PITTSBURGH — Oakmont’s already huge greens can be much more daunting when the lads’s U.S. Open returns subsequent summer season for a report tenth time.
The membership located within the northern Pittsburgh suburbs has restored greater than 24,000 sq. ft of inexperienced floor during the last two years as a part of a renovation guided by golf course architect Gil Hanse.
Hanse initially was introduced in to give attention to the bunkers. Throughout his journeys to the course, he got here throughout images from the Twenties and Nineteen Thirties and observed the greens was a lot bigger earlier than a number of components — time and pure erosion most of all — started chipping away at them.
He talked to the membership, whose membership enthusiastically agreed the renovations had been an opportunity to make the notoriously quick greens even tougher than they had been when Dustin Johnson received his first main at Oakmont in 2016.
Whereas the adjustments this time round received’t be fairly as seen as they’ve previously – Oakmont has spent a lot of the final 30 years eradicating hundreds of bushes in hopes of returning to its wind-swept, links-style roots — the 155 gamers who will be part of defending champion Bryson DeChambeau may discover pins tucked in locations they’ve by no means been earlier than throughout earlier Open stops on the venerable course that opened in 1904.
“The greens are the No. 1 protection on the course,” grounds superintendent Mike McCormick stated Monday. “Oakmont, in as we speak’s world, it’s not a loopy lengthy golf course. There are a number of holes out right here the gamers can be hitting wedges into and it places much more of an emphasis on (the greens).”
The course will play at 7,372 yards as a par 70 in 2025, a tick up from the 7,219 yards it performed at in 2016.
One of many new pin choices the expanded greens give the USGA is on the 182-yard, par-3 thirteenth gap. Pin placement beforehand was restricted to the left aspect of the inexperienced, with little wiggle room when it comes to yardage. Now there are a number of choices, together with a back-right pin that sits in the midst of a bowl, rewarding a great shot however nearly inaccessible from different parts of the inexperienced, notably the entrance proper.
U.S. Open scores have trended decrease of late. Solely one of many final eight winners has posted a better four-round whole in relation to par than Johnson’s 4-under 276, with the final six champions all ending at 6-under or higher.
Scott Langley, the USGA’s senior director of participant relations, thinks Oakmont stays one of many stiffest exams as a result of it lacks the form of shot choices locations like Pinehurst No. 2 (2024) or Los Angeles Nation Membership (2023) present.
“You may have strategic width (in these locations), you’ll be able to play the angles extra,” Langley stated. “There are spots right here the place you do this. However by and huge, Oakmont is you hit a great shot otherwise you don’t. And for those who don’t, the penalty is fairly uniform.”
The extra notable adjustments apart from the greens are a new-look fairway on the 485-yard, par-4 seventh gap that gives gamers two selections: play it secure and quick to the correct however accept a blind strategy or goal left and attempt to carry a drive 320+ yards over a fairway bunker that if executed accurately allows you to see the pin in your strategy with a brief iron.
Oakmont additionally rebuilt each hazard and revamped the course’s almost 200 bunkers whereas updating the drainage system. The membership was hit by almost 3 inches of rain in the course of the early rounds of the U.S. Open’s final go to, forcing the grounds crew and volunteers to get inventive whereas bailing out the sand traps.
“The bunkers had deteriorated considerably from 2016 to 2022,” McCormick stated. “There’s plenty of newer expertise and methods to empty bunkers and maintain sand and restrict contamination. So the membership had a possibility to ensure that the efficiency of the enjoying surfaces (remained constant).”
