Baltusrol Golf Club -- Golf's Yankee Stadium

Presidents and kings have walked its famed fairways. So, too, have golf's greatest legends. This week during the 87th PGA Championship, a host of other all-world talents will test their skills at Baltusrol Golf Club.

By Kevin Manahan, PGA Championship Journal

With his New Jersey golf course just four years old, Louis Keller lobbied the United States Golf Association for the 1900 women's championship, but the tournament was awarded to Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. So he did what any ticked-off guy would have done: He decided to hold his own women's tournament and make those silly golf officials think twice about refusing him again.

His invitational -- lavish and well promoted -- dwarfed the competition on Long Island, according to reports in the New York Sun. Keller's field of contestants bulged with the area's best golfers, and hundreds of cheering spectators lined the fairways and surrounded the greens.

The USGA got the message.

Keller's fledgling course was awarded the 1901 Women's Amateur Championship, beginning a string of major tournaments that have been woven into the fabric of one of the nation's most storied sports venues: Baltusrol Golf Club.

Two years later, the club staged its first U.S. Open, and on and on it went.

During the 20th century, Baltusrol, along with Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club, would host seven U.S. Opens -- more than any other clubs in America. Fittingly, the champion of the club's first U.S. Open was Willie Anderson, a former Baltusrol head professional.

Remaining true to Keller's vision -- to continually make Baltusrol the site of the game's most prestigious tournaments -- the club has hosted 15 national championships, including those seven U.S. Opens, in its 110-year history. It now welcomes the final major of the season, the 2005 PGA Championship, only the second PGA Championship ever played in New Jersey.

Somewhere, Louis Keller is smiling.

"He knew what he wanted to do from the start," says Baltusrol historian Rick Wolffe. "That's what made Keller different from other people who were building golf courses around the turn of the century. Most of them probably saw the game as a fad. He saw the future. He knew this game would grow beyond people's imaginations.

"And he wanted Baltusrol to set the standard for course design and great championships."

Keller's promotional strategy was simple: Host at least one important golf event, tournament or exhibition, each year to keep Baltusrol in the spotlight.

Little did he know that his course would become golf's Yankee Stadium.

Presidents and kings have walked the fairways. So, too, have the sport's greatest legends -- from Bobby Jones to Sam Snead to Arnold Palmer to Jack Nicklaus.

And, during the 2005 PGA Championship, several more all-world talents will take their places alongside the Hall of Famers who have visited Baltusrol, including two-time PGA Champions Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh.

Keller, with all of his intuition about the game, was not a golfer. He was a socialite with his finger on the pulse of the wealthy. The creator and publisher of the New York Social Register, Keller was the era's arbiter on class. He decided who could enter the stratosphere of the metropolitan area's social elite. And when the golf craze gripped the country, he saw a way to expand his elitism into the sporting world. But the Short Hills Club, a racquet club to which he belonged, couldn't be swayed to build a golf course on its extra acreage, so Keller decided to do it himself, using 500 acres of land he owned in Springfield, N.J.

Baltus Roll's Murder

But this wasn't any old pasture. Part of the parcel had once belonged to Baltus Roll, a farmer who had been dragged into the snow and killed by two masked men after they burst into his home in the middle of the night on Feb. 22, 1831, looking for money. One suspect, Lycidias Baldwin, fled to nearby Morristown and committed suicide by overdose after hearing that his alleged accomplice, Peter Davis, had been arrested.

In a courtroom drama that newspapers called "the trial of the century," Davis was acquitted of murder but convicted by the judge on four fraud charges stemming from testimony during the trial. He was sentenced to 24 years and died in prison.

Years later, when a local woman cleverly combined the victim's name and suggested it as the name for his golf club, Keller latched onto the idea. Baltusrol Golf Club opened on Oct. 19, 1895.

