First, there’s the name. Oakmont? Where exactly are the oaks? There are about as many trees on a Walmart parking lot as over the 7,200 yards that will sorely try the U.S. Open field this week.
Then there’s the reputation. The Oakmont membership prides itself on overseeing the principal’s office of golf, a place where one regularly goes to receive punishment. It grooms its image as the world’s toughest competition course as carefully as it does any of the 211 bunkers here that invite a player to come and stay for the weekend.
As a former Oakmont club champion told ESPN, “We are the most sadistic folks you’ll ever find.”
There is no shortage of testimony as to Oakmont’s harsh ways.
Phil Mickelson: “It’s probably the hardest course I’ve ever played.”
For good measure, the three-time Masters champion adds that these greens are trickier even than the porcelain slopes of Augusta National. “They’re pitched twice as much, and the green speeds are comparable.”
Rory McIlroy: “Every shot you hit you’re under pressure to hit a great shot.”
Mickelson again: “There’s no reprieve off the tee. There’s no reprieve into the greens. And there’s certainly no reprieve on the greens.”
More practically, Marietta’s Larry Nelson, who won the 1983 edition of the Open contested on a decidedly leafier Oakmont, offers some wisdom about dealing with the bully rough and the sand that goes deep and wide in these parts.
Don’t hit it there.
“It’s all about fairways and greens there, whether there are trees there or not,” Nelson said Wednesday. When he won in ’83, they hadn’t started clear-cutting roughly 7,500 trees from the property to return it to its early-20th century look. The foliage didn’t matter. It was and always has been about keeping the ball in these narrow fairways and somehow sticking it on greens that just may have been forged in some now-shuttered mill in nearby Pittsburgh.
“At Oakmont every shot matters. At a lot of venues, that’s not the case,” Nelson said.
When he won, Nelson went on a great third-round run that helped him to overtake Tom Watson by a stroke. He was 7 over through his first 40 holes of that tournament, and 7 under on his next 14. Nelson carried his momentum into Sunday, and then to Monday, after rain pushed back the close of the final round. With three holes left to play that Monday, Nelson announced his intentions by canning a 62-foot birdie putt. He finished 4 under for the week and proud owner of the second of his three major titles.
How did he do it? On that 14-hole rebound run, Nelson can remember missing only one fairway. And zero greens.
There is an old sensibility to Oakmont, one that certainly suited a player such as Nelson and one that runs counter to the temperament of today. Not even the strapping modern player and his high-tech sticks can overpower this place. The biggest mistake Joe Pro can make this week, Nelson said, would be to think he can do something bold and brave with the ball that finds trouble here.
“For the most part, it’s a bomber’s game, our generation,” the world’s No. 1, Jason Day, said. “It’s not like that this week.”
We’re definitely not at the John Deere Classic here. The last Open winner at Oakmont, Angel Cabrera in 2007, won at 5 over. There were but eight under-par rounds that entire week.
Nelson was hesitant to predict which side of par the winner might land this week, for the vagaries of nature have a say in this (and a softening rain is forecast through Thursday).
Players did their part in trying to soften up the place, too, taking to the court of social media this week seeking relief. Posted were various photos and videos of balls disappearing into the grassy maw of the rough or careening across the green like a downhiller on one ski.
They would be wise to follow the command of the second-generation member of the Oakmont founding family, W.C. Fownes Jr., known for his grandiose declarations. “Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artist stand aside!” he once decreed.
On his couch back home in Georgia, Larry Nelson will be enjoying it all heartily, cozy in his well-earned comfort zone while the world’s best golfers are forced far outside of theirs.
