Weaving her Way into History at Merion Golf Club
Golf can be an expensive pursuit, with costs of travel, equipment and greens fees, but Joni-Dee Ross has found a creative way to make a living at it.
Ross, known to many as the daughter of Woodlawn Avenue residents Harold and Betty Thompson, uses her basket-weaving skills to create one of the trademark features of Merion Golf Club. The course, in Ardmore, Pa, is considered among the nation's best, and most recently played host to the US Amateur Golf Tournament.
The name of the game is wickers
— gourd-shaped baskets that mark hole locations on the Ardmore course, in the same way that small flags are used at most other courses. Ross makes them, helping guide today's top golfers along the same course that has been played by Ben Hogan and Bobby Jones, among other giants of the sport.
They look like the top of a hot-air balloon,
she explained. If you imagine it woven, that is the shape of the basket.
The longtime weaver, a native of North Augusta, hooked up with the golf club in the mid '90s, when the search was under way for a weaver to succeed Guerrio D'Achille, a Pennsylvania construction foreman who had previously made them. Someone spotted Ross' baskets at a craft show in Dover, Del., and recommended her to the golf club. Officials approached her and made an offer.
Ross, who now lives in central North Carolina, recalled how her husband, David Ross, helped speed the process along. David walked in and looked on the dining-room table, and there's this business card that says 'Merion'.
He wanted to know what it was about, and I said, 'You know, some whacky thing — they want me to make some wickers or something. I'm thinking about it,' and he looked at me and said, 'No, you have to do it! Do you know what Merion is?' He told me all about Merion. They had to send me the wickers and I had to figure out how to do it.
Ross' routine now varies from year to year, fluctuating from high production (about 20) to low (five to 10). It just depends on the weather,
she said.
The size of the wickers also varies, with large ones being used on the course, medium-sized ones on the putting green and smaller ones employed as decorations within the clubhouse.
The wickers are made out of the same material that wicker furniture is made out of — the cane palm, and it's just round reed ... It has to soak in hot water for about six to eight hours. I can get by with four hours sometimes, before I can really bend it or shape it, so it's not like with the regular baskets. A lot of them, if I have an hour, I can run down and work on a basket and then come back and do something else, but with the wickers, I have to block out an entire day, because they have to soak, and then I can work with them.
The idea originally came from a golf course in Ireland or Scotland, and was imported by a member of the Merion golf club, she added.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the wickers date back to 1912 and were the idea of course designer Hugh Wilson, a Merion member who was sent by the club to the British Isles for seven months to study golf-course architecture.
Exactly where Wilson spotted wicker baskets over there remains a mystery. He apparently never said, and each time the club has believed it finally had the answer, it has turned out to be wrong — or plausible but not provable,
the newspaper noted.
Merion has two courses (east and west). Wickers are only used on the eastern one, with those on the front nine being dark red and those on the back nine being an orange-red tone, to help golfers distinguish between the course's outward and inward sections. Ross handles everything but the painting, which is done by the Merion greens staff.
Ross' creations also weave their way into North Augusta life on occasion, she said. Her brother, David Thompson, is owner of Lake Construction, on Old Sudlow Lake Road. He makes it a habit to give one of her baskets, as a welcoming gift, to each family for whom he builds a home.
I use 25-30 a year,
Thompson said. They're all handmade by my sister — each one.
While the gifts from Lake Construction are completely legitimate, it's unlikely for anyone to acquire one of Ross' golf wickers without breaking the law. They are removed from the golf course each evening to protect them from memorabilia collectors
, in the words of an account from the Detroit News.
Ross confirmed that the Merion crowd is very proud
of its wickers. This is something that I can only do for Merion. It's kind of a fun and unique thing to be able.
The Philadelphia newspaper noted that the baskets do occasionally find an authorized home away from Merion, such as when the Atlanta Athletic Club underwent a renovation a while back and named its formal dining room the Merion Room
, and Merion donated a basket and pole which are now mounted on the wall at the room's entrance.
Weaving her way into history at Merion Golf Club — North Augusta Star