At Merion, host of the 2026 U.S. Amateur, there’s always magic in the air

Mark Fulcher, the winning caddie at the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion with Justin Rose, is enduring a serious case of caddie envy this week, with the U.S. Amateur unfolding at Merion. Like all proper golf bums, Fooch (as the veteran British caddie is known throughout golf and at your better racetracks) knows that match-play golf is the game at its primal and purest best. This is, after all, a man who has caddied in seven Ryder Cups, seven Solheim Cups and one Presidents Cup, all contested at match play. The U.S. Am, like its British counterpart, is a match play event (after the two-day stroke play qualifier). At the 1930 U.S. Am at Merion, Bobby Jones completed golf’s version of the Grand Slam (it’s a bridge term) with an 8-and-7 victory in the 36-hole final over a gent named Eugene V. Homans. If you’re new to this whole thing, in match play every hole is its own one-hole contest. Jones had an eight-hole lead with seven holes to go. No more golf. Jones and his caddie, a local teenager named Howard Rexford, joyfully made the hike from the 11th green back to the club’s iconic white farmhouse clubhouse. There were no carts.

“Could you hit driver or 3-wood on one?” Fooch asked the other day, repeating a question posed to him and doing some oh-so-English stalling. The first hole at Merion is — well, what’s north of iconic? The first at Merion is a delicate tea-party par-4 with a ladies-at-lunch porch located a short lefty’s shank shot away. From there the hole is a wee uphill dogleg that, in U.S. Open stroke-play golf, is iron off the tee, wedge into the green, all day long, four straight days. But match play is a different animal.

“The first question you’d have to ask is, ‘Why?’” Fooch said Monday afternoon. Why would you want to hit driver? He was in Memphis, in its heat, getting ready for FedEx Cup I, Justin Rose due in that night. Well, statement golf would be an answer to that question, if the phrase lands with you at all. It does with Fooch. Match play has a lot of emotion in it. Driving a green as an opening statement packs a lot of emotion.

“Then you’d have to ask, ‘Where’s the pin?’” Fooch said. Heavy metal pin (flagstick), red wicker basket above it. (You’re going to have to find another way to read the wind above the greens at Merion — there are no waving flags there.) If the hole is cut, say, back left? Yes, you could think about hitting driver or even 3-wood off the first tee, and if your opening salvo finished in the front-right bunker, that would be just fine, if not great. But the far more prudent and expected play, Fooch said, is iron in the fairway, wedge on the green, try to make a putt for birdie, leave yourself a tap-in par if you don’t. Merion’s greens are loaded with slope. You can three-putt from anywhere.

Which gets us to Fooch’s No. 1 piece of pre-round advice for any of the 64 players in the match-play portion of this 126th U.S. Amateur at Merion: Use the practice putting green — the big one, to the right of the first tee — and putt a bunch of 20- and 30-footers so you get a feel for that day’s speed and slope. You’re gonna need it.

And from there it’s a short walk to Fooch’s No. 1 piece of smell-the-flowers advice for any of the 64 players in the match-play portion of this 126th U.S. Amateur at Merion: You’re likely to be nervous on the first tee, what with the ladies and all those USGA officials on the porch, all that murmuring that goes dead silent as you get over your ball. “Enjoy the moment” is Fooch’s advice. “What would you give later in life to have that feeling?” The feeling of being on the first tee at the Merion Golf Club, the club where Jones won the 1930 Amateur and Ben Hogan won the 1950 U.S. Open, and playing in a USGA competition.

Fooch and Rose, in a manner of speaking, had a similar conversation at a recent USGA competition, the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills in June. Justin Rose is 46. Mark Fulcher is 61. They have both been at this whole golf thing for a long while. Rose, like Tom Kite before him, has had many heartbreaking seconds and thirds and top-5s in majors, but he does have that one U.S. Open win.

“In the third round, we were three over through four, and things got quiet and there was a moment of, ‘What are we doing here?’ And we said, ‘There will come a time in our lives when we wish we could be three over through four in the third round of a U.S. Open.’” There was a mental adjustment, frustration giving way to privilege and joy — the privilege and joy of being where you are. The third-round 73 was no great shakes, but 73 is better than 74 or 75 or 76. A Sunday 68 led to a grind-it-out T-11 finish. Not a top-10 but better than T-12.

That’s the spirit. It really is. You can see the gratitude gene in all this, too. If you’ve been watching Rose for a while, Mark Fulcher often by his side, you know he has the gratitude gene, along with some other qualities — a type of golfing OCD — that have allowed him to lead an incredible golfing life. Adam Scott’s approach is decidedly similar. (Phil Mickelson was at another level for artistic flair and golfing gifts.) One of the most quietly impressive sights of this year in professional golf was seeing Justin Rose late on Monday afternoon at Royal Birkdale, the week of the Open Championship, grinding over 5-footers on the practice green, as if he had never made one in his life. He’s made a million, but there’s always the next one. Fred Couples was not built for such sessions — not physically, not mentally — but golf is a case of to each his own. Or her own. The U.S. Women’s Open is coming to Merion in 2034.

Fooch was on campus for the Curtis Cup in 2022 at Merion. Merion, Merion, Merion. After winning the U.S. Open in 1971, in a two-man playoff with Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino said, “I fell in love with a girl named Merion and I don’t even know her last name.” When Justin Rose was playing a practice round at Merion before the 2013 U.S. Open, his putting coach, David Orr, said to Rose, “Imagine Ben Hogan right here, in that flat cap, smoking a cigarette, away from the crowds, just thinking about his next shot — how magical is that?” This was not on 18, where Hogan played a second shot made immortal by the Hy Peskin photograph that captures its finish. It was while walking through the quarry on 16, in that no man’s land between the fairway and the green.

So many gods at Merion. Hogan, Jones, Trevino. Rose is a member of the club. Mickelson almost won there. Almost is part of what makes golf the game that it is. The runner-up at this week’s U.S. Am gets an invitation to play in next year’s Masters in April, provided he stays amateur. A good bet is that that guy will stay amateur, at least through the Masters. Fred Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National, is the last winner of the U.S. Amateur who did not ever turn pro. He won in 1975.

Some weeks after the 2013 U.S. Open, a package arrived at Fooch’s home, big enough for an upright piano. It was a Merion flagstick, with its heavy metal red-and-white shaft and the red wicker basket. In his mind, Fooch imagines it was the one that he removed from the hole when Rose holed out on 18 on Father’s Day in 2013, but he knows it’s not. (The two wicker baskets are different shades of red, he noted.) This week, a U.S. Amateur winner and the winning caddie will leave with special prizes not listed in the brochure. Whatever they are, they will last.

When the 1930 U.S. Amateur was over, six Marines surrounded Bobby Jones and escorted him to the clubhouse. Newspaper reporters surrounded 19-year-old Howard Rexford, peppering the caddie with questions. Nearly 60 years later, Rexford had a cut-glass fruit bowl in the living room of his house not far from Merion, the bowl filled with bills. The bowl itself was a wedding gift from Jones and his wife to Rexford and his. Jones discreetly paid Rexford $150 for his services in 1930 — about $2,700 today, adjusted for inflation. In the Depression? A fortune. The money came and went. The wedding-gift fruit bowl did not. Neither did 8-and-7 memories, and the brush with a truly great golfer on a truly great course. Mark “Fooch” Fulcher knows how all this goes. Justin Rose does, too. A player and his caddie will get a taste of it this week. What they won’t know, what they can’t know, is that it’s just a start. Merion and this championship will follow them around forever.