Baltusrol to Host 2010 Ivy Golf Championships

-Courtesy, IvyLeagueSports.com

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The Ivy League office announced today that the 2010 Ivy League Men's and Women's Golf Championships will be played April 23-25 at the world-renowned Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J.

The announcement means that both championship events will be played at the same location for a second consecutive year.

"We are thrilled to take our golf championships to such an outstanding and scenic course as Baltusrol's. The extensive history of hosting high-caliber tournaments will create a wonderful championship experience for our institutions," said Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris.

This is not the first time the Ivy League will find a champion on the Baltusrol links. In 1904, the U.S. Amateur Championship was contested at the legendary Old Course and Harvard's captain, Chandler Egan, took home the title. Egan was also a member of Harvard's National Intercollegiate Championship teams during three title campaigns (1902-04). Although preceding the development of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association (which would become the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1910), the titles are now recognized as NCAA championships.

Egan also won a team gold medal and an individual silver medal in the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, which is the last time it was contested at the Games. Golf will return to the London Olympics in 2012.

Additionally, in the midst of a nine-year stranglehold on the National Intercollegiate Championship (1905-13), Yale University won the 1911 championship at Baltusrol's Old Course. George Stanley, who defeated University of Pennsylvania's Harry Heyburn in the final round of the individual championship by a margin of 5-up with 4 to play, led the Bulldogs. In an All-Ivy Final Four in 1911, Stanley and Heyburn emerged from the semifinals with wins over Princeton's Albert Seckel and Yale's Robert A. Gardner.

Baltusrol Golf Club, synonymous with championship golf, sits at the base of Baltusrol Mountain in northern New Jersey, only a stone's throw from New York City. With a rich heritage that dates back to 1895, Baltusrol is considered one of the country's premier private golf clubs. Its two championship courses, the Lower and Upper, have played distinguished roles on the national golf stage since their creation by Golden Age architect A.W. Tillinghast. Together, the courses have hosted 16 national championships, including seven U.S. Opens, two U.S. Women's Opens and one PGA Championship. The PGA Championship will return to Baltusrol for the second time in 2016.

With its long history of championship golf, Baltusrol is one of a select number of clubs that can claim virtually all of the greatest players in the game have walked its fairways, from Harry Vardon and Bobby Jones to Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus to Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. In fact, Baltusrol's hallowed grounds have been the scene of some of the most historic moments in championship golf, including Jack Nicklaus' head-to-head duel with Arnold Palmer in the 1967 U.S. Open, Nicklaus' record-setting victory over Isao Aoki in the 1980 U.S. Open, the 18-hole showdown between Lee Janzen and Payne Stewart in the 1993 U.S. Open and the emergence of Phil Mickelson as a repeat major champion in winning Baltusrol's first PGA Championship in 2005.

The Ivy League is the broadest-based conference in the NCAA, sponsoring Division I championship competition in 33 men's and women's sports. The Ivy League includes Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell and Yale Universities, the University of Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth College.