Speaker 1: Oakmont Country Club is hosting the US Open for the
Speaker 1: tenth time. Let's dive deep. I'm Garrett Morrison and this
Speaker 1: is designing golf, all right, Joseph, how you doing. I'm
Speaker 1: doing great, Garrett.
Speaker 2: A lot to chew on with Oakmont Country Club in
Speaker 2: this upcoming US Open, so I'm excited to get your perspective.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm here with Joseph Lamania, my Friday golf colleague.
Speaker 1: We're going to do a bit of an Oakmont country
Speaker 1: Club deep dive in this episode. So we have some
Speaker 1: stuff prepared. We've both done a little bit of research
Speaker 1: in our kind of separate analytical areas, mine more in
Speaker 1: history and architecture, and yours kind of based on how
Speaker 1: the pros might play this course in the upcoming US Open.
Speaker 1: So basic plan for this episode is to first talk
Speaker 1: about some history. I have an interview with David Moore,
Speaker 1: who is the curator of collections at Oakmont Country Club,
Speaker 1: where we talk about the early years of this course essentially.
Speaker 1: Then we'll come back to me and Joseph to talk
Speaker 1: about architecture, how it will play for the pros or
Speaker 1: how we expected to play for the pros, and then
Speaker 1: we'll finish up with some holes to watch, but just
Speaker 1: to start off with some basics here. The golf course
Speaker 1: at Oakmont Country Club was originally designed by Henry C. Phones.
Speaker 1: Construction started in nineteen o three, and the course opened
Speaker 1: in October nineteen o four. Initially, the course played to
Speaker 1: sixty four hundred yards, which was a lot for that period,
Speaker 1: to a par of eighty. Over the next few decades,
Speaker 1: Henry Phones collaborated with his son William C. Phones and
Speaker 1: greenkeeper Emil Loffler on continual revisions of the golf course.
Speaker 1: The golf course was basically in a constant state of
Speaker 1: flux over its first few decades. A lot of their
Speaker 1: work involved adding, so that by the mid nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: the course had well over three hundred bunkers, more than
Speaker 1: there are today in fact, but with just a few exceptions,
Speaker 1: Oakmont's routing and greens have remained essentially intact since nineteen
Speaker 1: oh four, which is incredible. Oakmont has hosted three PGA Championships,
Speaker 1: two US Women's Opens, six US Amateurs, and next week's
Speaker 1: US Open, as I mentioned in my introduction, will be
Speaker 1: its tenth. It is a USGA anchor site, and there's
Speaker 1: a good argument that Oakmon is the quintessential US Open
Speaker 1: golf course. It is what you think of when you
Speaker 1: think of a US Open venue, But it's also a
Speaker 1: strange golf course in many ways. Like all really great
Speaker 1: golf courses, Oakmont seems to belong to its own genre.
Speaker 1: It's hard to imitate, and there aren't many courses like it,
Speaker 1: and we'll dig into some of those features that set
Speaker 1: it up part in this episode. Part of our intention
Speaker 1: here is not just to say the usual things that
Speaker 1: are said about Oakmont. Yes, it's hard. Yes there's a
Speaker 1: big church pews bunker on the third hole and another
Speaker 1: one on the fifteenth hole that are kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to look at look at, but we're going to go
Speaker 1: deeper than that. I have recently played this course, and
Speaker 1: Joseph has a way of finding things about golf courses
Speaker 1: that other people don't really see. So my hope is
Speaker 1: that we'll be able to say some new things about
Speaker 1: Oakmont and offer some new understandings about this course in
Speaker 1: the process of going deep on it. But before diving
Speaker 1: into the architecture itself, we're going to hear a bit
Speaker 1: about Oakmont's early history, who Henry and William Phones were
Speaker 1: and how the course came to be. And for that
Speaker 1: I'm bringing in David Moore, who, as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: as the curator of collections at Oakmont. Really good guy,
Speaker 1: very fun to talk to. So let's go to that
Speaker 1: interview now, all right, So, David, any story about Oakmont
Speaker 1: needs to start with the story of the Phones family.
Speaker 1: Could you just start off by telling me about Henry C.
Speaker 1: Phones who he was?
Speaker 3: For sure? So Henry Phones was born here in Pittsburgh
Speaker 3: in eighteen fifty six, and like the majority of the
Speaker 3: Gilded Age millionaires here in Pittsburgh, he made his fortunes
Speaker 3: in iron and steel, and Henry and his brother owned
Speaker 3: a company called the Kerry Furnace Company, which was a
Speaker 3: big blast furnace that produced about at its peak about
Speaker 3: twelve hundred tons of steel a day along the Monongah
Speaker 3: Halo River, And in fact, it became so profitable that
Speaker 3: he sold it to Andrew Carnegie in eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: and then, of course Carnegie sold Carnegie Steel to JP
Speaker 3: Morgan to create US Steel a couple of years later.
Speaker 3: But this made Henry Phones an incredibly wealthy man at
Speaker 3: a relatively young age. He was only in his mid
Speaker 3: fourth parties at the time of the sale of the
Speaker 3: carry furnace, and it's right around this time eighteen ninety
Speaker 3: eight where he really starts to get into golf. He
Speaker 3: had been introduced to it a couple of years earlier
Speaker 3: by another steel magnet in the Pittsburgh area named John Moorehead.
Speaker 3: But by the time we get to the turn of
Speaker 3: the twentieth century, there you know, Phones is a die hard.
Speaker 3: You know, he's a golf sicco for lack of a
Speaker 3: better term.
Speaker 1: And he had a son, right, William C.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, actually Henry had a couple kids, but W. C.
Speaker 1: Phones, William C.
Speaker 3: Phones Junior, was definitely the best player in the family.
Speaker 1: W C.
Speaker 3: Phones, like his father, went into the steel business and
Speaker 3: was truly one of the best players in American golf
Speaker 3: in the first twenty five thirty years of the game.
Speaker 3: You know, when you look at the amateur ranks, you'll
Speaker 3: let Bobby Jones at the top, Jerum Travers, Chick Evans,
Speaker 3: and Francis we met there, and then that next tier down,
Speaker 3: you know, WC. Phones could definitely be in that group.
Speaker 3: He won the nineteen ten US Amateur at the country
Speaker 3: club he played in nineteen US Amateurs and you know,
Speaker 3: more often than not finished in the quarterfinals or semifinals
Speaker 3: before he got eliminated. He won eight Western Pennsylvania Amateurs,
Speaker 3: which was a record until just two years ago. He
Speaker 3: won four Pennsylvania Amateurs, two West penn Opens and really
Speaker 3: was the catalyst behind the creation of the Walker Cup.
Speaker 3: And he captained the first US Walker Cup team in
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty two, and you know, by that point he
Speaker 3: was kind of more on the administrative side of the game.
Speaker 3: In twenty four and twenty five he was the vice
Speaker 3: president of the USGA, and then in twenty six and
Speaker 3: twenty seven, nineteen twenty six and nineteen twenty seven he
Speaker 3: was the president of the USGA. So, you know, the
Speaker 3: Phones family has a long history with not only championship golf,
Speaker 3: but you know championship golf with the USGA.
Speaker 1: So major figures in the early American game. These were
Speaker 1: the founders of Oakmont. How did it come about that
Speaker 1: they decided to found a golf club in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3: So, as I mentioned, Henry was, you know, he was
Speaker 3: truly a golf sicco. You know, he gets introduced to
Speaker 3: the game in eighteen ninety four and then I always
Speaker 3: tell the story of Oakmont. It starts with what we
Speaker 3: call the great misdiagnosis. So right after the sale of
Speaker 3: the carry furnace, somewhere in eighteen ninety eight, eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 3: nineteen hundred. We've never been exactly able to nail down
Speaker 3: the exact year. But Henry was welding a bicycle tire
Speaker 3: back together in his garage. He was a big bicycle
Speaker 3: guy and eventually became a big car guy too, in
Speaker 3: the early you know years of motor vehicles. And he
Speaker 3: was welding a bicycle tire back together when he noticed
Speaker 3: he developed spots in his vision, and he went to
Speaker 3: a doctor and he was incorrectly diagnosed, as we'd find out,
Speaker 3: with arteriosclerosis, which is, you know, essentially heart disease. And
Speaker 3: in nineteen hundred, this is a death sentence. He's given
Speaker 3: maybe you know, a year to two years to live. So,
Speaker 3: you know, he takes the news and stride. He sells
Speaker 3: off a lot of his business interests, and it's during
Speaker 3: that period that he goes and travels to Scotland and
Speaker 3: Ireland and plays you know, all the classic Lynks courses.
Speaker 3: You know, he plays the old course in Preswick and
Speaker 3: Musselborow and you know, the true pillars of the game,
Speaker 3: at least in Lynks Golf. And you know, he returns
Speaker 3: home from that trip and he notices the spots in
Speaker 3: his vision have started to disappear. So he goes to
Speaker 3: the doctor and he sees a different doctor this time,
Speaker 3: and he was diagnosed this time with and correctly diagnosed
Speaker 3: with welders flash and essentially, you know, given this brand
Speaker 3: new lease on life, he'd lived for another thirty five
Speaker 3: or so years, you know, and at this point, Henry's
Speaker 3: in his mid forties. He was already flushed with cash
Speaker 3: after selling the carry furnace to Carnegie, and you know,
Speaker 3: he sold off the rest of his business interests after
Speaker 3: the diagnosis. So he's got the money, he's got the time.
Speaker 3: So you know, he really started to become more of
Speaker 3: a golfer and play more. And the courses that were
Speaker 3: in Pittsburgh at the time just weren't the difficult test
Speaker 3: that Henry wanted. You know, he wanted to play somewhere
Speaker 3: that would test him on every single shot. And you know,
Speaker 3: no offense to the courses that were available at that time,
Speaker 3: and all of them have since evolved into some of
Speaker 3: the best courses in western Pennsylvania. But at the time,
Speaker 3: you know, early American golf was pretty primitive and those
Speaker 3: courses were rather primitive. So you know, the discussion went
Speaker 3: from trying to find the best golf course, too, well,
Speaker 3: why don't we create.
Speaker 1: The best golf course.
Speaker 3: And that process really kind of started in nineteen oh two,
Speaker 3: and by the following spring they found this property here
Speaker 3: in Oakmont and partially in Oakmont, partially in Plumborough, and
Speaker 3: the original one hundred ninety one acres of the golf
Speaker 3: course was purchased by a corporation that Henry Form called
Speaker 3: the Oakmont Land Company. Essentially, he sold, you know, five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars shares to all of his friends and he
Speaker 3: and his family bought the majority of them, and for
Speaker 3: seventy eight five hundred dollars they purchased the golf course,
Speaker 3: which was about three million today. And Oakmond Country Club
Speaker 3: is officially established in June of nineteen oh three.
