Oakmont will show its teeth this week
It’s U.S. Open week, the one week of the year when professional
golfers can often look like weekend hackers, especially when the
course they are playing on is set up as difficult as the United
States Golf Association does every year for this tournament.
Oakmont will show its teeth this week
It’s U.S. Open week, the one week of the year when professional golfers can often look like weekend hackers, especially when the course they are playing on is set up as difficult as the United States Golf Association does every year for this tournament.
And that will be the case this week at the Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Penn., home of the famous church pew bunkers as well as the numerous other challenging tests that will stare the world’s top golfers in the face throughout the grueling five-hour rounds each day.
Tournament pundits are saying that if the rain doesn’t come and the course stays fast and dry that this U.S. Open will be one of the hardest setups ever. In breaking down the numbers, I’d bet that +2 wins this tournament even if Mother Nature rains on the masochistic course conditions every day.
For starters, Oakmont has been backed up 250 yards since the last time it was played there in 1994 – making the course a scary 7,230 par-70 layout.
Even the best golfers in the world could look like amateurs on many of the holes at Oakmont. One of them is the 288-yard – Par 3 – eighth hole. Read that again. I just mentioned a 288-yard par-3. If that doesn’t sound scary enough, how about the 500-yard – Par 4 – 15th hole? That might even tame Tiger.
Now narrow up the fairways and toss in the notorious U.S. Open rough and Oakmont becomes a nightmare before the players even reach the putting surfaces – and that’s when the No. 1 player in the world claims that the tournament will really begin.
“Once you get to the greens, boy, that’s the challenge right there,” Tiger Woods said in a recent interview. “Trying to putt these things with the right speed because you’re coming over so many different mounds and angles and pitch on the greens … they are just so severe.”
This week the greens are expected to be firm and read 13 on the Stimp Meter. In layman’s terms that would be like trying to stop a ball that was struck with a 64-degree sand wedge on a driveway. In other words, good luck. Most of the greens at Oakmont are severely slopped from front to back.
In taking that information, let’s go back to that 288-yard par 3 real quick… How does a player bring a shot in high that will land softly and stop quickly on a severely sloped, firm green, if he has to hit a 3-wood to reach it off the tee?
I guess the course setup itself is why most of us enjoy watching the U.S. Open so much. It’s the one week a year where par is a good score and a bogey isn’t so bad – things that the average golfer can relate to.
It’s also more exciting to see a golfer ankle-high in thick rough with his ball buried and needing to nail a 2-iron to reach the green, but having to be forced to hit a 9-iron out instead to avoid a huge number. We can all relate to being in the same dilemma that the pros will face this week; and it makes it more exciting to see how they will face adversity for a change.
Most weeks on the PGA Tour it goes like this: Bomb a driver off the tee, then knock an 8-iron 20 feet from the hole and either drain the putt for birdie or have a tap-in par and walk to the next hole. At the end of the round, add it all up and, presto, another methodical 68.
This week, four 68s would give a player a 20-shot victory, which will never happen. Yet four 68s any other week might earn a player a second-place finish. The U.S. Open: Simply put, there’s nothing like it…
