Inside Oakmont Country Club: America’s Toughest Golf Course

Inside Oakmont Country Club: America’s Toughest Golf Course

if the US Open is the toughest test in golf then there is no better place to play it than Oakma Country Club located just 10 miles outside of downtown Pittsburgh the 122-y old club will have the world’s best golfers second-guessing their game this week to conquer Oakma you must have complete control of every club in your bag the average fairway is only 28 yds wide requiring precision off the te if you miss a fairway you’ll end up in 5-in thick risk-breaking rough or one of the courses 168 bunkers that’s an average of nine bunkers per hole not to mention the infamous Church Pews bunker that stretches over 100 yards in length and 40 yards wide even if you drive the ball well and feel good with your irons everything can fall apart when putting some greens are massive while others are small if one is wide the next is narrow oakmont’s greens are so firm and fast they literally led to the invention of the stint meter the device that golf courses all over the world now use to measure green speed in the last nine US Opens held at Oakmont Country Club only 27 out of 1,385 players have finished under par that’s less than 2% arnold Palmer famously said “You can hit 72 greens in regulation in the open at Oakmont and still not come close to winning.” Oakmont’s challenging layout is only part of what makes the course so interesting though as players walked into the clubhouse this week they could feel the club’s history and tradition wood panled walls are lined with memorabilia from the 1900s each locker still has the secret compartment that members use to store alcohol during prohibition there are working foam booths in the locker room but no air conditioning and when players sit on the wooden benches to put on their shoes they can literally see old metal spike marks and scuffs from the likes of Bobby Jones Walter Hagen Ben Hogan Arnold Palmer Jack Nicholas Tiger Woods and many other of golf’s greatest players oakmont is so old that the government used eminent domain to construct a highway through the middle of the course in the late 1940s due to the course’s elevation the Pennsylvania Turnbik’s 2.5 million weekly travelers wouldn’t even know the course is right next to them outside of a few banners on a chain link fence 20 ft above them but players and fans left across the bridge to reach holes 2 through 8 the USGA even threatened to remove Oakmont from tournament consideration due to a law jam on the bridge during the 1994 US Open but then hedge fund billionaire and Oakmont Country Club member Stanley Ducken Miller financed the construction of a second bridge for about $750,000 and all was forgiven but that also doesn’t include the $75,000 fee that the authority charged the club to close down the highway for 20 minutes during construction oakmont is such a fascinating venue because it has withtood the test of time while other championship courses are buying up land to deal with the increased length of the modern game Oakmont’s layout looks nearly identical to what it did 100 years ago to understand how that’s possible you first need to understand Oakmont’s history in 1903 a man named Henry Phones purchased 191 acres of farmland 10 miles outside downtown Pittsburgh for $78,500 the land was barren with train tracks running down the middle but phones didn’t care it was perfect for what he needed phones had recently become wealthy after selling his business to Andrew Carnegie the richest man in America at the time but when a doctor misdiagnosed him with a terminal illness Phones thought he only had a couple of years to live and decided to enjoy life phones traveled to Scotland to play some of the world’s best golf courses and when he returned to the US the 47year-old made it his mission to build an unrelenting linkstyle course in the hills of Pittsburgh in 1903 building a golf course wasn’t exactly easy there were no tools or excavators everything was manual phones marshaled a crew of 150 workers with about two dozen horses and mules they dug 12 holes in 6 weeks during the fall of 1903 paused for the winter and then finished the remaining six holes by the following fall since they couldn’t easily just level out the land they incorporated the natural slope into the course’s design oakmont Country Club officially opened on October 1st 1904 the course measured over 6,400 yards and played to a jaw-dropping par of 80 it was the only course that Henry Phones ever designed but one that would become iconic in the history of the game phones had a clear design philosophy he believed quote “A shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost.” End quote in other words every mistake should carry a hefty penalty deep bunkers sharp contours thick rut it all played a part rumor has it that phones would roam the course during the day observing where mishit balls landed if a player didn’t get punished for a poor shot phones would instruct grounds keepers to install a new bunker where it landed that’s why at one point there were over 300 bunkers on the course these also weren’t just any bunker in addition to coarse river sand from the Alageney River Henry and his son William invented a diabolical maintenance trick furoughed sand okamon’s crew used 50 lb steel rags with 4-in teeth to comb the sand into furrow if a player hit it into a furrow they would find a mount of sand right behind and in front of their ball forcing a sideways wedge shot out it was essentially a penalty shot sticking with the theme that no poor shot goes unpunished at Oakmont oakmont’s furrowed bunkers were so extreme that players actually threatened to boycott the 1953 US Open if something wasn’t done eventually a compromise was reached the club agreed to stop furrowing the fairway bunkers but they continued to do it on the Greenside bunkers for a while those steel rakes still hang in the clubhouse today for its first 50 years Oakmont remained true to Phones’s vision featuring sprawling views and no interior trees but after the 1952 US Open writer Herbert Warren Win described Oakmont as a quote ugly brute of a corf and quote he said that it lacked beauty and the members were stung by this criticism so they embarked on a beautifification plan over the following decade Oakmont planted over 5,000 trees including oaks and pines throughout the course these trees drastically changed Oakmont’s character the link style course evolved into a typical parkland course characterized by narrow