Why Oakmont is the Hardest Golf Course in the World
oakmont Blanc’s a sight to behold from an aesthetic perspective but you come out here and play golf you might not feel the same warm and fuzzy feeling yeah I think everybody knows this is probably the toughest golf course in the world they turn the US Open to to see a guy shooting eight over and and suffer you know i understand this place is hard i don’t I don’t you know I don’t need to read articles or I don’t need to hear horror stories like I I’ve played it I know it’s difficult so if you look at this there’s a lot more variation in the crowns of those pews now we’ve had those roped off all spring to keep all foot traffic off them to make sure that they’re in absolute peak aesthetic form going into the championship [Music] oakmont super Mike McCormack he told us “Look as perfect as the church pews maybe look from the sky they wanted them imperfect they wanted there to be a mound here and for it to be a lot flatter up here i mean you look at these two golf balls this one’s screwed we’re probably 180 yards out that means seven iron or maybe an eight iron depending on the wind you’re not getting that up over that grass or that mound so you’re hacking it out but you actually hit a worse shot you pulled it a little more left and you’re in the middle of one of the pews you’re completely fine that is why it’s kind of all luck and as Eric Vanroyan said don’t hit it here hit the fairway easier said than done man it’s uh well the answer that Eric Vanroyan gave us was don’t hit it here which is kind of the universal truth at US Opens if you get into crappy spots you shouldn’t be there to begin with but this is the the iconic church pew bunker that uh you try to avoid and when you hit it in here it’s kind of all luck like he actually had a pretty decent lie but got a little worried about it squirrely hit it out here and then ended up in the next bunker uh Ben Griffin had an even worse lie but he hit it perfectly every part of the green that you see is technically the ninth green but these guys are not really practicing on the ninth green they’re practicing for the course it’s a weird thing about Oakmont where technically this is the practice green and then this is the putting green but this is also the ninth putting green if you play it in competition but you can’t practice here on competition days it’s one of those kind of wacky things they’ve got it spelled out on a sign uh the thing you got to keep track of is the blue stake if you’re on this side of the blue steak you’re practicing if you’re on that side you’re probably playing but you may have to play from here if you hit your long iron a little too far a little too much draw spin you end up up here you’re putting all the way down there and everyone has to get out of your way but there will be people playing that hole while a lot of people are up here practicing for that hole that’s kind of one of the weird things of Oakmont never seen guys focus so much on uh lagging i mean it’s just at some point it becomes a lag putt championship gilance made the greens way bigger so you’re going to see pins that uh were not here in the 2016 Open and G guys are just focusing so hard on lagging 40footers inside the five foot comfort zone from there true greens fast greens you can putt pretty well but you got to get inside the friendship circle that’s kind of hard to do 5t friendship circle at least maybe a little do one there do one at your feet do one on to the right all right so well now I got to refine them okay yeah I’m I’m glad we have uh spotters up there because you know I played uh last Monday you know just in in Ducks outing and um you know you hit a ball off the fairway and you were you were looking for a good couple of minutes just to just to find it so um it’s it’s very penal if you miss um sometimes it’s penal if you don’t miss um but that’s you know that’s you know the the person with the the most patience and the best attitude this week is is the one that’s going to win on Oakmont we went from you know normally cutting it at 2 and 1/4 in to trying to get to a uniform uh 5 in standard rough for the championship uh there’s a lot that goes into it you have to slowly increase your height of putt cuz you if you just you know let 2 and 1/4 in rough just grow to 5 in you’re going to have no structure of that plant it’s going to lay over and you’re going to have fly lies and it’s really not going to be penal at the end of the day you want the ball to sit down in there that’s the real challenge basically where Oakmont is right now is where Mike McCormack was trying to get this place to where we’ve got a ball that is sliding down a 5- in piece of grass a blade of grass with actual structure so this ball is just above the soil but it is what 3 in or 4 in below the crown of the grass this is the worst type of lie that a any golfer in the world can face because if you’re trying to strike it you’re touching the blades of grass up here you’re leaning everything down suddenly you’ve got like 4 in of rough that’s in your way and whatever is on the the exit velocity of this golf ball it’s just not going to go anywhere this is going to turn your club and your ball’s going to go left of the green and that’s going to have you’re going to have guys basically like aiming out to the right opening up the face no pro golfer wants to deal with this because just have no clue where it’s going what’s the one thing that makes this place hard i don’t know if there’s one thing uh assuming the rough is lower on an average day at Oakmont in a non- US Open year the biggest challenge of the tea will be those fairway bunkers they’re usually very penal right they’re very often just deep enough to where you don’t have a chance to get to the grain due to the length if the church pews scare you off of course on the other side of like the fourth fairway are bunkers like these which are your classic Oakmont bunker