Speaker 4: What was the land before it was a golf club,
Speaker 4: so it was all farmland, you know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: you got to remember when you talk about country club
Speaker 4: in this era, you know, you truly were out in
Speaker 4: the country here.
Speaker 3: You know, today it's more built up for anybody that's
Speaker 3: been here, you know, like you know, Oakmond Town is
Speaker 3: you know, a pretty pretty big little town and you
Speaker 3: know everything around.
Speaker 1: Is a suburb, but it's but it's densely developed for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and really all of Pittsburgh is that way now.
Speaker 3: So but you know, in nineteen oh three, you were
Speaker 3: truly out in the sticks, you know, in Oakmond and
Speaker 3: even though you were only really you know, maybe ten
Speaker 3: miles up the Alleghany from the center of the city.
Speaker 3: So you know, it was all farmland. It was all
Speaker 3: rolling farmland. And you know that that was the property
Speaker 3: that Henry purchased, and he felt it was suitable to
Speaker 3: build a championship golf course on.
Speaker 1: It's a browny piece of land. Yeah, it must have
Speaker 1: been slightly intimidating at the time to build a golf
Speaker 1: course on such a piece of land because there are
Speaker 1: parts of it that are pretty severe. Tell me about
Speaker 1: the construction of the course, what methods were used to
Speaker 1: create golf there.
Speaker 3: So Henry was definitely inspired by that trip to to
Speaker 3: Great Britain, you know, playing the old you know, the
Speaker 3: classic Scottish links courses. Really kind of created the idea
Speaker 3: of what Henry wanted for his own golf course, so
Speaker 3: that played a huge role in the design. And you know,
Speaker 3: fortunately the piece of property had was pretty wide open
Speaker 3: to begin with a lot more rolling terrain than you
Speaker 3: would find in your you know, traditional links course of
Speaker 3: that time. But you know, it was wide open and
Speaker 3: he had all these natural undulations that he could use
Speaker 3: to create these green complexes and everything else, you know,
Speaker 3: and truly, you know, I think Robert Trent Jones kind
Speaker 3: of gets the you know, the moniker of being the
Speaker 3: father of penal design, but you know, you could really
Speaker 3: argue that it was Henry phones because you know, what
Speaker 3: he wanted to create was this Darwinnian test of golf.
Speaker 3: You know, man versus course hit the perfect shot or
Speaker 3: be punished for it. And you know it's the only
Speaker 3: golf course he ever designed in his life. And you know,
Speaker 3: we gotta give him a ton of credit. He hit
Speaker 3: a grand slam on the first pitch, and you know,
Speaker 3: it truly is a testament to you know, his his
Speaker 3: vision and his understanding that you know, he wasn't a
Speaker 3: professional architect and he was a quality player, but he
Speaker 3: wasn't on the same level as you know, say a
Speaker 3: Tilling Haster or Ceb McDonald that you know, we're building
Speaker 3: golf courses at the same time. And you know, he
Speaker 3: went out and with a team of one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty men and two horses and hand dug this golf course.
Speaker 3: You know, they didn't manipulate the land like they do today,
Speaker 3: and you know, create a hilly terrain out of a
Speaker 3: flat piece of ground or vice versa. What was in
Speaker 3: front of him was what Henry worked with, and he
Speaker 3: just brilliantly created this golf course on these rolling hills
Speaker 3: here in western Pennsylvania. And what you said, you know,
Speaker 3: perfectly sums it up. It's it's a pretty interesting piece
Speaker 3: of terrain. You know, you're kind of on a hillside
Speaker 3: and some aspects, but it doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, because the routing is constantly doing different things
Speaker 1: with the two hillsides that the course essentially sits on
Speaker 1: a very interesting routing, which I'll get to later in
Speaker 1: this podcast. A quote that a lot of people will
Speaker 1: hear the week of the US Open that sort of
Speaker 1: is presented as a summation of Phones's philosophy of design,
Speaker 1: is a shot poorly played, is a shot irrevocably lost?
Speaker 1: You'll hear different pronunciations of irrevocably or irrevocably, but in
Speaker 1: any case, that's the that's the saying. Yep. I want
Speaker 1: to dig into that a little bit. He doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that the ball should be literally lost, right. He means
Speaker 1: that a shot should be lost if the previous shot
Speaker 1: is poorly played. Do I have that right? Correct? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean again, what would Henry phones is really the
Speaker 3: father penal design? It was hit the perfect golf shot
Speaker 3: or be punished for it.
Speaker 1: You know, so if.
Speaker 3: You know, there were stories around the club that you know,
Speaker 3: Henry would sit on the porch every day and watch
Speaker 3: play and if he saw a player hit a shot
Speaker 3: you know, into the rough and they were able to
Speaker 3: get it out and you know, up onto the green
Speaker 3: and have a birdie putter, you know, escape without too
Speaker 3: much consequence. You know, the next day there would be
Speaker 3: a bunker there, or there would be a ditch there
Speaker 3: or something. They would create some sort of obstacle to
Speaker 3: make sure that you know, you were punished going forward.
Speaker 3: And you know, I mean that was the way this
Speaker 3: golf course really got its teeth.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The one interesting thing that Henry did from the onset
Speaker 3: that you know was really rather ingenious on his part
Speaker 3: is he was good friends with Corbyn Haskell, who created
Speaker 3: the very four first rubber core golf ball, so you know,
Speaker 3: which was creating an achron which is you know, a
Speaker 3: mere ninety minutes from here. So that was a huge
Speaker 3: catalyst when he built his golf course because he knew
Speaker 3: if he built it to be longer than any other
Speaker 3: course on the planet at the time, he would you know,
Speaker 3: he would have enough time for you know, technology to
Speaker 3: kind of catch up. And you know that that was
Speaker 3: pretty brilliant. So it opens at sixty four hundred and
Speaker 3: six yards and you know, for the Open now here,
Speaker 3: it'll play about seventy three seventy four hundred yards total,
Speaker 3: so it's only about a thousand yards longer than it
Speaker 3: was when Henry first opened it. In the first US
Speaker 3: Open in nineteen twenty seven, played at sixty nine hundred yards,
Speaker 3: so they haven't adee for a distance in a century,
Speaker 3: you know, for the pros, So you know, the distance
Speaker 3: was always the big thing. But the thing that makes
Speaker 3: this golf course so difficult are the green complexes. And
Speaker 3: I mean you've played it. You know, hitting into these greens,
Speaker 3: you have to hit the precise shot to have any
Speaker 3: good chance of scoring. And even if you do, once
Speaker 3: you're onto greens, they're so fast, there's so much undulation.
Speaker 3: You have to hit then the perfect putt to hole
Speaker 3: out or at least make you know, two putt for par,
Speaker 3: you know, And that is what Henry wanted, That's what
Speaker 3: his son wanted. You know, when they when they made
Speaker 3: this place what it was, it was meant to be
Speaker 3: the hardest golf course on the planet. It was meant
Speaker 3: to be for the best players and to you know,
Speaker 3: to test the best players in the world. And that's why,
Speaker 3: you know, here we are, it's a hundred year almost
Speaker 3: one hundred years later, we're hosting our tenth US Open
Speaker 3: and our twenty first National Championship, and you know, the
Speaker 3: best of the best tend to win here at Oakmont.
Speaker 3: And I think the big reason why is they're the
Speaker 3: ones that can navigate that that design the best and
Speaker 3: you know, they hit the perfect shot, and they don't,
Speaker 3: I'll revlicably lose it.
Speaker 1: So what's so remarkable about this history is how early
Speaker 1: it is in the development of American golf. Architecture nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three nineteen oh four. The course open in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh four, was built mostly in nineteen oh three. Was
Speaker 1: so early. This was seven eight years before National Golf
Speaker 1: Links opened. This was more than a decade before Pine
Speaker 1: Valley was anywhere near being completed. Those are considered kind
Speaker 1: of the founding golf courses of modern American golf architecture,
Speaker 1: National Golf Links in Pine Valley and Marion to an extent,
Speaker 1: Marion was built around the same time. Those courses all
Speaker 1: came later, though way later. Nineteen oh three nineteen oh four,
Speaker 1: the best courses in the US were considered to be
Speaker 1: Garden City Golf Club, Myopia, Hunt Club, maybe Equanic Up
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire would get mentioned from time to time
Speaker 1: as one of the better golf courses in the United States.
Speaker 1: There are really no rivals for Oakmont in this era.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I have a question here,
Speaker 1: but just how remarkable is it that this course dates
Speaker 1: back to nineteen oh three? How different was it from
Speaker 1: all the other courses around it in America at the
Speaker 1: time or even in the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing that's just so fascinating
Speaker 3: about it. And again I think the reason why even
Speaker 3: to this day where it won't play as the longest
Speaker 3: US Open venue. In fact, it's probably one of the
Speaker 3: shorter ones, especially in the recent years. But you know,
Speaker 3: what Henry created and and what they know perfected over
Speaker 3: the next twenty thirty years of their involvement here was
Speaker 3: creating this masterpiece. You know, like you said, you know
Speaker 3: what we think think of the best modern architecture was
Speaker 3: you know, National Golf Links in Pine Valley and then
Speaker 3: later Augusta, you know, created by you know, some of
Speaker 3: the best minds in golf architecture there ever was. And
Speaker 3: you know, again Henry was an amateur, just like Hugh Wilson,
Speaker 3: just like George Crump. You know, he wasn't in CB
Speaker 3: McDonald two for that matter, but you know he didn't
Speaker 3: have the pedigree of play that those guys did. So
Speaker 3: I think it's just you know, a real testament to
Speaker 3: him that you know, he learned so much from what
Speaker 3: he saw at those great links courses over over in
Speaker 3: Great Britain, in Scotland, and you know he was able
Speaker 3: to take some of those elements and put it in
Speaker 3: here and then you know, create the bunkers to be penal,
Speaker 3: but you know, give you an opportunity if you did
Speaker 3: hit the perfect shot. And you know, but the fact
Speaker 3: that he was really kind of ten years ahead of
Speaker 3: everybody else is really truly remarkable. And you know, again,
Speaker 3: I think it's a testament to why this place is
Speaker 3: still what it is is, you know, one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty years later, is you know what he was able
Speaker 3: to create.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that's a little hard to explain, even, yeah,
Speaker 1: that this course was built predominantly in nineteen oh three,
Speaker 1: and that the changes since then have been significant but
Speaker 1: haven't really altered the essence of the course as it
Speaker 1: existed originally. But getting into its evolution a little bit,
Speaker 1: William C. Phones, Henry's son, eventually became the most influential
Speaker 1: person at the club, probably right that the chair of
Speaker 1: the Green Committee, the person who is really the custodian
Speaker 1: of this golf course over the next decades. What was
Speaker 1: his influence on the course, What kinds of changes did
Speaker 1: he make and why so w C.
