Merion Golf Club

Merion's East Course is the centerpiece of this traditional private club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, a layout that has served as the stage for a long succession of championship golf.

The club traces its origins to the earliest days of the game in the United States. In 1910, the Merion Cricket Club's golf committee charged Hugh Wilson, a talented amateur architect, with designing a new course after the arrival of the Haskell ball rendered the Haverford layout too short. Wilson laid out the new holes on land in Ardmore purchased from the Haverford Development Company, and the course was routed, prepared and seeded by the early autumn of 1911. It was his first design effort, and USGA president Richard S. Tufts later described the result as a model test of golfing skill and judgment for later architects to study.