Baltusrol straightforward but tough
Players will pay for errant shots
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 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 would soon take his own life, while Davis was acquitted of murder charges but later convicted of forgery and died in prison.
Fifty years later, Louis Keller, publisher of the
purchased the rolling farmland in the hills 20 miles west of Manhattan and established the fifth-oldest golf club in the USA. Honoring the man who once farmed the land, Keller joined the names of Baltus Roll and thus fabled Baltusrol Golf Club came to be.
Against that backdrop — Roll’s tombstone rests 5 miles from the clubhouse and reads in addition to his name, “Murdered” — the 98th PGA Championship begins Thursday on the Lower Course.
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,” world No. 4 and two-time PGA champ Rory McIlroy said of the Lower, which will play to par 70 and 7,428 yards. “There’s no real hidden secrets.”
But there are plenty of distinctive features on the tree-lined layout that has sizable greens and just two water hazards, including the back-to-back par-5s that close the course, a rarity in golf.
The titanic 17th, at 649 yards one of the longest par-5s in major championship history, is a beast with its collection of heavy rough guarding the thin fairways, four large, mischievous bunkers that dissect the fairway 425 yards from the tee, and seven deep The 18th hole is Baltusrol’s second longest at 554 yards and will play as a par-5 during the PGA Championship. bunkers that protect the elevated green. A mis-hit tee shot could force players to stay short of the cross bunkers with their second shot, setting up an undesirable approach of 250-300 yards.
The 18th at 554 yards is more manageable but can deliver 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 ’80 U.S. Open here — Nicklaus used a 1-iron from 237 yards to reach the green in three after he was forced to lay up. He made the putt to establish the then-scoring record of 275.
Other holes can be cause for concern, including two par-4s stretching over 500 yards — the third and seventh. Three of the four par-3s are longer than 200 yards, and the fourth, the course’s signature hole at 196 yards, 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 here. “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.
“The only holes that are closed off are the short holes where you’re coming in with a wedge, like No. 8. Every hole allows you an opportunity to chase one up. So you can get it on the green, even if you do miss a fairway . ...
“Putting is a challenge 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, and it’s sometimes hard to see. I think reading the greens is going to be the biggest challenge for most people out here.”