Speaker 3: Is really you know, Henry creates the design. W C
Speaker 3: is the one that really gives it its teeth. And
Speaker 3: then you know, the third person to throw into that
Speaker 3: would be the greenkeeper Emma Leffler, and I always, you know,
Speaker 3: refer to him here as the father of the Son
Speaker 3: and the holy Greenkeeper because it was really that triumvirate
Speaker 3: that really just did everything here for those first forty years. So,
Speaker 3: you know, Leffler started as a caddy when the course
Speaker 3: opened in nineteen oh four, and W. C. Phones took
Speaker 3: such a shine to him that he made him his
Speaker 3: personal caddy. By the age of twelve, he was the
Speaker 3: caddy master. By the age of sixteen, he was the superintendent.
Speaker 3: And then after the pro unexpectedly passed away in nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty nine, he became the pro as well. But Lefler,
Speaker 3: Leffler knew every blade of grass on this golf course,
Speaker 3: and you know, the stories would would go that, you know,
Speaker 3: Henry W. C and Ema Lefler would walk this course
Speaker 3: every night and try to find different things that they
Speaker 3: can do to improve it, you know, to make it
Speaker 3: more difficult, or to make it more fair, or you know,
Speaker 3: to do whatever they felt was necessary.
Speaker 1: And you know, W. C.
Speaker 3: Phones is elected Greens chairman sometime around nineteen eight, nineteen
Speaker 3: oh nine, somewhere in that era. And you know, because
Speaker 3: he's such a quality player, and he's playing so many
Speaker 3: of these, you know, now classic courses like you know,
Speaker 3: the National Golf Links and things like that. You know,
Speaker 3: he's kind of seeing what everybody else is doing, and
Speaker 3: you know, taking elements of those other classic courses and
Speaker 3: bringing them here. But I think, you know, at the
Speaker 3: same point, let's make it as hard as possible as well.
Speaker 3: And you know, one of the things that they came
Speaker 3: up with from the early going was the furrowed bunkers.
Speaker 3: And what the furrows were are bunkers here for the
Speaker 3: first sixty years of the golf club was were bunkers
Speaker 3: filled with sand dredged from the nearby Allegheny River. So
Speaker 3: it was very coarse, very dense, pebble filled, you know,
Speaker 3: not the your prototypical white, fluffy sand that you play in.
Speaker 1: This is not linksland the sand. This is this is
Speaker 1: heavy river stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's almost like hitting that of wet dirt.
Speaker 3: And if that wasn't hard enough, what they did after
Speaker 3: that was they would rake the the bunker's perpendicular to
Speaker 3: the hole with this rake that featured four inch long
Speaker 3: steel times and you know, the colorful nickname for it
Speaker 3: was the Devil's backscratcher, and you know, you would rake
Speaker 3: it perpendicular, and these times would create these undulations, these
Speaker 3: these these furrows that you know, you would hit your
Speaker 3: ball into it and it would sit down in this sand.
Speaker 3: That the only way you could get any club on
Speaker 3: the ball was to pitch out sideways, and essentially, on
Speaker 3: a golf course that has no water hazards and no
Speaker 3: penalties with water, the furrows became the water hazard. Essentially,
Speaker 3: you had to basically pitch it out sideways and take
Speaker 3: your you know, take your medicine sort of thing. And
Speaker 3: if you tried to hit the hero shot, you might
Speaker 3: get lucky once in a hundred, but the other ninety
Speaker 3: nine you were going to create a lot of extra
Speaker 3: pain for yourself. And you know, I mean, by the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty eight US Amateur, I mean, players were complaining
Speaker 3: all the time and all that, you know, this is
Speaker 3: too hard and blah blah blah, and you know, w
Speaker 3: C Phones basically told them like, you're the best players
Speaker 3: in the world, and the members play it like this
Speaker 3: every day, you can play it for seven days.
Speaker 1: Kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And in nineteen fifty three, the players actually threatened to
Speaker 3: boycott the US Open if the furrows remained, and you know,
Speaker 3: the USGA and the club and the players came to
Speaker 3: an agreement that the furrows would remain in the Greenside bunkers,
Speaker 3: but not the not the Fairway bunkers, and by nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty two the practice was gone all together. But you know,
Speaker 3: the bunkers were difficult enough before the furrows, and then
Speaker 3: you add the furrows into it. And you know that
Speaker 3: was all the design of w C. Phones and mL Lefler,
Speaker 3: And you know that reign of the Phones is you know,
Speaker 3: WC resigns the whole family in nineteen forty six, after
Speaker 3: the talk of swimming pools and becoming more of a
Speaker 3: social club. But you know that first forty years that
Speaker 3: the phoneses were here, you know they did everything in
Speaker 3: their power to make this the most challenging golf course
Speaker 3: on the planet. Now they would say, if you hit
Speaker 3: the perfect shot, it would be fair. But you know
Speaker 3: if you didn't, you know you were going to suffer.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, David, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: on the pod. You've got a busy couple of weeks
Speaker 1: here as the go to historian for Oakmont, so good
Speaker 1: luck with the rest of your media obligations, but thank
Speaker 1: you for spending this time with me. Yeah, of course, anytime,
Speaker 1: happy to do it. This episode of Designing Golf is
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Speaker 1: All right, let's get back to the episode. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, Joseph. You ready to talk about some architecture.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, all right, I have a bunch of
Speaker 1: notes here. Feel free to interrupt or ask questions whenever,
Speaker 1: and then we'll get to more of your portion of
Speaker 1: it later. But let's start with the land at Oakmont.
Speaker 1: This land borders the Allegheny River, and this is something
Speaker 1: that can't really be seen from the golf course. You
Speaker 1: maybe aren't even aware when you're on the golf course
Speaker 1: that the river is there, a very big river, an
Speaker 1: important river for Pittsburgh. But the seventeenth tee is essentially
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty yards or so from from the
Speaker 1: north bank of the river. It was previously farmland, so
Speaker 1: the topography may have been a little bit smoothed out
Speaker 1: to a degree. It's mostly big, broad slopes on this property,
Speaker 1: not a ton of micro undulation. But since the course
Speaker 1: is very natural, there is some odd topography out there
Speaker 1: that's kind of charming. The soil is heavy clay, and
Speaker 1: the course essentially sits in a valley. This is two
Speaker 1: hillsides feeding into the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The highway is well
Speaker 1: below the level of the golf course. The turnpike was
Speaker 1: built in nineteen fifty one, but the gorge that the
Speaker 1: highway runs through now contained a railroad before that. So
Speaker 1: the turnpike kind of functions like a river in the property.
Speaker 1: Everything feeds toward it. And I think the tilt of
Speaker 1: the land, these two hillsides that kind of face each other,
Speaker 1: and that the golf course goes up and down and across,
Speaker 1: are really core to the identity of Oakmont Country Club.
Speaker 1: This kind of determines everything about the golf course. It
Speaker 1: accounts for a lot of its challenge, It accounts for
Speaker 1: a lot of its character. So that's the land at
Speaker 1: Oakmont Country Club. Let's go right into the routing. So
Speaker 1: how does this course use the land? I think the
Speaker 1: routing is one of Oakmont's greatest strengths, one of its,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe two or three greatest strengths. I would
Speaker 1: say the first three holes get you to the farthest
Speaker 1: point on the property from the clubhouse. The first hole
Speaker 1: plays down that main hill that the clubhouse sits on.
Speaker 1: Then you cross the turnpike, then the second hole plays
Speaker 1: up the other hill on the other side of the highway,
Speaker 1: and the third hole plays across to the northeast corner
Speaker 1: of the site, and then from there the front nine
Speaker 1: gradually works its way back down the hillside toward the highway.
Speaker 1: The eighth hole gets you back to the bridges that
Speaker 1: go over the turnpike, and then the ninth hole climbs
Speaker 1: back up to the clubhouse. The back nine stays on
Speaker 1: the clubhouse side of the property and basically works up, down,
Speaker 1: and across the hillside from southeast to northwest. And the
Speaker 1: genius of this routing, I think, is how much variety
Speaker 1: it finds in the natural terrain. The holes are constantly
Speaker 1: changing direction and finding new ways to relate with the land.
Speaker 1: There are down slopes, up slopes, side slopes, and the
Speaker 1: holes just find these endless permutations and combinations of those
Speaker 1: different slopes. So, for example, the first hole plays downhill
Speaker 1: while tilting a bit right to left, then the second
Speaker 1: hole plays uphill while tilting a bit left to right,
Speaker 1: and it goes on like that. It's constantly changing directions.
Speaker 1: So if there's wind, you're getting these different looks at
Speaker 1: the wind, and the land is doing something different on
Speaker 1: every hole, and I think this is really what gives
Speaker 1: the core its variety and gives each hole its distinctiveness.
Speaker 1: It's a big reason why the course is difficult, because
Speaker 1: you're constantly fighting the slope from tea to green. You
Speaker 1: have all these weird lies. You have to think about
Speaker 1: what your ball is gonna do when it lands. But
Speaker 1: also it just makes each hole memorable, and that's something
Speaker 1: that is I think surprising about Oakmont because the land
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have any really remarkable natural features aside from
Speaker 1: its slope. But that's not that remarkable. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just a big, brawny slope that a lot of golf
Speaker 1: courses have. There is no ocean here, there is no
Speaker 1: you know, you don't get up to see the Allegheny River.
Speaker 1: You don't find variety through spectacular natural vistas or even
Speaker 1: like a query like Marion has. You don't have those
Speaker 1: features that automatically give memorability to the holes. The reason
Speaker 1: each hole is memorable, though, is that it relates to
Speaker 1: the land in a different way. And I think it's
Speaker 1: really impressive that after a rounded Oakmont you have no
Speaker 1: trouble remembering every single hole, so it passes that test
Speaker 1: with flying colors, and that characteristic has been there since
Speaker 1: the beginning because the routing is basically phones is routing, right,
Speaker 1: So that's that's something that's very remarkable about Oakland. Is
Speaker 1: that something that was obvious to you, Joseph in kind
Speaker 1: of looking at the course from afar.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you went to the variety piece, because I
Speaker 2: think the deeper I've gotten into my Oakamont research, the
Speaker 2: more I've appreciated the variety in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2: You know, some greens you can run it up. Others
Speaker 2: are a little bit more of a forced carry, Like
Speaker 2: some holes have bunkers cutting into the fair way, like
Speaker 2: some are sloped one direction, some of the other way.
