A course worthy of its history
Brutal Baltusrol will offer stern test for best in world
SPRINGFIELD, N.J. — On a chilly February night in 1831, Baltus Roll, a farmer who led a quiet life alongside his wife, Susanna, was murdered by two men seeking a rumored buried treasure.
Billed by the New York newspapers as the ‘‘Crime of the Century,’’ the alleged killers, Peter Davis and Lycidias Baldwin, never found any lucrative cache as they ransacked the cottage and hogtied and strangled Roll to death. Baldwin soon would take his own life, and Davis was acquitted of murder charges but later convicted of forg- ery and died in prison.
Fifty years later, Louis Keller, the publisher of the New York Social Register, purchased the rolling farmland in the hills 20 miles west of Manhattan and established the fifth-oldest golf club in the United States. Honoring the man who once farmed the land, Keller joined the names of Baltus Roll, and fabled Baltusrol Golf Club came to be.
Against that chilling backdrop — Roll’s tombstone rests five miles from the clubhouse — the 98th PGA Championship begins Thursday on the Lower Course.
While not as ghoulish as the namesake’s demise, the course is a brute. Unlike Roll’s final hours, however, renowned architect A.W. Tillinghast’s gem will be a fair fight for the best players in the world.
‘‘Everything is straight out in front of you,’’ two-time PGA cham- pion Rory McIlroy said of a course that will play to a par of 70 and 7,428 yards. ‘‘There’s no real hidden secrets to it.’’
But there are plenty of distinctive features on a tree-lined layout that features sizable greens, just two water hazards and back-to- back par-5s that close the course.
The titanic 17th, one of the longest par-5s in major-championship history at 649 yards, is a beast, with its collection of heavy rough guarding the thin fairways, four large bunkers that dissect the fairway 425 yards from the tee and seven deep bunkers that protect the elevated green.
The 18th is more manageable at 554 yards, but it still can mean trouble. A plaque 237 yards from the green commemorates one of Jack Nicklaus’ greatest shots.
En route to winning the 1967 U.S. Open — he also won the 1980 U.S. Open at Baltusrol — Nicklaus used a 1-iron from 237 yards to reach the green in three after he was forced to lay up after an errant tee shot. He made the putt to establish the then-scoring record of 275.
Other holes can be cause for concern, too, including two par-4s stretching more than 500 yards. Three of the four par-3s are longer than 200 yards, and the other has a water hazard running right up the front of the putting surface.
‘‘You’ve got to drive the ball straight, for sure,’’ said Phil Mickelson, who won the 2005 PGA Championship on the course. ‘‘It doesn’t have to be long. If you notice, the great thing about Baltusrol is how the front of the greens are always open. You have an opportunity to run shots up. . . .
‘‘Putting is a challenge here because the greens have a lot of contour, and they are not consistent contours. There’s a lot of little rolls and knolls. You can see multiple lines, and only one of them is correct. I think reading the greens is going to be the biggest challenge for most people out here.’’