The invitations to join, which had been sent to Keller's most prominent friends in April of 1895, promised "nine holes averaging 250 yards" and "40-foot greens" laid out upon "sandy hills." The annual dues were $10, just $20 for families. By 1898, membership had grown to 400, and the course expanded to 18 holes.

Over the next dozen years, the facilities at Baltusrol grew to be incomparable in all respects but one -- the clubhouse. While the rustic refurbished farmhouse had charm, many considered it a firetrap, and on March 27, 1909, a late-night kitchen fire burned the building to the ground.

Hugh Toler, the only club member on the premises when the fire broke out, was hailed as a hero for saving the lives of several female employees.

Another Baltusrol member became famous for not being there, however.

After spending the night with his girlfriend, he returned home and told his wife he had been detained on business and had spent the night in the Baltusrol clubhouse.

She showed him the morning newspaper, a photo of the smoldering building on the cover. Says club historian Bob Trebus: "The marriage ended in divorce." Everything was lost in the fire -- trophies, artwork, the original deed to the property and hundreds of sets of golf clubs -- but a new clubhouse was completed by December 1910. The stunning Tudor structure still stands today.

The following year, Baltusrol staged the U.S. Women's Amateur.

By the time President William Howard Taft played the course and had lunch in the new clubhouse in 1912, Baltusrol's reputation was unparalleled. Taft said he had been told "Baltusrol is probably the best course in America." But flattery didn't help. Because Taft hadn't been invited to play, club officials decided not to pick up his tab.

The 1915 U.S. Open marked the fifth national championship to be played at Baltusrol Golf Club, but there had been some grumbling about decaying conditions during the tournament, and members, now numbering 700 and battling for tee times, were whining about the difficulty of getting on the course.

Upper, Lower Courses Built

So Keller made his boldest gamble yet and decided to build two courses using additional land he had purchased. But Baltusrol wasn't going to take the easy way and tack on another 18 holes. Instead, the club's board of directors agreed with golf course architect A.W. Tillinghast's recommendations to eliminate the hilly holes by creating upper and lower courses.

Think of this as the first "Extreme Makeover." The work lasted six years, and Keller died before the course officially reopened in 1922, but a new legend was born: With the upper and lower 18s hailed as successes, Tillinghast began touting himself as the "Creator of Baltusrol." Other clubs lined up to hire him.

"Baltusrol's decision to allow Tillinghast to plow the course under was unprecedented," Wolffe says. "Remember, the Old Course was a landmark. But it was all part of Keller's vision." Before landing the job to remake Baltusrol, Tillinghast had only dabbled in golf course design. Just about every job he had held was related to the game. He was a golf photographer, golf humorist and syndicated golf columnist. He owned miniature golf courses and driving ranges.

He also was a decent golfer, a second-tier player who once finished 25th in a U.S. Open. But he would have died a virtual nobody if not for Baltusrol, his first big break.

With two beautiful new courses, Baltusrol was selected for the 1926 U.S. Amateur, and a record 15,000 fans came to watch the final between George Von Elm and Bobby Jones, who was bidding for an unprecedented third consecutive Amateur title. Von Elm won, 2 and 1, in a 36-hole final.

The stock market collapse in 1929 nearly destroyed the golf industry and other luxuries, but Baltusrol was kept afloat by Major Avery Jones, the club's manager, who cut expenses and his own paycheck, and earned money for the course by allowing members to fly-fish in a pond on the 13th hole of the Upper Course for $15 a year.

When thriving again, Baltusrol hired the well-known Johnny Farrell in 1934 as its PGA head professional. Farrell had won seven tournaments in 1927 and had beaten Bobby Jones in a 36-hole playoff to win the 1928 U.S. Open at Olympia Fields, outside Chicago. Farrell became one of the most respected golf instructors of his time, boasting Edward, Duke of Windsor, as one of his pupils. Farrell remained at Baltusrol until 1972, an incredible run of 38 years (see Farrell feature elsewhere in this issue).