Speaker 2: I don't think this style of variety it has necessarily
Speaker 2: translates as well to TV as it does to seeing
Speaker 2: it in.
Speaker 1: Person as an absolutely experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And a lot of that has to do with
Speaker 2: the fact that the greens are so wild and the
Speaker 2: greens are such a strong defense, which I think we
Speaker 2: kind of have to almost lead with, Like that is
Speaker 2: the defense at Oakmond. It's it's incredibly penal t to green,
Speaker 2: but the greens are wild, and that slope is often
Speaker 2: hard to capture on TV. So I think from watching
Speaker 2: it historically the memorability it doesn't pass the memorability test
Speaker 2: on TV as well as I'm sure it does in person.
Speaker 2: And I think it can feel a little bit like
Speaker 2: a slog to watch but not to play, And so
Speaker 2: it's just an interesting golf course to talk about from
Speaker 2: that perspective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's because what doesn't translate to TV. It's topography,
Speaker 1: and what makes the holes at Oakmont distinct from each
Speaker 1: other primarily topography, also bunker rangements and green designs, but
Speaker 1: there is kind of an Oakmont style of bunker and
Speaker 1: green design and so once you see one, you're kind
Speaker 1: of like, Okay, these are similar to each other, but
Speaker 1: what really makes the whole stand out from each other
Speaker 1: is the way they relate to the land. And that's
Speaker 1: not going to translate on TV. If you think about
Speaker 1: a course that translates as instantly memorable from hole to
Speaker 1: hole on TV, Augusta National is probably the best example.
Speaker 1: And what do you have there. You have some remarkable
Speaker 1: water hazards, you have holes that visually are distinct from
Speaker 1: each other right away, especially on the back nine. So
Speaker 1: I think that's the kind of thing that translates to TV.
Speaker 1: Oakmont doesn't do that as much. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good point. Or sawgrass, yeah, TPC sagrass, perfect example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: immediately visually distinct holes from each other, partly because of
Speaker 1: the variety of different colors and textures of hazard. In
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, Oakmont's Oakmont's a bit more more
Speaker 1: is simple in terms of its in terms of its
Speaker 1: visual impact. Yeah, that's interesting. All right, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the design philosophy at Oakmont. I'm curious about your thoughts here.
Speaker 1: Phones's primary point of reference for great golf was links golf.
Speaker 1: He toured the links of Great Britain around the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, and Henry Phones's big intention was
Speaker 1: to create something like that in Pittsburgh, a links golf course. Now, admittedly,
Speaker 1: the influence of links golf on Oakmont is hard to discern,
Speaker 1: especially these days, because of the presentation of the course.
Speaker 1: The course is presented like an American inland parkland course.
Speaker 1: The exceptions to that would be the course was nearly
Speaker 1: treeless during Phones's time and is again treeless. So maybe
Speaker 1: that's a link to links golf. The greens have open fronts,
Speaker 1: for the most part, a lot of the greens have
Speaker 1: open fronts, inviting some run up play, another possible connection
Speaker 1: to Links golf, and then the architecture adheres to the
Speaker 1: lay of the land. This might have just been a result, though,
Speaker 1: of the limitations of construction during this period. They really
Speaker 1: couldn't have done anything else except adhere to the lay
Speaker 1: of the land. But when I'm thinking about how Oakmont
Speaker 1: resembles a links golf course, those are the directions that
Speaker 1: I would immediately go in Now, I think the lay
Speaker 1: of the land character of Oakmont is something that really
Speaker 1: needs to be noted. If you look at the top
Speaker 1: thirty or so most highly rated American courses, Oakmont might
Speaker 1: actually be one of the most even if it's not
Speaker 1: the most natural looking. And I think this is partly
Speaker 1: a consequence of Oakmont being the oldest, very highly rated
Speaker 1: American golf course. I mean, this was built in the
Speaker 1: ancient days of American golf architecture, well before National Golf Links,
Speaker 1: well before Pine Valley, two decades before Cypress Point, two
Speaker 1: and a half decades before Cyprus Point, and so the
Speaker 1: construction approach was relatively rudimentary. If you were to compare
Speaker 1: the amount of earth that the phones is moved in
Speaker 1: creating Oakmont to the amount of earth that core and
Speaker 1: Crenshaw moved in building Sandhills, which is regarded as one
Speaker 1: of the great natural golf courses. I think it might
Speaker 1: be similar. I think Coren Crenshaw might have moved more
Speaker 1: dirt in creating sand Hills. The course was built in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties as opposed to the very early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: so it's something to keep in mind. With oak it
Speaker 1: is an extremely natural golf course relative to the other
Speaker 1: great American courses. Now, okay, design philosophy, we have links
Speaker 1: golf as a potential influence. Maybe a little bit hard
Speaker 1: to see that these days, though, Oakmont's reputation is that
Speaker 1: of a quintessentially penal golf course. You see this in
Speaker 1: just about everything that's written about Oakmont. This is penal architecture.
Speaker 1: So Oakmont, yes, does have many obviously penal holes. The
Speaker 1: straight lines of bunkers guarding some fairways are a dead
Speaker 1: giveaway of that. If you look at the first hole,
Speaker 1: it just has these kind of lineups of bunkers down
Speaker 1: each side of the fairway. Very linear, very much intended. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you hook ory slice it. You're going to be
Speaker 1: in one of these bunkers, or you're going to be
Speaker 1: in rough That is penal architecture, and many holes at
Speaker 1: Okemont follow that philosophy. The tenth hole does, the fourteenth
Speaker 1: hole does. You could go on, but the course also
Speaker 1: has some holes that strike me as clearly strategic. If
Speaker 1: you're watching during the US Open, look at the second hole,
Speaker 1: Look at the fourth hole, par five. Look at the
Speaker 1: seventh hole, part four that's kind of near the turnpike.
Speaker 1: Look at the eleventh hole, look at the twelfth hole,
Speaker 1: the seventeenth hole. I think these are strategic golf holes.
Speaker 1: They are at least intended in their design to be strategic.
Speaker 1: They were more obviously strategic in the phones era. If
Speaker 1: you look at nineteen thirties aerials of this golf course,
Speaker 1: the fairways were wider, and to me, the strategic intention
Speaker 1: of the design of these holes comes across more clearly
Speaker 1: when you look at them back in the day. But
Speaker 1: Gilhans's work has restored some of the strategic characteristics of
Speaker 1: these holes that were lost over the years. And so
Speaker 1: I think that something that goes noted too rarely about
Speaker 1: Oakmont is how it mixes together penal and strategic holes
Speaker 1: with the balance tilted toward penal. But there are some
Speaker 1: strategic holes out there, and I think that this is
Speaker 1: an example of Oakmont's variety, and I think it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Is this something that you noticed and looking at the
Speaker 1: course at all?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like almost overwhelmed with how much there is
Speaker 2: to talk about with Oakman, Like even just in the
Speaker 2: last two minutes there that you're talking like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. I have a lot of notes.
Speaker 2: This is probably a topic for almost another day. But
Speaker 2: I often think there's too big of a distinction made
Speaker 2: between penal and strategic architecture, or at least that they
Speaker 2: overlap often more than Yes, sometimes they're described like.
Speaker 1: Strategic holes can also be penal. Right, if you have
Speaker 1: a strategic design, but then you put hazards down both
Speaker 1: sides of the fair way, but you still have some
Speaker 1: of those diagonals within the whole corridor, then he kind
Speaker 1: of got a hole that's both penal and strategic.
Speaker 2: I mean, Augusta National is a golf course that we
Speaker 2: probably would often discuss within the context of it being strategic,
Speaker 2: and I think there's a far more penal architecture out
Speaker 2: there than is often represented.
Speaker 1: So well just because of the trees.
Speaker 2: That's a huge part of it, right, Yeah, I do
Speaker 2: think some people may brush over the whole links golf connection.
Speaker 2: I think it's actually a really interesting way to understand
Speaker 2: Oakmont and important in that. One of the main ways
Speaker 2: I think Oakmont's different from a lot of golf courses
Speaker 2: that look like Oakmont is that the ground is a
Speaker 2: factor and that the ball on the ground it matters
Speaker 2: what happens when the ball hits the ground. So it's
Speaker 2: a clear difference from a golf course like Mirefield Village,
Speaker 2: where the PGA Tour is right now as we're record this,
Speaker 2: where the ground isn't really a factor like the greens
Speaker 2: aren't much of a defense.
Speaker 1: There the golf course for sure, yeah, right, And there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of slope in the fairway. It's totally
Speaker 1: and TPC Sawgrass is primarily an aerial golf course at
Speaker 1: this point. Even if Pete Dye was imagining that there
Speaker 1: will be some more rollout, Oakmont for sure is a
Speaker 1: course that prioritizes the ground game. I think this is
Speaker 1: a great point and something that should definitely come up
Speaker 1: when you talk about links golf and its influence on.
Speaker 2: Oakmont absolutely And part of the difficulty of that, And
Speaker 2: I think what makes Oakmont so interesting to talk about
Speaker 2: is that the golf course is in Pittsburgh and that
Speaker 2: is not necessarily a climate that is the most conducive
Speaker 2: to the ground game and so.
Speaker 1: Or a soil type. You know, it's as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: it is heavy clay.
