Baltusrol was named for a murdered farmer, and other facts about the PGA Championship site
A challenge to pronounce and type, Baltusrol Golf Club, which will host this week’s 98th PGA Championship, was named after Baltus Roll, a farmer who owned and worked the land where the club resides today. In 1831, Roll was slain at the age of 61, reportedly by two thieves who believed that he had hidden a small treasure in his farmhouse.
Louis Keller, publisher of the New York Social Register, bought the land in the 1890s and announced he’d build a golf course on the site. A nine-hole track opened in 1895 and eventually was expanded to 18 holes. Called the “Old Course,” it was completely replaced when famed architect A.W. Tillinghast was hired by the club to build two courses — the Lower and Upper. When both opened in 1922, Baltusrol was the first club in America to have two contiguous courses.
Fifteen U.S. Golf Assn. championships have been staged on the two courses. The Lower became the preferred layout, with Robert Trent Jones reworking it in 1948, and his son, Rees Jones, doing his own work in advance of the 1993 U.S. Open.
The most significant change to the Lower Course since Phil Mickelson’s PGA Championship victory in 2005 is that the pond on the left landing area on No. 18 has been enlarged and moved to make it more hazardous. Mickelson said this week that 3-wood might be the play off the tee instead of driver, in turn forcing a longer second shot for those who attempt to reach the par-5 in two.
Baltusrol’s Tudor Revival-style clubhouse is among the most iconic in American golf. The first clubhouse burned down in 1909 and was replaced by the current one. In 1912, it became the first golf clubhouse to host a U.S. president with the visit of William Howard Taft.
In 2005, Baltusrol was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2014, it was designated as a National Historic Landmark.
tod.leonard@sduniontribune.com