treelined fairways the trees might have pleased the eye but the grass struggled due to the lack of sunlight and air flow and the strategic angles that initially made the course so great were compromised displeased with how the course changed over time Oakmont’s leadership decided to make a change in the 1990s they wanted to remove the trees to return the course to its original design some members grew to love Oakmont’s green cathedral though so the grounds crew had to do this in secret they began by removing trees one by one after darkness or in the early morning light cleaning up the debris before anyone arrived eventually of course caddies and frequent members began to noticed that trees were missing but it was too late at this point members threatened the board with lawsuits but they held firm between the mid 1990s and the early 2000s about 10,000 trees were removed from Oakmont’s property restoring the chorus to its original treeless interior gilands was then hired to restore Oakmont in 2023 he sat with the club’s curator of collections for an entire day reviewing every historical photograph he could find of the property including aerial drawings they brought in heavy machinery to redo every bunker and every green with the final result adding 300 yd of length and 24,000 ft of green expansion today Oakmont is one of the most challenging courses in the world the USG rating this week is 78.1 on a par 70 course with a slope of around 150 that means a 10 handicapped golfer would be targeting a score in the ‘9s from the championship te’s oakmont does make a few changes for the US Open notably the grounds crew extended the church pews bunker by about 15 yards after players were able to hit T-shots over the penal area in 2016 it takes four to five guys about 45 minutes to hand rake the entire church pew section and Oakmont will bring in 150 volunteers to help this week that’s in addition to a full-time maintenance staff of 45 people during peak season oakmont’s rough will also look different this week at the club’s last US Open players were presented with a graduated rough off the fairway there were about 6 f feet of 1-in thick rough this then transitioned into an intermediate cut of 3-in rough for about 20 to 25 ft before the thick stuff at 5 plus in took over from there but this year it’s even more challenging oakmont is now transitioning directly from 1in thick rough to 5-in thick rough the rough is still mowed because if you stop cutting the grass and just let it grow to 5 in the grass would lie over itself and the ball would sit on top so by incrementally cutting the grass up to 5 in the individual blades of grass stand tall causing the golf ball to fall deep into the rough a typical day for the grounds crew at Oakmont runs from 4:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night dozens of employees hold turf management degrees or are actively pursuing them the truth is working at Oakmont is like receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School the club has remarkably low turnover there have been just eight head golf professionals over the last 120 years because the course has always maintained in championship conditions it doesn’t matter if the US Open is tomorrow or in 10 years oakmont members expect to be tested every single round oakmont may be a country club but it’s really a golf club in the purest sense more than a third of the club’s members carry a single-digit handicap and the club never closes for weather rain or shine cold or hot it doesn’t matter oakman is ready that’s why Lee Trovino famously said “There’s only one course in the country where you could step out right now right now and play the US Open and that’s Oakmont Country Club.” As you watch the US Open this week pay close attention to the details the way players pace around putts taking extra time to read the subtle breaks how they choose to attack Oakmont’s 300yard par 3 eighth hole the grimaces on their face when they find themselves in a bunker or that infamous 5-in thick Oakmont rough every shot is a decision and every decision has consequences that right there is the magic of Oakmont oakmont’s significance in golf history can’t be understated earlier this week Dustin Johnson called it the most challenging course he has ever played even though he won the US Open at Oakmont in 2016 then Ben Griffin took it a step further saying he would be happy with a score of four over par if you gave it to him before the tournament began oakmont is not just a golf course it’s a living museum of American golf unlike some older golf clubs that stopped women from joining in their early years Oakmont has welcomed female golfers from the start not only were they given the same facilities but the women’s locker room at Oakmont even has air conditioning a feature the men still lack today the clubhouse at Oakmont cost $38,000 to build but it still evokes the same Scottish farmhouse feeling that it did when it initially opened in 1904 ultimately that’s what this course is all about after losing its identity for a period of time during the late 1900s Oakmont has regained its footing the world’s best players will end the week with more bogeies than birdies but it’s just as much of a mental test as it is a physical test this year’s US Open will require patience and precision players must do everything well from controlling the spin off their irons to navigating hundreds of penal areas the last six US Open winners have shot a combined score of 47 under par but don’t expect that to happen this week the winning score will probably be the highest it’s been in two decades at the US Open which is precisely what Henry Phones would have wanted as Xander Schoffley said earlier this week people don’t turn on the TV to watch guys hit a 200yd shot onto the green they turn on the US Open to see a guy shooting eight over par and suffering oakmont is ready to deliver on that promise the only question remaining is who is up for the challenge

Sports business analyst Joe Pompliano takes an inside look at Oakmont Country Club, the host of this weekend’s US Open golf tournament. Oakmont is one of the country’s most historic golf courses and will host the US Open for a record 10th time this weekend — more than any other golf course in the United States. Joe breaks down Oakmont’s storied history, financials, challenging course layout, the course’s recent redesign, and dozens of other interesting facts behind the 122-year-old country club. Enjoy!

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