Will Merion prove enough of a challenge?

When they shut the lights out at Merion Golf Club and waved goodbye to the U.S. Open on a Sunday night in June 1981, not many people - club officials and members, and golf fans throughout the Philadelphia area - ever thought they'd see the national championship here again.

Even then, the increasing logistical demands of an Open meant that Merion was becoming too small to be the host club. The East course, despite being one of the architectural gems of American golf, had played at 6,544 yards for the Open in both 1971 and 1981, and other courses were providing more of a challenge with expanded length.

As golf entered the 21st century, advances in clubs and the ball, and the increased strength and fitness of the players, pushed Merion further into the background. But club officials, proud of their history with the U.S. Golf Association, decided to extend to the borders of the surrounding Haverford Township neighborhood and add yardage.

The move worked. Merion's longer course passed its audition at the 2005 U.S. Amateur and earned the ultimate prize - the 2013 U.S. Open. However, even at 6,996 yards from the back tees, the question is whether the stronger players with the modern tools will pummel par. That will be answered with Thursday's start of the championship.

"To me, the golf course will be the No. 1 subject leading up to the Open," ABC/ESPN analyst and two-time former Open champion Curtis Strange said. "It won't be Tiger [Woods], won't be Rory [McIlroy], won't be whoever. I think the golf course is the No. 1 curiosity this time."

To a man, experts of the game think it's a terrific idea to bring the U.S. Open to Merion. In an age when majors are played on courses that measure well over 7,000 yards, and Augusta National has felt compelled to stretch out to 7,435 yards, Merion can provide an old-school test in which brain may wind up dominating over brawn.

"I am hopeful that the world will find out that through the use of subtlety and strategy, you can still challenge players of this generation to think their way around a golf course, and that will be enough," said Malvern golf course designer Gil Hanse, who is in Brazil building the venue for the return of golf to the Olympics in 2016.

Merion will not be a "bombs-away" course for Open contestants off the tee. With many blind tee shots and approaches, players are going to have to establish target lines to follow, aiming at a mark in front of them or a tree in the distance. Given the course's doglegs and pitched fairways, the ability to shape a shot to follow the dogleg or hit into a slope will be crucial.

Gary Player, who won the 1965 Open, said Merion "produces difficult holes far beyond their length.

"The bombers on tour will have no advantage," he said. "The advantage lies in accuracy off the tee, putting, and overall course management."

Player's longtime rival, Arnold Palmer, agrees that the shorter length is not a big issue.

"I don't think there's any question that it is certainly very able and capable of handling the Open," Palmer said. "They've got some great par-4s that will be very challenging. It's narrow in spots. It's long enough. You know, 7,000 is not really an accurate [measurement] for what the golf course is. I think it plays a lot longer than a lot of 7,000-yard golf courses."

Bradley Klein, architecture editor of Golf Week, never thought the U.S. Open would come back to Merion because the average tee shot, which is 290 yards, is 30 yards longer than it was in 1981. But he noted that the design of the golf course remains demanding for the modern player.

"It's a different kind of game than the tour is used to," Klein said. "It's not Merion that's taking the driver from their hands, it's the ability to hit 3-woods. At Merion, it's all about placement. They're obviously not going to hit a lot of drivers. Some of them might hit three drivers a round. But there's so much trouble looming.

"It's going to be a great contrast to the Torrey Pines and the Congressionals where they're basically bombing away. I think it's going to be a really interesting alternative test for the players. Some of them will respond to it thoughtfully, and the others who are stupid will not."

Then you have the greens. If the 18 surfaces have one thing in common, it's that they don't have much in common.

"There's not really a trait that runs through them," said USGA executive director Mike Davis, who is in charge of Merion's setup for the Open. "But they are wonderfully designed. I think for that they're fascinating the more and more you get to study them. Certainly how you approach them strategically in a U.S. Open is very important."

Of course, with all the subtleties in finding the target lines on the golf course and the breaks on the greens, players will be cramming a lot of golf into a scant few days trying to learn the nuances of the course. Some may not think they have enough time.

Masters champion Adam Scott played two rounds at Merion last month and felt that he needed as many as five more practice rounds before he felt comfortable in competition.

"It's a course where a lot of knowledge will go a long way," Scott said. "I think as a member it's probably a really enjoyable course to play because you know the little bits and pieces of the course so well. So somehow we need to learn that. Somehow, in seven rounds, I need to have the local knowledge of a member who's played there for 40 years."