Speaker 2: So I you know, I pray that we get no
Speaker 2: rain and that the conditions are firm enough that the
Speaker 2: ground game matters. But like, that's a huge part of
Speaker 2: the story of the weak the story of the setup
Speaker 2: a golf course like Oakmont is that it is highly
Speaker 2: conditioned dependent. And I'm not sure how many golf courses
Speaker 2: in the world are as dependent on conditions for the
Speaker 2: golf course to play the way that it should as Oakmont.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting to think about it within the lens
Speaker 2: of it being a link style golf course, the ground
Speaker 2: game being a factor as to why that matters. Now,
Speaker 2: the greens will probably like they're wild enough that even
Speaker 2: if it gets a little bit of rain, they can
Speaker 2: firm out. They're going to play fast, So the ground
Speaker 2: game will still be a factor. Massive greens, right, Like
Speaker 2: that's a huge defining characteristic of Oakmont. But off the tee,
Speaker 2: it won't matter that the fairway slopes from left to
Speaker 2: right if we get a bunch of rain, like you
Speaker 2: watch some old clips of Oakmont, And this is something
Speaker 2: that we'll probably talk about later in this conversation. But
Speaker 2: I don't think there's I don't think golfers should be
Speaker 2: trying to hit down certain sides of the fairways out here,
Speaker 2: and if it rains, that's not even going to be
Speaker 2: a factor because the ball is just going to bounce
Speaker 2: and you know, only roll out a few yards anyway.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's really interesting to understand it within the
Speaker 2: context of it being a link style course and then
Speaker 2: thinking about the conditions as a function of how the
Speaker 2: golf course will play is important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they absolutely needed to be firm. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like in pro golf tournaments these days, you either need
Speaker 1: trees or you need firmness, and Oakmont doesn't have trees,
Speaker 1: and so the conditions have to be a defense. Now,
Speaker 1: the agronomy is so advanced at Oakmont, so technically proficient,
Speaker 1: that I think they can achieve firmness even if the
Speaker 1: conditions aren't ideal for it. But Yeah, wind and firmness
Speaker 1: would be a big part of the of the challenge here.
Speaker 1: And if you don't have those things, then then it's
Speaker 1: going to be tough.
Speaker 2: First, are you saying that they can Are you saying
Speaker 2: they can achieve that both on the fairways and the
Speaker 2: greens or just on the greens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think both, but certainly on the greens and
Speaker 1: on the approaches to the greens because the approach are
Speaker 1: essentially maintained as green surface. They're astonishingly short and firm,
Speaker 1: and there will be a lot of inputs that go
Speaker 1: into the approaches if the weather isn't ideal for firmness.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping for natural firmness. I'm hoping for well
Speaker 1: suited weather to a quote unquote American Links golf course.
Speaker 1: But there's no guarantee of that, and and so we'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll see. All right, let's talk about those greens. I
Speaker 1: said that routing was one of Oakmont's greatest strengths, routing
Speaker 1: and the variety that the routing creates with the land.
Speaker 1: The other big strength of Oakmont, I think is the
Speaker 1: green designs. The way these greens are built is different
Speaker 1: from anything else I've seen. They were constructed before golf
Speaker 1: architects really quote unquote knew how to build greens, So
Speaker 1: at Oakmont the phones is were sort of making it
Speaker 1: up as they went along, and the result is something
Speaker 1: completely unique. The greens are generally very large, They have
Speaker 1: open fronts so that you can run the ball on.
Speaker 1: They flow with the lay of the land. They are
Speaker 1: not built up significantly against the natural slopes of the property,
Speaker 1: or not built up nearly as much as they would
Speaker 1: be if a professional architect had built them some time
Speaker 1: later in history. So whatever the slope of the natural
Speaker 1: terrain is, that is generally the slope of the green.
Speaker 1: Derek Duncan, for Golf Digest referred to them as tilted
Speaker 1: basketball courts, and I think that's a pretty good analogy.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you walk around the greens at Oakmont,
Speaker 1: you can see some building up, some propping up against
Speaker 1: certain slopes, but it is surprisingly small. And the result
Speaker 1: is that the natural terrain determines the basic character of
Speaker 1: almost every green. Some grains, several greens in fact, just
Speaker 1: scream away from the line of play one, ten and
Speaker 1: twelve especially. This is very unusual, but again it comes
Speaker 1: from the natural topography. The main manufactured elements of the
Speaker 1: greens are these channels that phones cut through them. They're
Speaker 1: mostly just kind of straight, linear troughs that go through
Speaker 1: the greens, and these give some greens a kind of
Speaker 1: wavy appearance when you look at them from the fairway.
Speaker 1: You look at them and they have this kind of
Speaker 1: wave like structure to them. My hacky analogy would be
Speaker 1: it's almost like corrugated steel, which would be appropriate for Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: but the greens have that kind of distinctive look because
Speaker 1: of the channels that were cut through them. And I
Speaker 1: think that the channels serve a cup purposes. One they
Speaker 1: create some more easily pinnable areas on what are otherwise
Speaker 1: very sloped greens. So if you put a pin at
Speaker 1: the bottom of one of these troughs, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit friendlier and a little bit flatter down there, so
Speaker 1: you can pin them a bit more easily. You have
Speaker 1: a very sloped green, it's hard to find a pin
Speaker 1: there because everything is just going to work away from it.
Speaker 1: You're going to have these crazy puts that break five
Speaker 1: inches over over five feet. So you know, because they
Speaker 1: have these little manufactured elements in them, you can find
Speaker 1: some friendlier sections of them. The second purpose these channels
Speaker 1: might serve is that they help gather water and drain
Speaker 1: it off the greens, so they're functional in that way.
Speaker 1: And finally, they just make the greens more interesting. If
Speaker 1: the greens were just tilted planes, then they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: nearly as engaging as they are now. So ultimately, this
Speaker 1: is a very simple, almost rudimentary approach to green construction,
Speaker 1: but the results are really striking. I think they're again
Speaker 1: they're like no other greens in the world of golf,
Speaker 1: and they've remained essentially the same since nineteen oh four.
Speaker 1: Only eight, fifteen, and sixteen were moved and significantly rebuilt.
Speaker 1: Only eight was rebuilt after the phone's era. Eight had
Speaker 1: to be moved because when the Pennsylvania Turnpike went in,
Speaker 1: they had to kind of widen the gorge that the
Speaker 1: old railroad ran through, and so they moved the eighth
Speaker 1: green something like thirty yards back into the interior of
Speaker 1: the property. But they replicated or tried to replicate essentially
Speaker 1: what the hole was before. So those are those are incredible,
Speaker 1: incredible greens that just have have basically stayed what they
Speaker 1: were since nineteen oh four. There's nothing really like that
Speaker 1: in America. I don't think you can't find greens that
Speaker 1: have stayed the same for that long at many high
Speaker 1: profile courses you might look at, I don't know, Myopia
Speaker 1: Hunt Club or a Garden City or something like that.
Speaker 1: But among championship courses that the pros go to, this
Speaker 1: is this is something totally different.
Speaker 2: The greens I think the biggest that that's what jumps
Speaker 2: out when you're thinking about the test at Oakmont, and
Speaker 2: even compared to a golf course like Augusta, these are
Speaker 2: way wilder.
Speaker 1: And they're way more tilted for sure. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean Augusta is actually a good example of this propping
Speaker 1: up against slopes that I talk about. Augusta's greens are
Speaker 1: modern in the sense that if the green site for
Speaker 1: a green like one or fourteen is really tilted, then
Speaker 1: what Mackenzie did was lift up a low side so
Speaker 1: that he had a relatively level surface to work with.
Speaker 1: And then the interest of the greens that Augusta comes
Speaker 1: from mostly manufactured contour, and that contour can be really
Speaker 1: significant in some greens that Augusta have have really big,
Speaker 1: you know, overall slope as well. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: on tilted green sites, those greens are built up on
Speaker 1: the low side so that they're more leveled off. At Oakmont,
Speaker 1: you just don't see that, and they become wild because
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one thing that jumped out to me again
Speaker 2: watching some of these rounds back, like the twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: US Open. This is not to diminish the test that
Speaker 2: is Augusta National. I love that tournament, love that test,
Speaker 2: but those greens that would almost describe as being wild
Speaker 2: but kind of tame. I don't want to say straightforward,
Speaker 2: but when you're watching golfer's putt at Oakmont, the number
Speaker 2: of three footers that they're starting outside the hole or
Speaker 2: you know that really get away from you, or chip
Speaker 2: shots that like the second hole is a great example
Speaker 2: of this, where you see a shot just come up
Speaker 2: a little bit short and back down that false front.
Speaker 2: You may get to try that shot again. That there's
Speaker 2: not as much of that somewhere like Augusta, and I
Speaker 2: think that's gonna be a big thing from a skill
Speaker 2: set perspective, is these greens chipping around them, but mainly
Speaker 2: putting them is completely different than anything we see week
Speaker 2: in and week out. In professional golf, and I am
Speaker 2: curious which golfers. You know, Scott is a good example
Speaker 2: here who's been putting pretty well. But those are those
Speaker 2: are on tame greens. Like when you put somebody out here,
Speaker 2: I'm curious who is not going to be ready for
Speaker 2: just how different these greens aren't. A lot of these
Speaker 2: golfers are never gonna have seen anything like this unless
Speaker 2: they played here before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a good point. Certain golfers who
Speaker 1: are very concerned with fairness or with the with the
Speaker 1: consistency of a type of architecture see often on the
Speaker 1: PGA Tour might be very bothered by Oakmont in the
Speaker 1: same way that they can be bothered by links golf
Speaker 1: courses during during the Link season, or Shinnacock or even
Speaker 1: Augusta National, Right, I mean, they're just used to Augusta
Speaker 1: National and it's and it's eccentricities. But yes, those greens
Speaker 1: are are clearly very different from what they see week
Speaker 1: in and week out. Oakmont turns up that dial a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the other point here that I've been reflecting on
Speaker 2: as we get closer to this championship is that so
Speaker 2: much of golf has changed over time. There's been so
Speaker 2: many advancements, but I'd say that the two of the
Speaker 2: biggest have been three of the biggest. The golf ball
Speaker 2: and how much straighter it flies the driver head and
Speaker 2: how much more forgiving it is. And then track Man,
Speaker 2: which has optimized the way that golfer's hit shots, especially
Speaker 2: long shots. Course management would be another honorable mention, but
Speaker 2: my point is the way golfer's putt and hit chip
Speaker 2: shots is probably the part of the game that has
Speaker 2: changed the least overtime, and a strong reason why Oakmont
Speaker 2: will stand up much better than a lot of golf
Speaker 2: courses where the defense is tee to green. Right, the
Speaker 2: greens are pretty smooth and tame, but they're really tricked
Speaker 2: up from tea to green. Especially when those golf courses
Speaker 2: are soft, they get pillaged, you know. I think a
Speaker 2: reason to be excited about Oakmont is that its defense
Speaker 2: stands up better to the modern game than a lot
Speaker 2: of other golf courses.
