WEEKEND HACKERS?
W RIST-BREAKING rough, par-three holes that need a driver off the tee and the scariest greens in golf.
Whichever way you look at it, the world’s best golfers believe Oakmont is going to be one of the toughest tests ever encountered at a US Open Championship. There have been many changes to the famous Henry Clay Fownes layout at the Pennsylvania country club since Ernie Els defeated Loren Roberts and Colin Montgomerie in a play-off to win the last US Open at Oakmont in 1994.
It was always considered one of the world’s finest tests of golf, but extensive work in the last few years has made Oakmont even more of a brute, just the way Fownes and his son William Clarke Fownes Jnr, intended. Fownes intended the course to resemble the expansive and exposed links of Britain, where his parents had emigrated from in 1841. But over the years the club’s members decided to beautify their course and so tree planting began in earnest.
Now those 5,000 trees have been taken out to restore the course to near to its original look, while Tom Fazio has renovated the second green and reworked the teeing grounds on 12 holes. There were originally 350 bunkers, but these gradually disappeared and Oakmont has brought the number back up to 210. The new look certainly pleases Phil Mickelson, who played the 1994 US Open there, and has declared himself fit to play this year despite a wrist injury that developed while practising shots out of the Oakmont rough.
Ironically, he had gone into the ‘94 event following an injury, when he broke his leg after crashing into a tree while skiing. Mickelson, who began practising at the course in April, said: “It looked great. I thought it looked really cool. I’m a big fan of cutting them down, whether it’s golf or skiing! “But I thought without the trees it had a very cool look. You saw a lot more of the course, you saw a lot more of the fescue, the rough, the fairway, the sand, and so there was a lot more colour on the course, character on the course, and just thought it looked great.” Mickelson added that he did not find the lack of sight lines with no trees to aim at a problem either.
“I didn’t find it more difficult. I felt like the rough, the fescue, the different colourings of the grasses gave it plenty of definition to know where to hit it.” Adam Scott also played Oakmont in April, and the Australian was taken aback at the length added to the eighth, which takes the hole up to 288 yards, for a par three. “I just think it’s too long for a par three,” Scott said at The Players Championship last month. “But when I was there, we were still on the other tee. They had them on the back one and I hit 3-wood the other day off the tee. I don’t know, I mean, hopefully it’s just an option.”
Scott chuckled to himself at that, but it was a nervous laugh. His compatriot, defending champion Geoff Ogilvy, had not been to Oakmont when he was asked his thoughts on a 288-yard par three, but he said: “I don’t know what motivates someone to make it a driving par three. I’ll have to wait until I see it. I’m not going to bash a hole until I see it.” Mickelson has seen it and played it from the back tees with four different clubs. “I tried them all,” he said.
“What will I hit? Most likely a three-wood or a hybrid into the front part of the green. It’s a tough hole, really tough. “The stretch of 7, 8, 9, 10 is one of the toughest stretches I’ve ever seen. Seven is one of the toughest holes. Nine is now a par four instead of par five, and 10 is, I think, the hardest par four in America if I’’ not mistaken because of the green. That stretch of four holes will probably knock a lot of people right out of the tournament. That’s the stretch you need to get through.
“But they’re all fair. I love the (eighth) hole because of its architecture, and I’ve been slowly getting into architecture, the longest par three you ever see is about 240, 250, and the shortest par 4 is about 330. There’s 80 or 90 yards there where you don’t know what to call them. I don’t know what you call it par-wise, whether it’s a tough par three, or easy par four, but if you’re the USGA you know which way you’re going to go.”
The thought of the mental challenge that Oakmont is going to present also reduced even Tiger Woods to a nervous giggle when he said: “That golf course is going to be one of the toughest tests that we’ve ever played in a US Open, especially if it’s dry. If it’s dry, it’ll be unreal because those greens are so severe, obviously the speed and the rough that they have there, it’ll be everything you want. It will help the scores if it rains a little bit and slows it down.”
Yes, we had to get to the greens sooner or later. Oakmont is renowned for its members’ boast that the greens are actually slowed down for the US Open. Mike Davis, the USGA’s Senior Director of Rules and Competitions, who has a big input into the way Open courses are set up, has planned for the greens to roll 13-13½ feet on the Stimpmeter. That’s super fast on any green. On Oakmont’s pitched or sloped putting surfaces, it’s scary fast, leaving Davis to call them some of the “scariest” in golf.
“The greens are nothing like I’ve ever seen before,” world number one Woods said. “They’re totally different than Augusta. They’re all pitched.
“Once you get to the greens, boy, that’s the challenge right there, trying to putt these things with the right speed because you’re coming over so many different mounds and angles and pitch on the greens that it’s going to be one great test.” For once, Woods and Mickelson are on the same page, with Lefty adding: “Oakmont’s greens are probably the toughest greens in America because the pitch where the hole is is more severe than the next toughest, which is probably Augusta. I think Augusta’s greens are as tough as you can handle, and around the hole at Oakmont, it’s even more severe than Augusta. It’s going to be a very difficult test on and around the greens.”
Not everyone is enamoured at the prospect, however and Fred Funk may have been showing his age when he turned his thoughts to the Oakmont greens.
“It’s hard,” Funk said. “If you hear it once, you hear it 500 times that ‘we slowed the greens down for you guys’. Why would you want to be a member of a course that has greens this fast and undulating? It becomes goofy when the greens are that severe and have the speed on them and they’re so proud of them.
“I wouldn’t look forward to going out there and playing that thing on a steady diet. I have to qualify for it this year, and I’m hoping to get in it, but at the same time it won’t break my heart.”
Funk duly qualified last week and the Champions Tour member will trudge with heavy heart, and maybe a nervous laugh, to Oakmont.
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