U.S. Open Conditions Every Day | Super Secrets at Oakmont

U.S. Open Conditions Every Day | Super Secrets at Oakmont

[Music] when you start talking about the standard at Oakmont Country Club it dates back to the club’s inception in 1903 when our founder Henry Phones um started this club he decided he wanted to build a golf course and not not just that but he wanted to build the most challenging golf course on earth and one that could host championships in perpetuity oakmont hosted its first US Open in 1927 uh flash forward almost 100 years to this year this will be our 10th US Open and so Oak’s hosted more US Opens and championships in general than any other club in the country so like that in itself is like the first part of the standard i mean we’re in it together i the early mornings yeah they suck it’s long it’s hard but in the end like showing off what we do what we love it’s always on display especially for the membership I mean with the US Open that’s another thing but like every single day is to us like the US Open they take care of the golf course like the US Open day in and day out the standard doesn’t change the Oakmont standard is the the simplest terms is excellence is bringing your best every day giving what you got all day long you know going home taking care of yourself coming back the next day even better it’s the continuous learning experience making yourself better and better each day day in day out i think the second part of the standard is our membership and their expectation that we have championship conditions on a daily basis [Music] [Applause] i think the last part of the the standard is the legacy of the club and you know when you get to wear this logo the OC logo every single day like there’s something about that that I think everyone on our team embraces that in a in a major way everyone realizes like you know you’re playing for the Yankees here you’re one of the most historic operations within our industry and we don’t take that lightly [Music] so this morning um again 8:00 shotgun we are going to mow fairways cleanups approaches approaches let’s use the turf trainers on today we’re double hand cutting greens and then single rolling greens behind that turbining fairways and touching up bunkers okay second assignment today we’re going to fly mo bunkers come off the end of this shotgun work through the gap try to finish that up mo rough today top tough dress greens do some spraying on the range 216 and some miscellaneous stuff all right typical day at Oakmont like we start the night before so like last night we had we had guys here all day from uh 4:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night we did some PM maintenance yesterday um behind me play knowing that we have a double shotgun today so we have I think 80 players going off at 8:00 a.m and then another like 80 players going off at 1:30 [Music] i think what makes our business so exciting is that everything is always changing no day is the same yeah the standard is always the same especially as you lead up to a US Open it’s all about like practicing the fundamentals and and doing the fundamentals as close to perfection as you possibly can [Music] we bring in guys from all over the country it’s um it’s a really unique team here we have roughly 30 guys or we will have 30 guys this year that either have already obtained turf management degrees or working on obtaining turf management degrees i studied at Penn State so I just finished my my degree last year and knew I wanted to work for big course and knew the US Open was coming and I met Mike a few years back so I decided to come and join him here [Music] you know we typically peak out around 45 guys like peak season um once everyone comes back from school and you know the guys who don’t have turf degrees like they’re also super educated very motivated dedicated people who take a lot of pride in their work we have guys here like you know Stevie Bay um he’s been here this is his 48th season he’s done nine championships so come championship time everything gets ramped up right starting Thursday and Friday of the championship they’ll be teeing players off 1 and 10 at 6:45 in the morning so we have to get all the playing surfaces cut 200 bunkers and rake and be off the golf course basically by the time they go out and play starting advance week the week before the championship we’ll bring in 60 volunteers and then for championship week itself we’ll bring in about 150 volunteers to help our team out prepare the golf course everyone on our team like this is way more than just a job for them it’s it’s more than like a means to put food on the table we eat sleep and breathe it and when you take you know 45 guys with that same passion that ultimately sets a standard within our operation and allows us to produce the conditions that we produce on course each and every [Applause] [Music] day oak’s one of a kind oak is the only club that Henry Phones ever built i think his son WC was really instrumental in the development and evolution of Oakmont the Phones family was here from 1903 until the 1940s it’s really the only course like it you know Oaka was the one and only Henry Foes designed and it’s really stood the test of time it’s it’s pretty incredible it’s a really unique combination of like aesthetic beauty and also just so challenging which is Oaklan in a nutshell like Oak’s a sight to behold from aesthetic perspective but you come out here and play golf and you might not feel the same warm and fuzzy feeling [Music] so the church views you know there’s a lot of iconic things about Oakmont but the Church Fuse is something that you