Speaker 1: We see. Let's talk about trees. Oakmont had hardly any
Speaker 1: trees in the phones era, you know, so for the
Speaker 1: first four and a half decades of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: the club did start planting trees in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties. David Moore, the historian, told us a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago that the tree planting program at Oakmont was
Speaker 1: in part a response to Herbert warrenwind the great golf writer,
Speaker 1: referring to the course as an ugly old brute. But
Speaker 1: Whend wrote that in nineteen sixty two, and my understanding
Speaker 1: is that Oakmont's tree planting started before that, So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if that was the sole reason that they
Speaker 1: began to plant trees at Oakmont, but that was definitely
Speaker 1: an influence, and it's a quote that many Oakmont members
Speaker 1: still remember, ugly old brute. They didn't like that at
Speaker 1: the time, and it helped justify or motivate more tree planting.
Speaker 1: The truth is that a lot of courses added trees
Speaker 1: in the post World War two period. Nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties were high times for planting trees everywhere, not just
Speaker 1: golf courses, and the justification was beautification. It wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: about enhancing the challenge of the courses. It was about
Speaker 1: beautifying the courses. And this was something that was happening
Speaker 1: across America. You know, keep America beautiful, make America Beautiful,
Speaker 1: plant more trees. This was something that had wide support
Speaker 1: and it was something that was happening at golf courses. Now.
Speaker 1: Over time, as on many golf courses, tree planting got
Speaker 1: a bit out of hand. At Oakmont, small trees became
Speaker 1: big trees. They started to crowd each other, and the
Speaker 1: turf began to suffer. The playing characteristics of the course
Speaker 1: began to suffer. A lot of the intended character of
Speaker 1: the golf course went away. Now there's a great article
Speaker 1: that I want to recommend to people about how tree
Speaker 1: removal began at Oakmont in the nineteen nineties. This is
Speaker 1: an article by Peter McCleary and it appeared in Golf
Speaker 1: Digest in two thousand and two. It's called Mission Unpopular,
Speaker 1: and it's a very very good article. If people want
Speaker 1: to dig deeper into this tree removal movement at Oakmont,
Speaker 1: then check this out. But there's a story in that
Speaker 1: article about the head pro at the time, Bob Ford
Speaker 1: taking a group of members to a bunker on the
Speaker 1: first hole, and Ford showed them how if you were
Speaker 1: in that bunker, you also had to hit over a
Speaker 1: tree to get toward the green. So this double hazard was,
Speaker 1: in Ford's mind, a problem. So the head professional was saying,
Speaker 1: by the nineteen nineties, at least the trees were a
Speaker 1: problem at Oakmont. So the club started to take out
Speaker 1: trees in the mid nineteen nineties under the superintendent. Mark Kunes,
Speaker 1: the Greens chairman at the time, and the club board
Speaker 1: supported the removal program, but not all members did. I'd
Speaker 1: like to know more about how exactly the leaders at
Speaker 1: the club became radicalized on this subject, so to speak,
Speaker 1: while while a number of other members at Oakmont were
Speaker 1: not in support of tree removal. But usually in these
Speaker 1: situations there is a mix of motivations for tree removal.
Speaker 1: One superintendents tend to push for tree removal because of
Speaker 1: the agronomic benefits, and especially since the nineteen nineties, superintendents
Speaker 1: have become very influential at clubs because their job is
Speaker 1: so important, and because the market for hiring good superintendents
Speaker 1: is very competitive, and so club leaders really want to
Speaker 1: find and keep great superintendents. And so if that a
Speaker 1: great superintendent says, I want you to remove trees that
Speaker 1: carries a lot of weight, and so I think that
Speaker 1: was a factor at Oakmont, then the people who are
Speaker 1: most familiar with the history and architectural ethos of a
Speaker 1: golf course do tend to be the people who serve
Speaker 1: on boards and green committees, and they're the ones who
Speaker 1: are likely to push for a restoration of the look,
Speaker 1: feel and strategy of original course designs. Again, I think
Speaker 1: that's something that happened at Oakmont these days, Oakmont's standard
Speaker 1: justification for the tree removal is that Henry and William
Speaker 1: Phones wanted the course to be links like. That's the
Speaker 1: line that they get, But I think there were a
Speaker 1: number of other things feeding into this. So at first,
Speaker 1: the maintenance crew at Oakmont removed trees starting very early
Speaker 1: in the morning, when it was still dark. They would
Speaker 1: take a tree down, haul away the limbs, grind up
Speaker 1: the stump, and replace the turf over the hole where
Speaker 1: the stump used to be before members were out on
Speaker 1: the course. So they were essentially doing this in secret.
Speaker 1: The superintendent at the time, Mark Hunes, said, we took
Speaker 1: down so many trees before anybody knew what was going on. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the caddies at Oakmont caught onto this and words started
Speaker 1: spreading around the club. Many members were absolutely furious. Some
Speaker 1: threatened to start a petition, there were rumors of a lawsuit.
Speaker 1: A neighboring church started saying prayers for the trees survival,
Speaker 1: but ultimately thirty five hundred trees were removed in the
Speaker 1: first round of restoration work, and I think one members
Speaker 1: saw the views that were being opened up, the topography
Speaker 1: that was revealed. Once they understood that the agronomy was
Speaker 1: getting better, they became much more supportive of ongoing tree
Speaker 1: removal and now essentially every tree has been removed from
Speaker 1: the golf course property. The only notable one remaining is
Speaker 1: an elm next to the third te And so it
Speaker 1: was a remarkable thing that happened at Oakmont. How many
Speaker 1: trees came out, and this tree removal program is probably
Speaker 1: the most important and influential in the history of golf.
Speaker 1: It's still a lightning rod. A lot of people are
Speaker 1: still pissed off about it. Joseph, do you wish the
Speaker 1: trees were still there? A lot there, Garrett.
Speaker 2: I think based on how many people out there think
Speaker 2: that trees are the solution to a the distance problem,
Speaker 2: but be also testing accuracy, which are different things. There's
Speaker 2: probably a lot of people praying for the tree removal
Speaker 2: to stop. Outside of those churches around Oakmont that they
Speaker 2: think that's the solution.
Speaker 1: Here's what I will say on that.
Speaker 2: I can't speak as much to the agronomic benefits or
Speaker 2: to some of the history at Oakmont, but from a
Speaker 2: setup perspective and how that informs the test. Way too often,
Speaker 2: and I'm a broken record for anyone who's listened to
Speaker 2: other pods, but way too often we focus just on
Speaker 2: the width of a fairway and the length of the rough.
Speaker 2: And what matters, what's a crucial component to how much
Speaker 2: accuracy is tested, is what happens on a very wide miss.
Speaker 2: And there are certain golf courses I always throw out
Speaker 2: Tory Pines as an example, where you can miss wide
Speaker 2: of fairway bunkers and it's often better than just missing
Speaker 2: by a little bit.
Speaker 1: We've also seen that.
Speaker 2: At other golf courses, some classic golf courses like Winged
Speaker 2: Foot and like oak Hill, where wide misses, especially with
Speaker 2: tournament infrastructure, where you often get relief, you sometimes have
Speaker 2: a clean look at the green. It's not that much
Speaker 2: a penalty. I don't think that's anywhere near as much
Speaker 2: of a concern and issue at Oakmont, where the hazards
Speaker 2: are big, like the bunkers out there are wide, and
Speaker 2: so you're not missing, you know, left of the church
Speaker 2: pew bunkers and getting away with it. So from purely
Speaker 2: the standpoint of hey, could you add a bunch of
Speaker 2: trees out there and test accuracy a little bit more?
Speaker 2: I mean you could, like it could slightly bring up
Speaker 2: the penalty associated with some of the wide misses if
Speaker 2: you had some trees on the perimeters, but I don't
Speaker 2: think that's necessary here. I don't think it would elevate
Speaker 2: the test also blocks people's vantage points, and I am
Speaker 2: a proponent of the tree removal, and in particular here,
Speaker 2: I think this golf course sets up a little bit
Speaker 2: better to not have that problem of super wide misses
Speaker 2: just just getting away with it. There are some exceptions
Speaker 2: to that, like there's some getting away with it, but overall,
Speaker 2: I think the test off of the tea is pretty
Speaker 2: stout and would not be enhanced by adding a bunch
Speaker 2: of trees.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk a little bit about esthetics, a
Speaker 1: little bit about renovation work, and then we'll move on
Speaker 1: to some other subjects. But the esthetics of Oakmont are
Speaker 1: really interesting. I think it has its own completely distinctive look,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure i'd call it beautiful, but the land
Speaker 1: is impressive and handsome. Again, you can't see the river,
Speaker 1: but when you look in that direction, you have the
Speaker 1: sense that there are some spectacular vistas over there, even
Speaker 1: if you can't really see them. The turnpike is right
Speaker 1: through the middle of the course, which a lot of
Speaker 1: people object to, but I think that's kind of ridiculous
Speaker 1: when you're actually on the golf course. The highway is
Speaker 1: way below the level of the golf course, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't really feel like it factors in. You can hear it,
Speaker 1: but it's not that big of a deal. The thing
Speaker 1: that is interesting to me about Oakmont is how the
Speaker 1: built features have this very utilitary aesthetic to them. They're
Speaker 1: not trying to be beautiful. The bunkers and the other
Speaker 1: artificial features at Oakmont are not trying to blend into
Speaker 1: the natural landscape or give you the impression that they've
Speaker 1: always been there. They're just trying to serve a function.
Speaker 1: They're trying to create challenge and strategy, and there is
Speaker 1: a kind of honesty and simplicity to this approach that
Speaker 1: suits the ethos of the course really well. Oakmont is
Speaker 1: not about delivering pleasure. It's not about delivering pleasure in play,
Speaker 1: It's not about delivering pleasure in esthetics. It is trying
Speaker 1: to do a job, test good golfers to the full
Speaker 1: extent of their abilities. And I think the esthetic of Oakmont,
Speaker 1: the utilitarian nature of how the artificial features there were built,
Speaker 1: fits that to a t. Now, one detail I did
Speaker 1: notice about Gilhans's recent renovation work is that the bunkers
Speaker 1: don't have perfectly straight edges. There is a little squiggle
Speaker 1: to them, which makes them look handmade, which of course
Speaker 1: they originally were. And I think that's a nice touch
Speaker 1: because a less sensitive architect might have just created the
Speaker 1: bunkers at Oakmont with a bulldozer and made those lines
Speaker 1: perfectly straight, because that is the overall direction of the
Speaker 1: features at Oakmont, these straight lines. But when you make
Speaker 1: something by hand, it's never going to be perfectly straight.