jt was talking about them yesterday he says there’s not a very much of a sand face so the ball doesn’t roll up and come back down the ball rolls up to the base essentially of what is a a grassy face kind of more reminiscent of pot bunkers that you see in the UK such that if your ball ends up here you’re really not off the fairway by that much but you have to go 30° left just back into the fairway there’s no really advancing i heard a rumor yesterday that Max Graaserman played solid but any shot that missed the fairway you could not advance it to the to the green either you’re playing from the rough and you can’t advance it you’re playing from the bunkers you can’t advance it they might need to nickname this place Cannot Advance It Country Club because uh that’ll be the state of this tournament [Music] so you come to Oakmont there’s history around every corner and that’s why we are talking to you Chick Wagner a member here at Oakmont for 47 years and as it turns out apparently some of the most important and most relevant history at Oakmont actually is happening between the tea boxes what’s going on 1949 Hogan’s driving home he’s in this fog has an accident doesn’t think he’s going to live okay but he comes back tries to recover does and and comes here in 53 after winning the Masters uh first round he shoots like 67 he’s winning by four or five shots okay and they do the interview with him now back then they did the interviews up in the locker room by his locker so he’s sitting down on the bench exhausted and they go “Tell us about your run.” He says “Look at me i look like a rat.” And they go “No no no tell us about your run.” He says “Look at me i’m I look I’m exhausted.” He goes “I I didn’t miss a fairway i missed a couple greens i made some putts.” and I had a really great round but I am exhausted so they said why what’s going on he says I didn’t miss a fair but I had to walk through this deep rough the whole time and I mean why did I have to walk through this deep rough and exhausted myself so lo and behold you know the phones and the you know USJ and Oakmont all together they listened to this and they said wow you know he’s right we should do something about it so evidently overnight they cut a path from the TE’s to the fairways on every hole and he comes out the next day and he sees these walkways he goes “Isn’t this wonderful thank you very much.” And he goes on to w to win the tournament so um and and we’re all still thankful for that because we don’t like walking through this long rough either even to this day uh but you as you know now all these other courses all around the world 90% of the courses around the world have these Hogan walks from tea to fairway and it all started here in the fog in the long rough this week at a major Tuesdays are a big day it’s the busiest day probably on any tour truck all year a lot of things happening we’re going to hit a couple of these trucks today with some very unique items that I think are going to be important this week one is turf interaction and one is finding a utility iron or a utility club to fit the bag there’s some unique things happening on the ping truck and some cool stuff happening with Stricks on so let’s get on these trucks and find out what the hell is happening for Oakmont this week this golf course is a beast let’s get into it they’re doing a ton of ninewoods yes out here so ninewoods and there what I like about what’s the the lofted fairways that you guys are doing is they’re all really high spin like they’re all the max platform so who’s kind of looking at these like particularly what players are kind of looking at a 9wood this week yeah so Mackenzie Hughes was one of the guys that requested it plays a sevenwood already and that’s auto it’s always in the bag so he’s saying it’s great out of the rough but why not be why not get more advantage out of it right the rough is so thick the blades are so strong that guys are really struggling to even fight out a a sevenwood so more lofted ninewood it’s only going to help you on shots out of the fairway right cuz you’re producing more height you’re getting a better landing angle um so it actually becomes a utility club everywhere out of the rough and the way you guys make them cuz you guys you know I I say specific to Ping you guys cut them a little shorter so if you needed to drive it down you could right yep so at what point like on P on the PGA Tour and on live we’re seeing a lot of three irons are disappearing four irons are disappearing i mean do you see this trend yes we have a couple guys on the PJ tour right now that the 9wood is in the back okay from week in to week out um it’s really it’s really because one the ball doesn’t spin that much right you It’s hard to create height um and these greens are always firm and so so your land angle your landing angle right you’re the the problem is unless you’re really trying to hit a fairway and hit something chasing you’re trying to create height trying to get stopping power on the greens and really the best way to do is a landing angle how it’s coming in so when guys are hitting four irons that are head high landing in the front next thing you know they’re out the back obviously Ryan Fox won last week sea is having a great year shane Lowry’s having a great year they’re all on the five five and seven ZXI irons so specifically in your opinion what is it about these irons that are becoming so popular on tour and then obviously in the fitting basic what’s unique about these just I mean feel feel of the golf club itself is second to none it’s the softest feeling iron out here with the with the frame that we’ve got on there it makes it very playable for all the the ZX7 um most of our guys are playing in let’s say five iron down and then we go we move into the ZX-5s which is your higher launch which is a higher launch high highest spinning iron we make and it it it in the past in our utility club that was always the go-to