know I think anyone who knows anything about golf could probably recognize the Church Pews and know that they’re here at Oaklan Country Club you know the church pews originally like way back when the club was founded were a series of long skinny bunkers and then sometime in the 20s they kind of connected the outsides of of that feature to turn them into the church pews and they’ve gone through several iterations over the history of Oakmont during this last restoration we actually added about 15 yards to them in another queue because back in 16 guys were able to hit their drives over them so that won’t be the case for this championship um and we really returned them to you know how they looked during the phones era as well where there’s some variation and elevation of the church views you might land in the sand and you know have the big mount in front of you you might have a more shallow mound in front of you you know from a maintenance perspective typically for the membership we try to maintain those you know pretty thin wispy so you can easily find and play your golf ball for the championship they’ll be a little bit denser this year um but it’s a big bunker you know and it it’s uh especially when you’re hand raking it for the championship you know that’s going to take four or five guys probably 45 minutes to rake that entire thing [Music] normally we roll every day it could be one roll it could be two rolls it could be six rolls depending on the time it really tightens up the plant these these greens have evolved to just love getting rolled so you get into like certain environmental patterns where grass is kind of puffy it really helps smooth it out tighten up the plant you get a lot better cuts afterwards and then you know the obvious reason is for every fast green playability so a lot of it’s the USGA and we actually went out and we put flags in all the old US Open hole locations all the new hole locations that we’ve found over the restoration and all the new greens so they’ll pick out six or seven hole locations that they could possibly use throughout the week depending on weather depending on anything they can move those around on a daily basis so and what does that look like what makes a pin difficult it could be any number of things like the undulations around the holes one it depends on how fast our greens are rolling different spots be harder depending on how fast they are obviously if you tuck them behind bunkers maybe harder to get at your as your second shot that can be a tough pin i’m a personal fan of just having a fun putt i love putting on greens it’s like one of my favorite parts of golf so if I can have a putt that maybe a double breaker or breaks one way kind of try to find those spots and let them have some fun that is what we want oakmont’s known for a few things as it relates to championships one is the speed and firmness of the greens two is how we present the rafter for championships still got to go up quite a bit the last two championships in 2007 and 2016 um we had a graduated cut so we had our fairway surface 6 ft of intermediate cut at roughly 1 in and then in those championships we had roughly call it 20 to 25 ft of graduated cut outside the intermediates that was cut at roughly call it 3 to 3 and 1/2 in then outside of that was 5 in plus plans right now for the championship is go to go right from that intermediate cut at it’s going to be a little higher inch and a quarter maybe an inch and a half that will go right transition into 5 in and that 5 in will be uniform throughout the entire golf course starting to nestle down here grass will get more and more upright here over the next call it month here leading in the championship gym i think a lot of people in the golf world they think of a US Open they know you know courses that do have rough that the rough is going to be presented in a very penal manner um but I think a lot of people think we just stop mowing the rough right um and that couldn’t be further from the truth where if you were to just go out and mow the rough at 2 and a/4 in then let it grow up to five all that rough would just lay over itself and the ball would ultimately sit on top by incrementally increasing the height we’re trying to get the grass to stand straight up our rough units have suction within the rotary deck it stands the turf up as it’s cutting it so that ultimately leads to upright growth and that’s how we get the ball to kind of nestle right down in there and and make it as penal as possible you know so this is this is the approach surface so this is cut at right about 2/10 of an inch and then this is the fairway surface right here that’s cut at about 3/10 of an inch so our approaches are very tight kind of many instances throughout the golf course where you approach this slope away from the green so you know if you’re a player playing in the US Open and you can’t control your spin you come off a little short might find yourself 30 40 yards back and throw What [Music]

Some major championship hosts need to make huge changes to their golf course before the pros arrive. Not at Oakmont Country Club. Superintendent Michael McCormick and his deep team of knowledgeable, hard-working grounds guys make sure that U.S. Open conditions are served up daily at Oakmont. On an April morning before the championship, GOLF.com visited the crew that rightfully will get all the praise for this tough major test.

0:00 The Oakmont Standard
2:43 Inside the Team Room
6:33 The One-of-a-Kind Design
9:24 Maintaining the Greens
10:47 Preparing the Rough
13:00 Finishing at Oakmont
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