Speaker 1: And so there is a slight variation of the edges
Speaker 1: to the features at Oakmont that I think is really
Speaker 1: well executed. Tom Doak has compared the look of Oakmont
Speaker 1: to a battlefield, and I think that's spot on. You
Speaker 1: sort of have these trenches, craters and built up fortifications
Speaker 1: and they're all all built in a very straightforward way.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're building battlefield fortifications, Beauty is not
Speaker 1: the primary motive, and so that is Oakmont's aesthetic. It's
Speaker 1: kind of an anti esthetic, but it works for the
Speaker 1: golf course. It's not a beautiful course, but it is
Speaker 1: a striking one, all right. So moving on to the
Speaker 1: renovation work. Gil Hans did this work between twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three and twenty twenty four. For the most part. The superintendent,
Speaker 1: Mike McCormick refers to it as the single biggest project
Speaker 1: that the course has done in its history. An old
Speaker 1: irrigation system was replaced. Hans touched every bunker in every green,
Speaker 1: installed new bunker drainage, and reconstructed mini bunkers. He added
Speaker 1: length to the championship tease, but he did not, I
Speaker 1: don't think, really transform the golf course. It's going to
Speaker 1: look substantially similar to the course that we saw in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, and I think that part of the reason
Speaker 1: for that is that the big work that Oakmont did
Speaker 1: it did gradually between the nineties and when Hans came in.
Speaker 1: It was the tree removal that was the big transformation,
Speaker 1: but the features in the ground haven't really been monkeyed
Speaker 1: with that much. And so if you compare the telecast
Speaker 1: of the twenty sixteen US open to the telecast of
Speaker 1: this one coming up, I'm not sure that unless you
Speaker 1: look closely, you'll see massive differences. So this was not
Speaker 1: a transformation renovation like Hans has done at Southern Hills
Speaker 1: or other courses that just came out looking completely different
Speaker 1: than they did before. This was more of a fine tuning.
Speaker 1: But a lot of work was done, a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff was rebuilt and rearranged. The effect of it all, though,
Speaker 1: is going to be relatively subtle. So Hans based his
Speaker 1: work on historical evidence from the Phones period again, this
Speaker 1: is about nineteen oh three through nineteen forty six or so.
Speaker 1: But instead of restoring the course to a particular version
Speaker 1: or year, Gil assembled the kind of greatest Hits collection.
Speaker 1: He chose bits and pieces from different periods of Phones's
Speaker 1: tenure at the course. Probably the most significant work that
Speaker 1: he did was restoring the dimensions of the greens, so
Speaker 1: he pushed out a lot of the greens to the
Speaker 1: edges of the green pads. This will open up some
Speaker 1: new and sometimes more difficult pin positions. This has given
Speaker 1: back the greens some of their original quirky shapes. And
Speaker 1: he also reduced a lot of the sandy build up
Speaker 1: at the edges of greens. When courses evolve over time,
Speaker 1: often the edges of the greens start to get propped
Speaker 1: up by this build up of organic material. Right when
Speaker 1: people play out of bunker, sand will fall on the edges,
Speaker 1: and over time the edges will kind of come up
Speaker 1: so that the edges of the greens are higher than
Speaker 1: the middle. A lot of what Hants did was to
Speaker 1: bring those edges back down, so that although the greens
Speaker 1: are bigger, they're going to feed into the middle a
Speaker 1: lot less. They're going to run off the edges a
Speaker 1: lot more. Because he brought those edges down, he did
Speaker 1: widen the fairways in certain spots. You know, from what
Speaker 1: I can see, Hans did a lot of widening in
Speaker 1: spots where the members are going to play, and also
Speaker 1: widening in spots where you might try for a provocative
Speaker 1: little angle at a certain pin. So, in this way,
Speaker 1: you know, the green expansions and the fairway expansions worked
Speaker 1: in tandem. If a green expansion opened up a certain
Speaker 1: new pin position, then often the part of the fairway
Speaker 1: that might let you best access that pin position was
Speaker 1: also widened slightly. He shifted the position of some of
Speaker 1: the bunkers, you know, in some cases to account for
Speaker 1: distance gains and other cases to restore some concepts from
Speaker 1: the Phones era. So certain holes are just to have
Speaker 1: completely different bunker arrangements. You know, they might have the
Speaker 1: same greens as they always did, they might have the
Speaker 1: same routing as they always did, but the bunker positions
Speaker 1: will will be different throughout the holes. But we don't
Speaker 1: really have time to go into whole by whole what changed.
Speaker 1: Just note that that some holes have have different bunker
Speaker 1: arrangements and orientations. Now, so that's Hans's restoration work. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much all I have in my notes. We've gotten through.
Speaker 1: We've gotten through my many notes on Oakmont. I skipped
Speaker 1: over some stuff, but that is the that's the core
Speaker 1: of the research I did on the course. You've already
Speaker 1: put some of your thoughts in here, Joseph, But you know,
Speaker 1: as you were researching the course, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how it's going to play for the pros.
Speaker 1: So what are some of your general thoughts about how
Speaker 1: Oakmont is going to serve its purpose as a US
Speaker 1: Open venue. This time around, we've.
Speaker 2: Hit on some of it, and I think the importance
Speaker 2: of the ground game and how conditions will dictate that
Speaker 2: as a huge facet of the test. You talked about
Speaker 2: increasing the size of some of the greens. I think
Speaker 2: I saw that the USGA has a whole by whole
Speaker 2: YouTube video. It's excellent, said the green on seventeen is
Speaker 2: fifty two hundred square feet and that's the smallest green
Speaker 2: on the course.
Speaker 1: And just to give.
Speaker 2: People some reference point, like, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: golf courses we see in professional golf where the average
Speaker 2: square footage is smaller than fifty two hundred square feet
Speaker 2: and that's the smallest green on the golf course. So
Speaker 2: big greens, And I think it's a huge mistake, a
Speaker 2: misguided notion to suggest that big greens make golf courses easier, right,
Speaker 2: because sure, holding everything constant, if you took a green
Speaker 2: and you just made it a little bit bigger and
Speaker 2: it didn't have interesting contour, yeah you'd decrease the scoring
Speaker 2: average a little bit. But the greens at Oakmond are wild,
Speaker 2: and when the significant part of the green is a
Speaker 2: false front, for example, or a steep runoff into an
Speaker 2: area of trouble that's not easy. So I think conflating
Speaker 2: size of greens with ease or with difficulty is not
Speaker 2: the right way to look at it. And that's kind
Speaker 2: of a cousin of thinking that shrinking fairways with is
Speaker 2: a good idea, right that it's same sort of idea
Speaker 2: that that more short grass makes things easier, which is
Speaker 2: not always the case. So I'm really excited that the
Speaker 2: greens are going to be a significant defense. As we've
Speaker 2: touched on, main other thing that came up through my
Speaker 2: research is that there's always a conversation around how much
Speaker 2: will a golf course test distance, how how bomber friendly
Speaker 2: will it be, and often that gets framed as bombers
Speaker 2: or accurate drivers. I've never looked at golf that way
Speaker 2: that that those are that it's a spectrum of distance
Speaker 2: or accuracy. Like to me, golf courses are always more
Speaker 2: of a quadrant like how much does it test distance
Speaker 2: and how much does it reward accuracy, not necessarily one
Speaker 2: or the other. And to that point, I don't think
Speaker 2: this golf course is going to be quite as distance
Speaker 2: friendly as it may be described.
Speaker 1: You see some short.
Speaker 2: Hitters contending in past editions of the US Open, you
Speaker 2: will need to be an elite ball striker. I would
Speaker 2: not expect some golfer who hits it kind of short
Speaker 2: and accurate but isn't a great iron player to contend.
Speaker 2: I don't think that kind of golfer will contend. But
Speaker 2: somebody like a Colin Morikawa, for example, who is not
Speaker 2: the longest driver of the golf ball in the world,
Speaker 2: but is lethally accurate and an excellent iron player through
Speaker 2: the bag. The setup at Oakmont does not prohibit him
Speaker 2: from contending in the tournament. So I do think you
Speaker 2: could see a wide range of golfers compete. You're gonna
Speaker 2: have to be an elite ball striker, and I do
Speaker 2: think there's an opportunity to separate yourself on the greens
Speaker 2: as well. So I think the golfer that wins will
Speaker 2: have a solid week on the greens. But the good,
Speaker 2: the really good putter who doesn't hit the ball super well,
Speaker 2: it doesn't have much of a chance here at Oakmont.
Speaker 1: Why don't you think distance is an outsized advantage at Oakmont?
Speaker 2: Well for some of the holes like and this gets
Speaker 2: to the effective playing with some of the drives are
Speaker 2: they play a little funky for a golfer who hits
Speaker 2: it three hundred and twenty five yards.
Speaker 1: There's a couple.
Speaker 2: It's going to be court like I expect the winner
Speaker 2: to be a long hitter. But you've seen historically some
Speaker 2: of the shorter hitters like Jim Furick finished T two
Speaker 2: here in twenty sixteen and in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: and I think that model works if you're an elite
Speaker 2: iron player. So there's certain holes where like there are,
Speaker 2: there aren't that many holes that are going to be
Speaker 2: massively correlated with distance, Like whole eight's going to be
Speaker 2: a controversial one, right the two hundred, however long they're
Speaker 2: going to play that part three like, that's going to
Speaker 2: be correlated with distance, because if you're a long hitter,
Speaker 2: you're going to have a better chance of hitting less
Speaker 2: club and hitting it higher lofted. But there are runoffs,
Speaker 2: There are run ups into some of the greens, which
Speaker 2: mitigates the distance advantage. Sometimes when you can chop something
Speaker 2: out of the ruck and run it up, you don't
Speaker 2: have to hit. It's not all forced to carry. So
Speaker 2: that's another reason that the shorter hitters will have a
Speaker 2: little bit of a or less of a disadvantage, but
Speaker 2: just in general, I think the main thing is the
Speaker 2: effective playing with like it for Bryson to get up there,
Speaker 2: he can't just pound away like he can at Winged
Speaker 2: Foot at Tory. At some of those golf courses where
Speaker 2: wid misses aren't penalized, you do have to keep it
Speaker 2: in the playing areas, and some of them are really narrow,
Speaker 2: some of them are twenty to twenty five yards wide.
Speaker 2: So it should be a diversity of styles that succeed.
