The tournament's opening act belonged to an unlikely figure. Marty Fleckman, a 23-year-old amateur from Port Arthur, Texas, playing in his first U.S. Open, fired a 67 in the opening round to lead the field by two strokes. It was the kind of performance that electrifies a gallery -- an unknown taking on the giants of the game and, at least temporarily, beating them all. Fleckman held the lead through 54 holes before the pressure of the final round caught up with him. He would finish as low amateur, one stroke ahead of Bob Murphy, an achievement worth celebrating even as the spotlight shifted to the professionals chasing the title behind him.

Nicklaus had won the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont as a 22-year-old, and by 1967 he had already accumulated six major championships. But his final round at Baltusrol -- a 65 that matched the U.S. Open record for the lowest closing 18 holes -- was something special even by his standards. The 275 total eclipsed Ben Hogan's mark of 276, set at Riviera Country Club in 1948. Arnold Palmer, four strokes back in second place, had now finished runner-up at the U.S. Open for the fourth time in six years, having lost playoffs in 1962, 1963, and 1966. The rivalry between Nicklaus and Palmer was the defining storyline of 1960s golf, and Baltusrol offered another chapter in their ongoing battle, one that Palmer kept losing by the narrowest of margins.

The 1967 Open carried a valedictory quality that no one fully appreciated at the time. Ben Hogan, 54 years old and long past his competitive prime, entered the championship field one last time. He shot 72 in each of the first two rounds and finished tied for 34th -- respectable for a man whose legs had been shattered in a 1949 car accident and who had rebuilt himself into arguably the finest ball-striker the game has known. It was Hogan's final major championship appearance. His scoring record, the 276 he had posted at Riviera nearly two decades earlier, fell to Nicklaus that same week. One record ended where another began, on the same course, during the same tournament -- a passing of the torch so precise it might have been scripted.

The 1967 Open was played on Baltusrol's Lower Course, which A.W. Tillinghast had designed in 1918 after demolishing the club's original Old Course. By 1967, the Lower Course stretched to 7,027 yards with a par of 70 -- a massive increase from the 6,003-yard Old Course that had hosted the 1903 Open and the 6,212-yard layout used in 1915. The 1936 Open had been played on Baltusrol's Upper Course at 6,866 yards. Each return of the Open to Baltusrol told the story of how golf was evolving: longer courses, lower scores, and athletes who hit the ball distances their predecessors could not have imagined. Nicklaus's 275 record would itself stand for only thirteen years before he broke it again -- at Baltusrol, in 1980, with a 272 on the same Lower Course.