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