There is nothing exotic about the 16th hole on the Lower Course of Baltusrol Golf Club. Competitors in this week’s P.G.A. Championship in Springfield, N.J., will encounter a 230-yard par 3 that plays slightly downhill to a well-bunkered green. The most dramatic moment to occur at No. 16 was in the 1993 United States Open, when Lee Janzen holed a chip shot for a score of 2 during the final round on his way to a two-stroke victory over Payne Stewart.
Where the putting surface of the 16th hole is situated, though, once existed one of the most talked-about features in early American golf: the sport’s first island green.