Baltusrol Golf Course

Baltusrol Golf Club operates two courses on a single Springfield, New Jersey property — the Lower and the Upper — that A.W. Tillinghast routed simultaneously in 1922. The Lower Course is the championship rotation venue and the focus of all major-hosting; the Upper Course hosts the U.S. Women's Open and select PGA Tour events but stays largely outside the modern major conversation. The Lower has hosted seven U.S. Opens — 1903, 1915, 1936, 1954, 1967 (Jack Nicklaus, course-record 65 in the final round), 1980 (Nicklaus again), 1993 (Lee Janzen) — and three PGA Championships, including the 2005 (Phil Mickelson) and 2016 (Jimmy Walker) editions.

The Lower Course plays around 7,400 yards par 70 from the championship markers, with bent fairways and a slope in the upper 140s. The seventeenth — a 650-yard par-5 from the championship markers, the longest par-5 ever played in a U.S. Open at that length — and the eighteenth, a 553-yard par-5 with a green set above a pond, are the routing's defining holes. Tillinghast designed the green complexes for the gutta-percha and early wound-ball eras; modern equipment has shortened the routing's playing length, but the green-complex contouring still defends against tour-quality iron play.

Baltusrol is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The membership has supported the major-rotation through generations, and the club has invested in continuous restoration to keep the Tillinghast routings intact. The 2029 PGA Championship is scheduled for the Lower Course.

New Jersey climate gives Baltusrol a playing season of April through November. The course closes through brief winter cold snaps. The mature tree canopy keeps the routing cooler in mid-summer than the surrounding suburban Springfield area. Tillinghast's original strategic decisions appear most clearly in the angled fairways and the way the green complexes capture approaches from the wrong side of the playing corridor.