SPRINGFIELD, NEW JERSEY | In the pantheon of American golf, few places loom as large as Baltusrol.
Founded in 1895 by Louis Keller, publisher of the celebrated guide to members of the aristocracy known as the Social Register, the association took form on rolling land in this town some 20 miles west of New York City. The nearly 600-acre property had once been owned by a farmer named Baltus Roll, who had been murdered in 1831 in what some people in Manhattan called “the crime of the century.” But the notoriety of what ended up being an unsolved case did not dissuade Keller from combining the first and last names of the long-departed victim to create the appellation for his new retreat, calling it the Baltusrol Golf Club.
Keller was an ambitious soul who wanted Baltusrol to be the leading golf club for what he felt was the country’s leading metropolis in New York City. One way to achieve that, he believed, was to host major golf championships. And Baltusrol staged five of them in its first 20 years on a layout that had been fashioned by the club’s head golf professional and superintendent, Scotsman George Low, among them two U.S. Opens, a pair of U.S. Women’s Amateurs and one U.S. Amateur.
Keller liked the cachet those competitions brought but wanted to elevate the club’s profile and stature even further. So, he hired A.W. Tillinghast to add a second 18-hole track. But after considering the ground on which he had to work, the architect suggested that Keller plow under the original layout and let him design and construct two new 18-hole tracks. Tillinghast’s goal was to make them different but architecturally equal. Dubbed the “dual course” concept, it was a first for American golf.
Keller quite liked the idea and directed Tillinghast to proceed accordingly, with construction starting on the new Upper and Lower Courses in 1918. Four years later, they opened for play.
In time, Tillinghast’s creations did exactly what Keller had hoped they would, which was make his club one of the top places for golf in the country, for tour professionals, elite amateurs and recreational players alike. And since those tracks came on line in 1922, Baltusrol has been the site of five more U.S. Opens, including a pair won by Jack Nicklaus in 1967 and 1980; two U.S. Women’s Opens, the 1961 edition of which featured Mickey Wright as the victor; an additional trio of U.S. Amateurs; two PGA Championships, with Phil Mickelson prevailing in 2005; and finally, a U.S. Junior Amateur Championship. While the majority of those events were held on the Lower, several took place on the Upper, including the 1936 U.S. Open, the 1985 U.S. Women’s Open and the match-play portion of the 2000 U.S. Amateur. That record makes Baltusrol the only club ever to stage U.S. Opens for men and women on both its courses, and is but one reason why it was named in 2014 a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior. It is one of only four golf properties ever to receive that honor, and you can be sure that Keller would have been pleased with that recognition.
He would also like how Baltusrol has endeavored to maintain its rather exalted position in golf by taking such good care of its most important assets, the Tillinghast courses. The most recent example of that has been the restoration of those layouts by architect Gil Hanse, using the original designs – and design intents – of Tillinghast as his primary guides.
“The Upper was pretty intact, which made it actually more exciting for us because we wouldn’t have to make as many physical changes to it. The relationship to Tillinghast’s original design was a lot clearer.” – Gil Hanse
The plan for that effort was formalized in the spring of 2019, with work beginning on the Lower late that fall and concluding more or less on time two years later in spite of all the difficulties that the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 presented. The results of Hanse’s effort were very well received, and no one better captured what the architect had accomplished than historian David Normoyle, who said: “What Gil has done is remind us of the subtlety, strategy and rolling beauty of the Lower. And he has made it tremendously fun to play.”
But Normoyle, who has served as a consultant to Baltusrol, was quick to add: “Gil did so without taking away any of its toughness.”
A look down the fairway at the dual green on No. 14 of Baltusrol’s Upper Course in 1935 (left), and a view of No. 14 today. (Click on images to enlarge.)
Having played the Lower in the summer of 2021, I fully concurred with that assessment. And I remember being excited at the time to see what Hanse would produce with a similarly sympathetic restoration of the Upper that was scheduled to begin a couple of years later.
