Sports: How Merion Got Its Groove Back

A few weeks later, Fay called Craig Ammerman, who’d been with him that day. He told him he’d been thinking and, given Merion’s contribution to the game, was succumbing to members’ sense of history — of romance. He wanted to try to make an Open feasible. Ammerman suggested Fay call Inquirer golf writer Joe Logan to float a trial balloon.

Logan was stunned. “I knew Fay was a big fan of the course, but my first thought was, ‘Is this some kind of practical joke?’ The idea that Merion might be in play again was an absolute shock.”

Iredale was just as stunned when he read Logan’s story in early November 2002 hinting that an Open was being considered. “The USGA hadn’t shared any of this with us, so we were more in the dark than the light,” he says. “We didn’t want to get excited. We didn’t know how sincere the feeling was.” Members talked about it, “but it was really wishful thinking,” concedes Iredale, “like kids sitting around and saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to be a jet pilot?’ The conversation was meaningless.”

And died. Until 2004, when Davis finally came clean with the membership: Sentiment for Merion within the USGA was building. The 2005 Amateur would be a dry run inside the ropes. If that went well — if Merion delivered a championship-caliber event across the board — a conversation about hosting the U.S. Open would no longer be meaningless.

A HOT, WET summer made conditions dicey for the Amateur. But by opening day, the course looked much better, and by the end of the second day, Bill Iredale and his posse knew: Their little museum piece had come through.

Iredale checked the scoreboard constantly and wasn’t seeing many red numbers — only six golfers had posted one-under-par rounds, out of 312 total. The 78.2 scoring average (on a par 70) was the second highest since 1991, grittier than the performances put on by recent pedigreed Amateur sites Baltusrol, Winged Foot and Pebble Beach. “The kids may have been hitting the ball a thousand yards,” says Greenwood, “but we held our own.” Davis concurs: “As far as I was concerned, Merion passed with flying colors.”

By Sunday evening, as Iredale, Marucci and Greenwood sat with Davis and his wife on the clubhouse porch, the excitement was palpable. Marucci broke open two bottles of vintage bordeaux. “We all toasted the fact that it had gone so well,” says Iredale, “and that it was leading to The Big One.”