Speaker 2: And then the last point is there's some randomness at
Speaker 2: this golf course, so like you could chip something that
Speaker 2: comes back to your feet and turn a three into
Speaker 2: a five or six pretty quickly, and sometimes that just
Speaker 2: introduces a level of randomness that benefits golfers who aren't
Speaker 2: the best golfers in the world. And I think that's
Speaker 2: a good reason why you see golfers like Scott Peercy
Speaker 2: in the top ten. Jerry Kelly was in the top
Speaker 2: ten in two thousand and seven, and he was a
Speaker 2: great golfer, but he wasn't the type of player that
Speaker 2: you necessarily expect. It wasn't a top five golfer in
Speaker 2: the world at the time.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that part of the effect of
Speaker 1: greens like you have at Oakmont is a certain randomness. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is what you get when you have a green
Speaker 1: like the Twelfth Green that just absolutely runs away at
Speaker 1: a grade that you don't see pretty much anywhere. That
Speaker 1: is challenging, but it also introduces some element of chance
Speaker 1: that you might make it. So Oakmont doesn't reliably sort
Speaker 1: for the best players in the world. So what I'm
Speaker 1: hearing is that you don't expect Oakmont to be like
Speaker 1: a pure bomb and gouge exercise just because this is
Speaker 1: a tree lists inland course with heavy rough and one
Speaker 1: that's going to play very long. It's not necessarily going
Speaker 1: to be one where it's bombers only.
Speaker 2: Now, and a lot of the best players in the
Speaker 2: world hit it really long. So I think the winner
Speaker 2: is going to be one of the top six names
Speaker 2: coming in. I do Scottie Bryson, Rory Xander Ram or
Speaker 2: Colin Morikawa, like I expect the winner to be in
Speaker 2: that camp. And I think this golf course sets up
Speaker 2: incredibly well for Bryson. Despite him being a very long hitter,
Speaker 2: he's also an incredible putter, and I think that is
Speaker 2: going to shine through Bryson on the greens. His calculated approach.
Speaker 2: He's going to turn a lot of potential three putts
Speaker 2: into two puts that a lot of other golfers will struggle.
Speaker 2: So the reason I'm saying that is that if we
Speaker 2: get a bomber who wins, like some of that could
Speaker 2: be the distance advantage that are realizing. Dustin Johnson won
Speaker 2: here in twenty sixteen, Like distance is still an advantage,
Speaker 2: But I think if we see Bryson win, it's not
Speaker 2: necessarily necessarily a reflection of the golf course being bomb
Speaker 2: and gouge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Bryson has a number of other skills, and
Speaker 1: so I mean that will be the narrative surely if
Speaker 1: Bryson does win that this was a bombing gouge fest.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we know that he can do a number
Speaker 1: of different things and this might be a very good
Speaker 1: course for him. He did well here in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and he's a very different player now, But but he
Speaker 1: proved in twenty sixteen that he can handle this golf course,
Speaker 1: that he's that he suited to it, that it doesn't
Speaker 1: bother him, And I think that's a big deal.
Speaker 2: I think Bryson may win this golf tournament.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm picking him. He's my one and done pick
Speaker 1: from kicking Scotty. I've been saving him for Oakmont, Scotty
Speaker 1: yet in our one and done league, I'm picking Scott No.
Speaker 2: I think I've probably already used I didn't want to done,
Speaker 2: but like official pick Scottie. But I think Bryson is
Speaker 2: a very very strong contender here.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to some holes to watch at Oakmont,
Speaker 1: some holes that were excited to see the pros tackle.
Speaker 1: What comes to mind for you first here, Joseph. Three
Speaker 1: holes stand out for me. I think number two.
Speaker 2: I love watching the second hole, short four three hundred
Speaker 2: and forty five yards or so. A bunker that cuts
Speaker 2: in that kind of separates whether or not you want
Speaker 2: to hit something like two sixty two seventy off the
Speaker 2: tee and then.
Speaker 1: Have big barker cuts in on the right yeah.
Speaker 2: Correct, yes, or if you want to go for it
Speaker 2: extremely severe runoff on the front that made a mockery
Speaker 2: of a lot of golfers in twenty sixteen who thought
Speaker 2: the hit good shots in whether it was a wedge
Speaker 2: or their te shot that kind of runs up onto
Speaker 2: the front of the green, but then ends up rolling
Speaker 2: way back into their feet.
Speaker 1: It gave Brooks Koepka fits.
Speaker 2: Was rewatching the twenty sixteen final broadcast, and yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a shot where some golfers will probably complain that it
Speaker 2: violates the fairness doctrine that you hit some good shots
Speaker 2: that you think should be rewarded and then end up
Speaker 2: in a worse spot than you started. I think that's
Speaker 2: going to be a really cool hole to watch. And
Speaker 2: then I like sixteen and seventeen a lot coming down
Speaker 2: the stretch. The final stretch is one where there's a
Speaker 2: range of scores that are available to you. The sixteenth hole,
Speaker 2: long par three, has a bunker short right that's been
Speaker 2: removed since the twenty sixteen US Open. I actually really
Speaker 2: like removing that bunker, and now you'd have a shot
Speaker 2: from the rough to a severely elevated green that would
Speaker 2: be impossible to get any spin on and would result
Speaker 2: in a very difficult up and down.
Speaker 1: I was there, Actually I had that shot impossible right.
Speaker 1: It was completely blind. I mean I actually hit my
Speaker 1: shot of the day and hit it within about four feet. Nice,
Speaker 1: but it was like it was fly. I was flying
Speaker 1: blind with that shot for sure, and it is it's
Speaker 1: one of the few places that Oakmont where you can
Speaker 1: really see the construction work on the green because that
Speaker 1: part of the green was very lifted up, probably initially
Speaker 1: by just building the bunker, but now it's just this
Speaker 1: deep hollow and the rough is going to be very
Speaker 1: very thick down there.
Speaker 2: And then the other seventeen there is another short four
Speaker 2: that's going to get a lot of attention. Small landing area,
Speaker 2: but I do think you're going to see the aggressive
Speaker 2: strategy payoff both on two and on seventeen. But those
Speaker 2: are cool holes to watch where it does get narrower
Speaker 2: the farther up you hit the t shot a lot
Speaker 2: of range.
Speaker 1: You know you can make birdie there. You could see
Speaker 1: some bogies.
Speaker 2: To me, those stand out as being a few of
Speaker 2: the most distinctive holes and some where the tournaments could
Speaker 2: be not necessarily one or lost right, especially on the
Speaker 2: second hole. It's too early in the round to win
Speaker 2: or lose the tournament, but those will be pivotal holes
Speaker 2: and I think they play well for professional golfers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like seventeen a lot, both as a pro
Speaker 1: golf hole and a hole for amateur I think it
Speaker 1: might actually play better for amateurs because the choice for
Speaker 1: the choice of you know, going at the green or
Speaker 1: playing out to the right in the fairly wide fairway
Speaker 1: out there is actually a great choice, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of risk for going out the green. Probably most
Speaker 1: pros are going to attack this hole, But what I've
Speaker 1: heard is that they've added some some deeper rough to
Speaker 1: the left of that green, because left was the big
Speaker 1: bailout in twenty sixteen, and so we'll see if that
Speaker 1: is any kind of deterrent. But there's some room to
Speaker 1: play up short of that green, so I'd expect that
Speaker 1: the pros to kind of go at that portion of
Speaker 1: the hole. But the design of that hole is super cool.
Speaker 1: It's almost like George Thomas hols. It's got a little
Speaker 1: bit of ten at Riviera in it because the green
Speaker 1: is kind of lifted up and tilted away from the
Speaker 1: safe portion of the fairway, and so if you play
Speaker 1: out safe, you just have this really really tricky short
Speaker 1: approach into that green.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I'm not sure I would have would have
Speaker 2: described it as a George Thomas inspired Well, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be inspired, but it was inspired. But it's a similar,
Speaker 2: but it is kind of it has a little bit
Speaker 2: of ten in Riviera now that you outline, especially with
Speaker 2: left kind of being the bailout and then hitting a
Speaker 2: chip shot out of the rough up the spine of
Speaker 2: the green.
Speaker 1: So it's a good point. The green. The green put
Speaker 1: me immediately in mind of the of the tenth green
Speaker 1: at rivi Air. They're not exactly the same, but they
Speaker 1: have this similar kind of really striking tilt to them,
Speaker 1: and they're and they're pretty narrow, and if you play
Speaker 1: safe off the tee then you face a very very
Speaker 1: tough shot into a shallow angle into that green.
Speaker 2: In a bunker shot, that's what. That's way uphill and
Speaker 2: difficult to stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a cool hole, and it used
Speaker 1: to be way wider. The configuration of the bunkers used
Speaker 1: to be a little bit different. If you look at
Speaker 1: at an aerial shot that exists for that hole from
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen twenties, you're looking at it and you're thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Rivier, I'm looking at Lacc North. It
Speaker 1: is just kind of interesting to see that type of
Speaker 1: hole at Oakmont of all places. So holes that I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to seventeen would be one of them. I
Speaker 1: really like the twelfth hole, side hill par five with
Speaker 1: staggered bunkers and a wildly tilted green falling away from
Speaker 1: the line of play. If you're left of that green,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely dead. And I'm just interested to see how
Speaker 1: players kind of tack their way up that hole, what
Speaker 1: happens when players try to go for the green on
Speaker 1: their second shot, because if they miss left, then it's
Speaker 1: not worth it to go for the green. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see how pros approach that hole. And
Speaker 1: then of course I'm looking forward to number eight, the
Speaker 1: long par three, because people apparently hate long par threes.
Speaker 1: We found out during the tournament and at Merefield Village
Speaker 1: that there are certain pros who don't think that a
Speaker 1: part three can be any good if it's over two
Speaker 1: hundred yards, which has been just an astonishing revelation to me.
Speaker 1: Can't I can't believe what I'm hearing. Yeah, again, that's
Speaker 1: a big topic.
Speaker 2: I do think part of where that comes from is
Speaker 2: a little bit of an anti rollback take that is
Speaker 2: adjacent to, hey, you don't have to make golf holes
Speaker 2: long for them to be difficult, and I do think
Speaker 2: that is part part, not entirely, but part of what
Speaker 2: is motivating that comment.
Speaker 1: All right, so those are some holes to watch for.
Speaker 1: That is a lot of information about Oakmont. We really
Speaker 1: went deep there. Hope people enjoyed that. This is something
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about doing for major courses every once in
Speaker 1: a while when there is a meaty topic to dig into,
Speaker 1: then we'll do a longer version of the Designing Golf
Speaker 1: podcast like this. But thanks for doing this with me, Joseph.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. This episode of Designing Golf was produced
Speaker 1: by PJ Clark. Thank you, PJ. If you like this
Speaker 1: kind of deep dive approach to golf architecture, then join
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Speaker 1: for listening, Enjoy the US Open, and we'll be back
Speaker 1: again soon with another episode.