Huge undulating, sloped greens are lightning fast. Another legend, Sam Snead, joked: “I put a dime down to mark my ball and the dime slipped away.”
It was seeing a Sarazen putt run off an Oakmont green at the 1935 championship that inspired Edward Stimpson to invent the measuring device known as a “Stimpmeter” to calibrate just how fast a green is running.
Six times major champion Lee Trevino noted the difficulty of the greens when he observed: “Every time I two putted at Oakmont, I was passing somebody on the leaderboard.”
The rough is thick and juicy and its 175 bunkers are harsh, penal hazards. Phil Mickelson, who this week plays his 34th and most likely final US Open, thinks it is “the hardest golf course we have ever played”.
Geoff Ogilvy, the champion in 2006 at Winged Foot – another brutal venue, said: “Playing Oakmont was like the hardest hole you have ever played on every hole.”
The course was built in the early 20th century by Henry Clay Fownes after he sold his burgeoning steel business to Andrew Carnegie. The Fownes family were among the best players in Western Pennsylvania at the time.
Now they had the wealth to indulge their sporting passion and they transformed 191 acres of farmland at a place called Plum on the outskirts of Pittsburgh into one of the most feared pieces of golfing architecture ever built.
It was the only course HC Fownes designed and it has more than stood the test of time. He did not see golf as any kind of beauty contest.
“Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artists stand aside, a poor shot should be a shot irrevocably lost,” he stated.
When the course opened in 1904 it measured 6,406 yards and was par-80. This week it is stretched to 7,431 yards and the par score is 71.
Dubbed “Soakmont” when it last staged the US Open, heavy rainfall softened fairways and greens, Dustin Johnson’s winning score was still only four under, admittedly including a controversial penalty for unintentionally moving his ball on the fifth hole of the final round.
Joint runners up Shane Lowry, Jim Furyk and Scott Piercy, who were three shots behind, were the only other players to beat par.
When Angel Cabrera won in 2007, the course was fast and firm and the Argentine was the only contender to break 70 on the final day. His 69 was enough to finish five over for a one-shot win over Furyk and Tiger Woods.