In 1948, when Baltusrol wanted to improve its two courses, the board selected Robert Trent Jones, the best golf course designer of his era. But when Jones shoved back the tee on the par-3 fourth hole, which plays over water, members complained that he had made the hole too difficult.

To end the protests, a defiant Jones strolled to the No. 4 tee box with a 4-iron.

He knocked the ball in for an ace, then turned to the stunned onlookers.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I think the hole is eminently fair."

The '54 U.S. Open is on National TV

The course tweaked, Baltusrol was awarded the 1954 U.S. Open on the Lower Course, with a star-studded field that included Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Cary Middlecoff and Jimmy Demaret.

But they were all beaten by Ed Furgol, a journeyman professional who had overcome a childhood playground accident that had disfigured his arm.

Furgol won the title in dramatic fashion, hooking his tee shot on No. 18 into the trees that separated the two courses. He played his second shot into the Upper Course, then knocked the ball onto the green on the Lower Course to beat Gene Littler by a shot.

"First time I've ever seen a guy win a major by playing two courses on one hole," golf reporter Red Hoffman said at the time. "I wouldn't have believed it, but I saw it."

The 1954 U.S. Open was the first Open to be nationally televised. It also was the first that used ropes to contain the spectators.

America's love affair with Jack Nicklaus probably started at the 1967 U.S. Open at Baltusrol Golf Club. Although the Golden Bear was seen as an up-andcoming star, Arnold Palmer was still the overwhelming favorite of golf fans. But when Nicklaus won the '67 Open, partly on the strength of an incredible 1-iron shot at 18, he captured many hearts.

During the final round, Nicklaus had driven the ball into the rough and tried to chop an 8-iron down the fairway. He hit it fat, leaving a long way home on the final hole.

"Here I am, 238 yards from the green off a downhill lie," Nicklaus recalls. "It's uphill and into the wind. And I had to carry those bunkers with the old golf ball. Can you imagine?"

He hammered a 1-iron onto the green.

Today, a plaque in the fairway marks the spot. That single shot, and his victory, convinced the world: He was better than Palmer.

Then, in 1980, when he was considered washed up at 40, Nicklaus staged the greatest triumph of his career. After being winless for more than a year and hearing the whispers that he was through, Nicklaus beat Isao Aokia of Japan in the U.S. Open at Baltusrol, leading headlines to proclaim: "Jack is back!" The 1980 U.S. Open title was his fourth.

"Baltusrol taught me one thing," says Nicklaus. "Life doesn't end at 40." In 1993, Baltusrol staged its seventh U.S. Open, a record. Lee Janzen took home the trophy, but John Daly, a young grip-it-and-rip-it golfer who electrified crowds with his booming drives, became the first golfer to reach the 630-yard 17th hole in two shots.

More history is likely to be made at this week's PGA Championship -- more feats for the record books, more historic photos for the walls of the Baltusrol clubhouse, more memorabilia for the PGA Historical Center in Port St. Lucie, Fla. A tradition that started in 1895 with Louis Keller keeps growing more than a century later. Baltusrol is the only club to host major championships on three different courses, the only club to stage men??s majors on two courses.

"People on the street may think that the history of Baltusrol starts with Jack Nicklaus," Trebus says, "but the club was around for more than 72 years before Jack??s first U.S. Open victory here. There is a rich history at Baltusrol. As members, we know that history and embrace it."

For a week, golf fans will walk among that history while watching the current generation of greats
--
Woods, defending PGA Champion Vijay Singh, popular Phil Mickelson, effortless Ernie Els, super cool Retief Goosen and fiery Sergio Garcia, among others. The fans will feel what the members feel.

"Why else would you want to be a member at Baltusrol?" Trebus asks. "You want to be here. You want to try to hit your shots where Nicklaus and Palmer and Trevino hit theirs. You want to walk among the history, and no other golf course has the rich history of Baltusrol."