in the long irons when we came out with the ZXI5 immediately launch was up spin was up carry was up okay so it’s just more forgiving and easier to hit and easier for the guys to get in the air what specifically to the ZXI though like if you take like the Z745 which I think which what McDow plays some of the older models which are obvious you have some some irons that are like unicorns from back the one the one consistent feature through all the generations is the soul is the soul okay so as you’ve progressed is this a slightly like if we’re going to talk specifically about the seven talking specifically about the seven is this a larger did you guys go slightly bigger very similar sizes from the original from the Z from the 745 we just cleaned up different areas of the golf club to make it look and and like you mentioned the blend i mean in the past the the five was a little bit thicker a little bit more bulkier okay so we’ve tried to blend it all together where you’re getting the advantage of having the ZXi5 okay for air getting the ball in the air and spin and to make it not look so different from playing position so it looks like two different sets of golf pat you just pulled driver it’s a 17th hole is there any question to the club choice off the tea maybe maybe if the wind came really in or something but for the most part I think it’s a driver try and get it up there you know on line with the front left edge of the green and then pitch up the green how much does your game plan change on this hole it being either your eighth hole or your 17th hole i don’t think it changes much um no i I think you want to play more aggressive and maybe like take the driver versus laying up if it’s your eighth no I think I’d probably hit driver most of the time and uh you know unless it was downwind really downwind or really into the wind you know you could hit a 3-wood if it gets to the right number or uh driver may not be able to cover that left side but it’s actually not too dissimilar from the tenth at Riv in that you want to put it on the left side coming up the green because the green’s relatively severe so uh if you can get it on that correct angle pitching up the green I think that’s the best way to play the hole i’m curious let’s pivot to Jess jess you played this in 2010 what uh what do you remember from that week about just how this place plays when it’s turned up to 11 like this it was a different color when we played it it was brown yeah um they it was pretty burnt out so I remember just trying to bounce everything in and just pray for the best okay um it turned green on Friday afternoon then I didn’t make the weekend i think that’s interesting for this week because this you would classify as soft right yeah definitely and definitely softer than expected but what uh I guess what kind of bounce to these greens have right now not much it’s it’s pretty playable right now but you know if the forecast stays how it is I think it’ll be dry for the next 3 4 days and it should firm up just hearing the clunk out of the rough is is insane is it really wet underneath it’s not crabby or No no but you can tell it’s been a good uh What are the changes like on the course because everyone said that they made them bigger can you tell like a really big difference i only played it maybe once before okay so hard to say exactly but it’s definitely uh the greens are definitely bigger and it’s longer than the first time I played it pat do you think that they can make the greens a little bit faster than they are now i’m sure they will yeah they usually do so not much speed work throughout the week just trying to get you know comfortable with the the slopes on the greens play a lot more break here than most weeks [Music] for a practice round 10 out of 10 you can’t be showing up obviously wearing shorts in a compet competitive round but it is the US Open the United States Open red white and blue and how would you rate your fit brought to you by Johnny uh the best part about Johnnyo is the pants uh I think they’re my equivalent uh comparison are like kind of like silky pajamas very light very comfortable and I think they make me look good what do you think i mean if if anyone can it’s Donnie that’s for sure
The U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club isn’t just hard — it’s the ultimate test in golf.
From lightning-fast greens to punishing rough to brutal bunkers, Oakmont has earned its reputation as the toughest major championship venue in the world. In this video, we break down the course’s most iconic challenges, its U.S. Open legacy, and why even the best players struggle to survive four rounds here.
Get a closer look at the layout that’s humbled legends — and why it might do the same in 2025.
—–
At GOLF.com, we’re here to help you live well, play well. From the Top 100 Courses in the World to the Top 100 Teachers in America, we connect you with the places and people that make golf the greatest game in the world. Our personalities provide exclusive access to Tour pros, celebrities, and golf’s colorful characters. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, visit GOLF.com, and follow us for the latest Tour news, interviews, gear reviews, and features you won’t find anywhere else.
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/golf_com
—–
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/golf_com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GOLF_com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/golf
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@golf_com
3 Comments
looks easy
Pat cantlay continues to be a non existent personality
That course looks like an uptight, over perfect American version of a links course. It's probably the environmental equivalent of a walmart car park – not a bird, insect or creature would live on it – it's incredibly unlovely. Looks like it's gonna be a hackathon out of that ridiculous rough. Good luck golfers!