Merion, East Course

The club grew out of the Merion Cricket Club, founded in 1865, whose members opened a golf course in 1896. In 1910 they chose one of their own, a 32-year-old member named Hugh Wilson who had never designed a course, to build a new one. He spent seven months studying the courses of Scotland and England first. The East opened in September 1912 and the West in May 1914; the original course closed.

The East has hosted five U.S. Opens, most recently in 2013, on ground along Philadelphia's Main Line that is small by modern standards and asks for precision rather than length. Its markers are wicker baskets on the flagsticks instead of flags, so the player gets no help reading the wind at the green. The clubhouse was the eighteenth-century farmhouse of the family that owned the land.