Course Plays Major Role

In the name game, it’s one of the more unusual ones. So what exactly is a Baltusrol?

It’s a 7,392-yard, par-70 endurance test of a golf course in Springfield, N.J., that’s Baltusrol Golf Club, where the 87th PGA Championship will be contested beginning Thursday.

Baltusrol Golf Club has been the scene of seven U.S. Open championships -- 1903 when Willie Anderson won, 1915 when Jerome Travers won, 1936 when Tony Manero won, 1954 when Ed Furgol won, 1967 and 1980 when Jack Nicklaus won and 1993 when Lee Janzen won.

But long before Baltusrol reached the big time, its beginnings were something less, if not exactly of grand proportions, then at least quirkily grand.

Before the name game, there’s a history lesson. In 1831, about 500 acres of land in Springfield Township where Baltusrol now stands was farmland worked by a Scottish immigrant.

His name was Baltus Roll.

Baltus Roll lost the land one night, through no fault of his own, which is what happens when you are robbed and murdered, as poor Mr. Roll was.

As it turns out, Baltus Roll lives on phonetically, thanks to Louis Keller, who was publisher of the New York Social Register and in 1895 coveted a way to get in on this new sports craze called golf.

Keller opened his new club with the funny name and the place took off, shrugging off a brief setback when the clubhouse burned to the ground in 1908.

Baltusrol earned its pedigree when renowned designer Alfred Warren Tillinghast, the man behind Bethpage in Farmingdale, N.Y., and Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y., made two new courses out of the old one, the Lower Course and the Upper Course, and they opened in 1922. It’s Tillinghast’s Lower Course that sealed Baltusrol’s fame.

It may have been 12 years since a major has been played at Baltusrol, but chances are that it’s not going to be any easier than it was when Janzen shot eight-under-par 272 to beat Payne Stewart by two shots and a fresh-faced Scot named Colin Montgomerie by three.

Baltusrol measured 7,152 yards when Janzen tamed it to win the first of his two U.S. Open titles, but it’s going to be 240 yards longer this time. And that features 20 more yards added to the par-five 17th, which measures a heart-stopping 650 yards, mostly uphill and possibly into the wind.

Only two players have reached the green in two shots. The first was Billy Farrell in 1967 when the hole measured 610 yards. It was 630 yards when John Daly did it in the second round of the 1993 Open. He drove it 325 yards, then smoked a one-iron shot 290 yards, saw it bounce around a bunker and roll onto the green. He two-putted for a birdie.

The PGA of America hasn’t let its guard down at Baltusrol. Besides the brutish 17th, there are two par-fours on the front that are more than 500 yards, the rough is tall and thick, the fairways are somewhat narrower than the 35- to 40-yard width from 1993, and even someone as strong as defending champion Vijay Singh knows that distance off the tee is vital to success.

“I think the longer hitters are going to have an advantage, but then again, longer hitters are going to hit more times in the rough,” Singh said. “So the shorter hitter, depending on how short he is, I mean, if he’s very short he’s probably going to have no chance. But if he’s medium, if he’s in the middle of the pack, then he has to hit a lot of fairways to have chances to attack the greens and the pins.”

As for reaching the 17th green in two, Singh said it’s possible: “If the ground gets firm and it’s downwind, you would probably be able to. You can fly it 350 yards, you have a chance to get up there, but it’s very unlikely.”

The par-four third hole, which was 466 yards long for the 1993 Open, has been beefed up to 503 yards.

John Huenke, the tournament’s general chairman, explained the lengthening, saying the PGA of America wanted to get back to basics.

“When it was originally designed by Tillinghast, the purpose of the whole design was to give the player the opportunity to hit driver, and it has always been a long golf course,” Huenke said.

“What we’ve tried to do in our changes is to keep the course playing the way Tillinghast would have wanted it to be played ... particularly for second shots. On No. 3, for instance, it goes downhill and people were getting so long that they were able to catch that hill. And instead of having a mid-iron, which it was designed for, they would be hitting nine-irons.”

Architect Rees Jones has reworked 14 holes on the course since the 1993 Open, but the most important changes, besides the 17th, were bringing the water more into play on two holes -- the first and 13th -- and lengthening the par-three 16th from 216 yards to 230 yards.

There have been mountains of changes in golf since the 1993 Open, including the introduction of Tiger Woods, who was 17 when Janzen won. But Baltusrol remains largely the same, despite its greater length and dozens of tweaks.

Singh said that if he or anybody else were hitting his driver well, it would be the weapon of choice. The longer the better, said Singh, which lets Woods and his power-hitting peers into the mix for the fourth and last major championship of the year.

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Driver in play

The seven longest layouts in major championship history, including the Lower Course at Baltusrol Golf Club, site of this week’s PGA Championship:

* WHISTLING STRAITS: 2004 PGA Championship, 7,597 yards

* COLUMBINE: 1967 PGA Championship, 7,436 yards

* MEDINAH: 1999 PGA Championship, 7,401 yards

* CARNOUSTIE: 1999 British Open, 7,361 yards

* BALTUSROL: 2005 PGA Championship, 7,392 yards

* HAZELTINE: 2002 PGA Championship, 7,360 yards

* CROOKED STICK: 1991 PGA Championship, 7,295 yards

PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

* When: Thursday-Sunday.

* Defending champion: Vijay Singh.

* Thursday on TV: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. PDT, TNT.