Philly-Area Golf Courses Among Nation's Top 100: Golf Digest

SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA — Two of the nation's best golf courses are right here in the Philadelphia, according to the eminent golf publication.

Golf Digest recently published "America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses."

The list looked at six pieces of criteria: shot options, challenge, layout variety, aesthetics, conditioning, and character.

"We are proud to say this year's edition is the most scientific ever—with our 1,800 panelists submitting more than 85,000 evaluations over our 10-year scoring criteria," Derek Duncan and Stephen Hennessey wrote for the publication.

Among the top 100 were Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square and Merion Golf Club: East in Ardmore.

Here's what Golf Digest has to say about Aronimink Golf Club:

Aronimink is an object lesson in architectural evolution. After Donald Ross completed his design in 1928, he proclaimed, “I intended to make this my masterpiece.” That didn’t keep club members from bringing in William Gordon in the 1950s to eliminate out-of-play fairway bunkers and move other bunkers closer to greens. The course was later revamped by Dick Wilson, George Fazio and Robert Trent Jones. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Ron Prichard, one of the profession’s original restoration specialists, began returning Aronimink back to Ross’s conception based on the architect’s drawings and field diagrams. But there was always a discrepancy between what Ross drew in plans and what was actually built in 1928. A more recent renovation by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, who live nearby, has put the course’s architecture more in line with what aerial photographs depict of the early design, particularly the bunkering that might have been imagined as larger in scale but built in smaller, more scatter-shot formations.

And here's their take on Merion Golf Club: East:

Merion East has long been considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, and when it hosted the U.S. Open in 2013, its first since 1981, the present generation of big hitters couldn’t conquer this clever little course. They couldn’t consistently hit its twisting fairways, which are edged by creeks, hodge-podge rough and OB stakes and couldn’t consistently hold its canted greens, edged by bunkers that stare back. Justin Rose won with a 72-hole total of one-over-par, two ahead of Jason Day and Phil Mickelson. With Gil Hanse's extensive two-year renovation making even more improvements at Merion's East Course, the design should be even more polished when the Open returns again in 2030.

See the full list from Golf Digest here.