Louis Keller, the man who created the Social Register -- the directory of who mattered in New York society -- purchased 500 acres in Springfield Township in the 1890s. On October 19, 1895, he announced the opening of Baltusrol Golf Club. The original nine-hole course, designed by George Hunter, was expanded to 18 holes in 1898 and further modified by George Low. But Keller wanted something grander. He hired A. W. Tillinghast, who looked at the existing Old Course and made a bold recommendation: plow it under entirely, and let him design two new courses from scratch. The club agreed. Construction of the Upper and Lower courses began in 1918, and both opened for play in June 1922 -- the first contiguous 36-hole design built in America.

Tillinghast designed the Upper and Lower courses as equals -- what he called "Dual Courses," intended to be "equally sought after as a matter of preference." But nature gave him two distinct canvases. The Lower Course spreads across rolling parkland, the remnant of a terminal moraine deposited by glaciers roughly 18,000 years ago. The Upper Course runs along a ridgeline called Baltusrol Mountain, the east face of the First Watchung Mountain, formed from massive lava flows approximately 200 million years ago. One course shaped by ice, the other by fire. Both feature ponds, creeks, and natural hazards woven through Tillinghast's designs. He served as the club's architect until his death in 1942.

Baltusrol has hosted 15 USGA-sponsored championships and two PGA-sponsored events. The U.S. Open has been played on its grounds seven times -- in 1903, 1915, 1936, 1954, 1967, 1980, and 1993. The U.S. Amateur has visited four times, the U.S. Women's Open twice, and the PGA Championship in 2005 and 2016. The list of winners reads like a hall of fame in itself: Ed Furgol, Mickey Wright, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Janzen, Phil Mickelson. In 2014, the club was designated a National Historic Landmark -- not for its tournament history, but in recognition of its importance to Tillinghast's career as a course designer. It is the only two-course club to have hosted both the men's and women's U.S. Open Championships on both of its courses.

Robert Trent Jones updated the Lower Course for tournament play in 1948. His son Rees Jones lengthened it again in 1992 and tackled the Upper Course before the 2000 U.S. Amateur. Both Joneses worked to reinstate Tillinghast design features that had been lost over the decades -- bunker shapes, green contours, strategic angles that the original architect had intended. The Lower Course's signature holes tell the story of the place: the fourth, a 194-yard par three over water to a two-tiered green; the seventeenth, a 650-yard par five where John Daly is the only player to have reached the green in two; and the eighteenth, a 533-yard par five that has produced some of golf's most iconic finishes. The original clubhouse burned down in March 1909 and was quickly replaced with a Tudor Revival design by Chester Hugh Kirk. A century later, it still stands.