May 2007 - 2007 U.S. OPEN at OAKMONT CC

This year the U.S. Open is coming back to Oakmont CC. Oakmont – just outside of Pittsburgh – has hosted more major championships than any other course in America. 

Founded in 1903 and designed by Henry Fownes, Oakmont was developed on an old, barren, windswept farm. Fownes loved the land because it reminded him of the links-style golf courses in Scotland.

But, about 40 years ago, the Oakmont members decided to “beautify” the course by planting trees. And planting trees they did – Oakmont began to look like a tree farm.

Well, have you ever seen trees on a sod farm? Trees are not conducive to growing grass – the shade and lack of air flow make a course superintendent’s job a nightmare. I like trees. But, I’m not in love with too many trees on a golf course. Trees should be used to define holes and protect players from dangerous situations. 

Too many trees on a golf course take away shot making options and restrict strategy. This happened at Oakmont. Surprisingly, the members recognized the problem and fixed it – they’ve removed between 5,000 – 8,000 trees. Of course this wasn’t easy – some of the members went ballistic and the club had two warring factions. 

As I’ve talked about in previous columns, I believe in the risk/reward school of course design, not the penal school of course design. The penal school demands that the shot has to land in the perfect landing zone – anything else, even a shot just a yard off target is severely penalized, in fact very often the shot just a little off is much more penalized than a wild shot. I believe that a good design offers a variety of strategies to play the hole and that each shot is balanced in a risk/reward ratio. Heavily tree lined fairways don’t offer much for strategy – hit it perfect or else. 

The classic golf courses were risk/reward designs. But over the years many have been “improved” by the misguided ideas of green committees. Also beginning in the ‘60’s, many of the new championship courses were designed to be torture chambers and full of gimmicks. During that same era, baseball parks and football stadiums were also poorly designed. Fortunately most of those ridiculous stadiums are being torn down and replaced with classic parks such as Camden Yards. Hopefully, golf is catching on to the blunders of course design of the last 40 years and will revive the sanity and playability of the classic golf courses.