Work on that course started after the close of the 2023 golf season and concluded with the reopening of the Upper in May 2025. It was, to say the least, a rather monumental undertaking, costing $22.9 million and entailing the reconstruction of all greens, bunkers, tees, approaches, fairways and rough as well as installation of the latest irrigation and drainage systems to ensure that the course could play firm and fast. And as I discovered during a round on the Upper earlier this month, its restoration is as much of a triumph as the one Hanse orchestrated on the Lower.
Having never before played the Upper, I had no frame of reference as to what the course was like pre-restoration. But my playing partner-cum-Sherpa this day, member Bob Ferguson, described many of the changes the architect had made as we made our way around. Such as rebuilding the greens to USGA specifications and employing PrecisionAire systems to better manage moisture levels and improve turf health. And bringing the putting surfaces back to their original sizes, a process that ended up expanding them collectively by more than 65 percent and increasing the number of pin positions that could be used. Ferguson told me that teeing areas were also enlarged, mostly to provide members with the option to play the course from multiple distances and also to accommodate elite players who hit their drives much farther than Tillinghast or any of the Golden Age architects could have ever imagined. At the same time, Ferguson added, Hanse moved a number of bunkers farther down the fairways so they once again came into play for the big hitters – and rebuilt all of the sandy hazards with the acclaimed Better Billy Bunker method.
In keeping with his approach on the Lower, Hanse was sure to consider the needs of the average club player on the Upper by creating some new forward tees and widening a number of the fairways.
Ferguson and I played from a set of combination tees that measured 6,265 yards. I liked how the first six holes ran alongside Baltusrol Mountain and appreciated the mix of distances they boasted and the variety of shots they compelled me to hit. I also smiled at the views of the Manhattan skyline I could see from the fifth tee and when Ferguson told me that Baltus Roll’s house once stood behind the tee of the seventh, a longish downhill 3-par with an infinity green guarded by six bunkers. In addition, I admired the specimen hardwoods that rose throughout the course and appreciated the tree-cutting that Hanse had carefully overseen, opening up vistas, restoring scale and improving air flow while retaining the parkland feel of this very bucolic property.
Another positive was realizing as I stood on the tee of the 13th hole, a par-4 some 350 yards in length with a pond and fairway bunker on the right off the tee and a creek running parallel to the landing area to the left, that I had hit every club in my bag. And there was lots more golf left to play.
In talking about his work on the Upper, Hanse is quick to point out how different a job it was from the Lower because the Upper had hosted far fewer major championships and thus had not been altered nearly as much.
“The Upper was pretty intact, which made it actually more exciting for us because we wouldn’t have to make as many physical changes to it,” he said. “The relationship to Tillinghast’s original design was a lot clearer.”
Interesting is certainly one word I would use to describe the Upper. Fun, too, and pleasantly challenging. And as I walked off the fine finisher that is No. 18, all 420 yards of it, I thought of something else Hanse has said about Baltusrol and the two courses he has recently restored there – and that I had been fortunate enough to play.
What also helped the restoration process was the way that club leaders armed Hanse with a vast array of historical documents, largely in the form of aerial photography.
“They provided us with an iPad loaded with an incredible number of images,” the architect recalled. “We could go to Hole 1, and it would show all the aerial photographs of Hole 1. We could literally stand where the photograph was taken and start to visualize: What does the back horizon line look like on the green? What is the relationship between the bunkers and the putting surface?”
In describing the Upper, Hanse says that it is a much more natural course than the Lower and “kind of tucks into that back corner of the property. The holes are so beautiful in the way that they sit in that landscape. The features are really interesting and because the topography allowed it to happen, some of them are bolder, especially the opening set of greens.”
Interesting is certainly one word I would use to describe the Upper. Fun, too, and pleasantly challenging. And as I walked off the fine finisher that is No. 18, all 420 yards of it, I thought of something else Hanse has said about Baltusrol and the two courses he has recently restored there – and that I had been fortunate enough to play.
“As a 36-hole complex, I think Baltusrol can stand toe to toe with any 36-hole complex in the country. It’s the variety. It’s the difference and the fact that the Lower Course sits down there, appropriately so, and the Upper has some amazing topography. I think both of them now have a consistency as it relates to Tillinghast in his design and the way he presented and visualized those golf courses.”
Amen to all that.