Merion Golf Club Centennial Celebration




Representatives from 25 American clubs beyond the Philadelphia area and five from Great Britain and Australia joined members of Merion Golf Club in tournaments and other ceremonies for its Centennial celebration that be gan in June and ran through July 10.
Tom Ligget, Lew Rawlings and Ed Slevin, along with club President Rusty Sharp, headed the group which conducted the events. They began with a Marine color guard marching up the 18th fairway ahead of a Scottish bagpipe band, followed by Sharp and former c lub presidents W. Scott Smith, Meade Geisel, Bill Olmstead, Rawlings and John Laupheimer. Harry McCaw, president of the Royal and Ancient of St. Andrews, and Reg Murphy, former president of the United States Golf Association, raised their organization flags. Merion member Buddy Marucci raised the World amateur flag and Mrs. Mark Porter, Rivert on, that of the Golf Association of Philadelphia. Huntingdon Valley's O. Gordon Brewer, a member of the USGA executive committee, presented Merion the USGA's citation.
Kirk Luntey's 72 won the men's medal play on the East course. Jeff Hall and Bill Rose, from New York's Winged Foot, were second at 75.
Merion's Nancy Porter led the ladies' medal play with 77, followed by Carol Caldwell, Sunningdale, and Barbara Vandeweghe, Cypress Point, who tied at 82.
St. Andrews' McCaw and Dick Biborosch, Aronimink, teamed with Geisel and Bryan Bostwick in scoring the 125 that won the men's two-best-balls-of-four competition.
Joe Guerin, captain of Ireland's Ballybunion GC, who has a prosthetic left arm, the result of a fireworks accident, scored an 80 on the West course.
—Fred Byrod

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