Peter Williams: Baltus legend keeps on a Roll

Memories of old Baltus Roll will surround the fourth major championship of the year when the US PGA starts this week. Golf courses take their names from various sources. Many, like St Andrews and Augusta National, are based simply on the location.

Others, like Pebble Beach or Pine Valley, are named after geographical features in the vicinity. Very few are named after dead people.

But such is the case for the famous Baltusrol Golf Club, near New York City, which this week hosts its first major championship since the 1993 US Open.

Until 1831, the land on which the golf club is now situated was a farm owned by Mr Baltus Roll. He was a man renowned for his thrift. One night in 1831 a couple of strangers, very keen to relieve Mr Roll of his considerable stash, were disturbed by the parsimonious farmer. As is usually the case, two bad guys were too powerful for one good guy and poor Mr Roll met a violent death.

Two suspects were later arrested and charged with the murder. One hung himself in jail and the other was tried but acquitted. Mr Roll's gravestone in nearby Westfield, New Jersey bears the simple inscription - Murdered.

Even though Mr Roll had no descendants, the land was farmed for another 60 years. But, in the 1890s, a group of locals, keen on taking up a popular new game called golf, purchased the farm, laid out a rudimentary course and formed a club. In deference to the tragedy of the man who had toiled more than half a century before, the club was called Baltusrol. It has become one of the most revered properties in the game.

After the initial efforts of club members, the foremost golf architect of the early 20th century, A.W. Tillinghast, designed the basis of what still exists today.

There was considerable development work carried out in preparation for Baltusrol's first US Open in 1954. The man who supervised it was Robert Trent Jones, father of the designer responsible for Gulf Harbour.

Before Ed Furgol won that US Open 51 years ago, the first to be televised, many Baltusrol members had complained loud and long to Mr Jones about how difficult he'd made their golf course.

In particular, they were incensed at the way he'd built swales and contours on the par-three fourth and made it, in their opinion, unfair.

Mr Jones was summoned to the club and ordered to play the hole so the members could make their point. The architect, according to legend which has grown through the ages, took out a four iron, hit the shot and watched as it went into the hole on the second bounce.

Mr Jones didn't linger but, as he left the tee, he commented: "Gentlemen, I believe the hole is eminently fair."

Half a century on, two of the modern-day greats think pretty much the same about the entire golf course. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson both called in for a practice round earlier this week.

Woods said Baltusrol was "straightforward" while Mickelson said the "shot values were as good as any course we play".

Woods and Mickelson, who have a famously frosty relationship, only met up by coincidence last Monday. They arrived separately but encountered each other on the course and played a few holes together.

They were both wearing shorts. Members are not allowed to play in attire so casual - as far as we know, neither player was asked to change.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY