

26. WESTCHESTER CC Harrison, N.Y. (Walter Travis)

27. CENTURY CC Purchase, N.Y. (C.H. Alison)

28. THE STANWICH CLUB Greenwich, CT (William and David Gordon)

Editor’s Picks

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The post This year’s U.S. Open will be different, but no less meaningful than it’s ever been appeared first on Golf.

The post This year’s U.S. Open will be different, but no less meaningful than it’s ever been appeared first on Golf.

My first U.S. Open Championship was in 1980.

Many of you will remember that week at Baltusrol Golf Club, for good reason. Jack Nicklaus set a scoring record en route to his fourth U.S. Open victory. For me, it was an unforgettable experience with my dad that sticks with me to this day.

My love for the game was already clear to me, but seeing golf played by the greatest competitors under the most challenging conditions was unlike anything I had seen before. It didn’t feel like a normal tournament — and it wasn’t supposed to.

The mental, physical and emotional toughness and human triumph that I witnessed that week fueled a lifelong passion for the game that is as strong now as it has ever been. I knew then that I wanted to be part of it, and it was powerful when I realized that I actually could be part of it.  

That is the pure beauty of this championship. It’s open. It’s the ultimate meritocracy and why “From Many, One” is so powerful in describing this unique and unparalleled major championship. Any golfer is worthy of competing based solely on their ability to play the game. There are no judgments based on who you are or where you come from. Successfully navigate the U.S. Open qualifying process and you’re in — that’s it.

It is difficult to imagine a more important time in our country’s recent history to remember this simple ideal of equality. Those who came before me, the USGA leaders who had the courage to insist that the 1896 U.S. Open be conducted with John Shippen and Oscar Bunn in the field despite great opposition, understood that. It reminds me that the game is at its best when it’s open to everyone.

Despite my best efforts as a competitor, I never did make it into the field, but the ideal of having the opportunity to try is what makes the U.S. Open unique in golf.

That’s why eliminating qualifying this year has felt like a gut punch. The USGA has the good fortune of providing a platform for athletes to chase their dreams. When we had to take away that platform, those dreams, we took it very hard. We join the 10,000 hopefuls in feeling a sense of loss, and we hope we will never have to do this again.

We will forge ahead, however, because we believe that conducting this U.S. Open is important to the players, to the game and to our country. We will fill the field with as many worthy glory-seekers as we can. Amateurs. Club pros. Touring pros. The best the game has produced. Each will have earned his place in the field by meeting rigorous criteria. We know it will be different, but we will conduct a U.S. Open in 2020 that we can be proud of and one that produces a champion worthy of joining the elites who have come before.   

It is also important to everyone we serve. It might seem like the U.S. Open story ends on Father’s Day, but the meaning and spirit of the championship run much deeper throughout the game, and its impact is felt long after the final putt drops.

Thanks to the U.S. Open, the players who compete in it, the partners who sponsor it, the fans who watch from home or on-site, and our broadcast partners, the USGA is able to have a meaningful impact on the game of golf. The U.S. Open inspires the next generation of golfers by fueling programs that provide a pathway into playing the game. Junior programs like LPGA-USGA Girls Golf, The First Tee and Drive, Chip & Putt. Career pathways like the P.J. Boatwright Jr. Internship Program.  

The U.S. Open helps keep the amateur and recreational game strong and growing, and plays a vital role in elevating the women’s game by providing opportunities to compete at the highest level.

It means that the on-course experiences of every recreational golfer can continue to improve, thanks to research, tools and education that promote sustainable golf course practices.

Features

And it provides an opportunity to add to the rich storybook of golf, one that starts with the players who compete, and celebrates the culture that has shaped the game through time. Art, architecture, science, breaking barriers, overcoming the odds — they are stories worth celebrating and preserving.

Those efforts, together with our dedicated volunteers, USGA Members, Foundation donors, and host communities, are what make U.S. Open week so memorable. And why we feel a responsibility to deliver it.

As I sit in my family room for the first time in 30 years on Father’s Day with my son, I will remember that first one I attended with my dad. I will remember that the glory each champion receives is worthy of the grit and determination it takes to win a U.S. Open. And I will remember that the U.S. Open, and the impact it delivers, will help ensure a healthier game long after the trophy is hoisted.

It is how we champion and advance the game. And it is why the U.S. Open is our championship — not the USGA’s, but everyone who loves this great game.

A great U.S. Open means a great game. And I can’t wait for the 120th installment in September at Winged Foot.

Mike Davis is the CEO of the United States Golf Association.

Editor’s Picks

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The post PGA Championship and Women’s PGA heading to iconic Baltusrol Golf Club appeared first on Golf.

The post PGA Championship and Women’s PGA heading to iconic Baltusrol Golf Club appeared first on Golf.

Historic Baltusrol Golf Club has already hosted a huge amount of prestigious golf events, and now it’s getting two more to add to its resume.

The PGA of America announced on Saturday that the 2023 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship will be held at Baltusrol, as well as the 2029 PGA Championship on the men’s side.

Baltusrol, located in Springfield, N.J., previously hosted one other women’s major, the 1961 U.S. Women’s Open won by World Golf Hall of Fame member Mickey Wright.

A total of seven U.S. Opens have been played at the club, and two recent PGA Championships in 2005 and 2016. Phil Mickelson captured his only PGA title there in the 2005 event. The club has also played host to four U.S. Amateurs, the most recent in 2000.

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The post PGA Championship 2016: Our 14 Favorite Items for Sale at Baltusrol appeared first on Golf.

The post PGA Championship 2016: Our 14 Favorite Items for Sale at Baltusrol appeared first on Golf.

The merchandise tent will be one of the main attractions this week at Baltusrol, so we’ve saved you some time by finding the coolest stuff your money can buy.

The post PGA Championship 2016: Our 14 Favorite Items for Sale at Baltusrol appeared first on Golf.