That doesn't always work, though.

"I've played it many, many times," said Berwyn's Jay Sigel, a two-time U.S. Amateur champion, who lost in the semifinals of the 1989 Amateur at Merion after his tee ball on the first playoff hole settled into a divot. "You always notice something different. There's danger around the corner. But it's just a fantastic place."

Much has been made of Merion's relatively easy stretch - seven birdie holes in the middle (7 through 13) - and the brutally tough final five holes as conceived by designer Hugh Wilson.

Hanse called Merion "perhaps the finest routing of a golf course on a particular property." He said Wilson used the natural features of the site to make a course "that builds to a crescendo like no course I know through the imaginative use of the boundary on holes 14 and 15, and his innovative use of the quarry on holes 16, 17, and 18."

Four-time Open champion Jack Nicklaus, who lost a playoff at Merion to Lee Trevino in 1971, said he thought Merion was a fine mix of holes, with some that players "are going to abuse the golf course with, and some holes that are going to abuse them."

Nicklaus, who has designed 290 golf courses in 36 countries, thinks Merion would have done very well for the Open even if it did not make the effort to stretch out the holes that it had the room to lengthen.

"They couldn't do anything with some of the holes," Nicklaus said, mentioning Nos. 7 through 13. "They're nice little holes, but by today's standards they are the ones that they're going to abuse. But they will get abused the other way to even it up.

"I still think Merion is a wonderful golf course. To me they don't really need to do that to the golf course. Go play Merion as Merion is. Will they break the Open record there if they would have played the old golf course? Yes. But what does that mean? Is it that important? The importance is that you have a great championship and a great player who has played his best golf to win the championship. That's what it's all about, not the preservation of Merion as a golf course."

Speaking of score, the hope is for fast and firm conditions on fairways and greens to provide the maximum test, meaning a winning score of maybe 2- or 3-under par for 72 holes. However, if it's rainy and the course is softened, expect to see something along the lines of McIlroy's 16-under in 2011 at soaked Congressional.

Still, if that should happen, no one would think that Merion fell short of its mission to test today's contestants with a layout that provided the ultimate trial to legends such as Bobby Jones and Ben Hogan.

"I don't think they're going to tear it up, but it depends on the weather," Sigel said. "If it's 10-under or more, I don't think it failed. I think it's good for golf to have that event here on a facility that's so unusual, so different."

However it ends up, and whether the lights will be turned out for good on a U.S. Open when everyone leaves Merion next Sunday, there will be much interest this week at the small club on the Main Line.

As Nicklaus said, "Merion is a great golf course. I'd love to still have the golf game to go play it."

Is Merion's East Course long enough to challenge the top pros in the world at this week's U.S. Open? Based on recent history, its total length of 6,996 yards should be plenty. Here are some facts about course length and the Open since it was last held at Merion in 1981:

This is the first U.S. Open since Shinnecock Hills in 2004 that an Open course has played to less than 7,000 yards.

Every U.S. Open since 1981 has played to a longer length than Merion's then-6,544 yards.

In the 1980s, only Brookline (Mass.) in 1989 and Baltusrol in 1980 played to more than 7,000 yards.

The second-

longest Open since 1981, at Congressional in 2011, yielded the lowest U.S. Open score in history - Rory McIlroy's 16-under-par performance. A rain-softened course was most commonly cited for McIlroy's dominance.

In the last 10 years, there has been no pattern connecting length of course to total score. The two highest winning scores - 5-over-par 285s by Angel Cabrera at Oakmont (7,230 yards) in 2007 and Geoff Ogilby at Winged Foot (7,264) in 2006 - were played at average-length U.S. Open courses.

The second-shortest course - Pebble Beach (7,040) in 2010 - produced an even-par 280 winner in Graeme McDowell, who won despite shooting a 3-over-par 74 in the final round. It was hardly the length that day, as each of the top six finishers on this relatively short U.S. Open course shot over par.

Merion's 7-under winning score by David Graham in 1981 is not noteworthy for being particularly low. Since Merion in 1981, seven winners have shot at least 6-under for the tournament. However, only four winning scores - McIlroy (268), Jim Furyk (272 at Olympia Fields, 2003), Tiger Woods (272 at Pebble Beach , 2000), and Lee Janzen (272 at Baltusrol, 1993) - were lower than Graham's 273. - Gary Potosky

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