Merion Prints

Linda Hartough painted the 16th on Merion's East Course, the Quarry Hole, for the 2013 U.S. Open: an approach across the old stone quarry to a green marked by one of Merion's wicker baskets.

The East is short by championship standards and sits on a small property, yet it has tested the best players for more than a century. Its bunkers, known as the white faces of Merion, are rough-edged and deep, and its greens are fast and full of slope. The flagsticks are topped with red wicker baskets instead of flags, so players cannot read the wind from them. The closing holes play around and across an old stone quarry; the 16th, the Quarry Hole, asks for an approach across it.

Merion has hosted the U.S. Open five times, in 1934, 1950, 1971, 1981 and 2013. In 1950, sixteen months after a near-fatal car accident, Ben Hogan hit a 1-iron to the 18th green on the way to a playoff he went on to win; the moment was captured in one of the best-known photographs in golf. Justin Rose won in 2013. Merion has also hosted more USGA championships than any other club, including the 1930 U.S. Amateur, where Bobby Jones completed his Grand Slam.