In 1915, the line between amateur and professional golf remained sharply drawn, and amateurs rarely competed for the U.S. Open title. Jerome Travers was the exception. He had already won the U.S. Amateur four times -- in 1907, 1908, 1912, and 1913 -- establishing himself as the dominant match-play golfer in America. But stroke play was a different test, and the Open demanded a different kind of nerve. Travers took the lead in the third round with a 73, one shot ahead of a pack that included Jim Barnes, Louis Tellier, Bob MacDonald, and Mike Brady. Tom McNamara lurked two strokes behind. When Travers stood on the tenth tee of the final round, needing 37 on the inward half to win, few in the gallery would have bet against him.

What followed was a masterclass in recovery. After the disaster at ten, Travers saved par with a 15-foot putt at the eleventh, then three-putted for bogey at twelve. McNamara, already finished with a 75 for a 298 total, could only watch. Travers steadied himself with pars, then made a crucial birdie at the fifteenth hole to give himself breathing room. Pars on the final three holes brought him home with a 76 and a 297 total -- one stroke ahead of McNamara, three ahead of MacDonald, and four clear of Barnes and Tellier. Defending champion Walter Hagen, who would go on to win eleven major titles of his own, finished nine strokes back in a tie for tenth.

Shortly after his victory at Baltusrol, Travers did something no one expected. He announced his retirement from competitive golf. He never played in another U.S. Open. The reasons have been debated by golf historians ever since -- some point to business pressures, others to a restless temperament that found conquering enough and had no appetite for defending. Whatever drove the decision, it gave the 1915 Open a bittersweet quality: the greatest amateur of his generation had proved he could beat the professionals at their own game, then simply walked away. It would be another 18 years before another amateur, Johnny Goodman, won the U.S. Open.

The 1915 U.S. Open was the last major championship played on Baltusrol's original layout. The Old Course had hosted its first Open in 1903, when Willie Anderson won in a rain-soaked playoff. By 1918, renowned architect A.W. Tillinghast had been hired to reimagine the property entirely, and the Old Course -- all 6,212 yards of it, with its quaint par of 74 -- was plowed under. In its place rose the Upper and Lower Courses, longer and more demanding designs befitting the evolving game. The Open returned to Baltusrol's Lower Course in 1936, by which time the old grounds Travers had walked were nothing but memory and turf beneath Tillinghast's new greens.