Oakmont awaits man of steel to lift US Open trophy

Whoever lifts the US Open trophy in Pittsburgh this weekend, he will need to be a man of steel in the nerves department to triumph in a city once described as “hell with the lid taken off.”

Home to American icons from Andy Warhol to Charles Bronson and the backdrop for big screen hits like The Silence of the Lambs and Night of the Living Dead, it is no longer a maelstrom of soot, molten iron and coal-dusted mushroom clouds.

Belching blast furnaces made it “orange by night and grey by day”. Pittsburgh is America’s blue collar heartland, giving the world the first Big Mac and legendary American football quarterbacks from Dan Marino and Joe Montana to Joe Namath and Jim Kelly.