Brutal Oakmont will stretch world's best to the limit

13 April 2012

Let the unforgettable words of the founder of Oakmont resonate at the start of the most fascinating United States Open in recent memory.

"Stand aside the clumsy, the spineless and the alibi artist," said Henry Fownes, son of English immigrants, when the club opened in 1904.

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Few players will relish the Oakmont course, including Phil Mickelson

"A shot poorly played here will be a shot irrevocably lost."

No one has marked down a quadruple bogey yet, so perhaps it is not surprising that the most brutal test in the entire history of the game has drawn few complaints to this point.

There again, perhaps even the pampered, the whingers and the excuse merchants can recognise a masterpiece when they see one.

For how proud Fownes would be if he could see how those who came after him have protected his legacy.

The hardest course bar none, yet there is believed to be a higher percentage of single figure golfers at Oakmont than any other course in America.

Suffice to say this is no country club stuffed full of 28 handicap CEOs who use the fairways as an office away from the office.

These people are here to show their love of the game. No wonder the United States Golf Association have held more U.S. Opens here than anywhere else.

"You can see how thrilled the members are to have us," American Paul Goydos said.

"They just talk golf and they long to see how we get on. They're like peacocks, keen to show off all their feathers."

Johnny Miller believes this to be the best course in America, and since they removed all its trees he might well be right.

For anyone who was here for the last U.S. Open staged at this place in 1994, when virtually every hole was lined with trees, the transformation is literally stunning.

I have to be honest and say I couldn't see anything back then to distinguish it from 50 other similar courses in America. Since they took the oak out of Oakmont, however, it's right up there with any course you care to mention.

The trees were planted as a vanity project but that didn't sit well with half the membership who remembered Fownes's original intent that it should resemble some of the great Scottish links courses.

So they organised tree-cutting sessions in the middle of the night with the intention of removing them one by one.

All was going swimmingly until someone from the other side noticed a tree missing on the 13th.

All hell broke loose but those clasping the spirit of the founding father to their breast won the day. It is estimated that in total 5,000 trees were removed.

Alongside no trees there are no lakes or ponds. There's no useless beauty at Oakmont, no artificial contrivances here.

For those of us who have always thought inland golf to be a lesser form of the game for all of the above reasons, this course, located 500 miles from the nearest ocean, is a real education.

There's no way to do justice to the severity of the greens. Let's just put it this way: if you think Augusta's look difficult, they're a doddle in comparison to this collection.

If you've got an area the size of a duvet to land the ball on at Augusta to finish close to the hole, here it's shrunk to a T-shirt. The most common sight this week will be players with 10-foot putts for par.

Who's going to win? Not a clue. That's the beauty of this game. You could make a plausible case for a third of the 156-strong field and even then you'd probably still be wrong.

Wimbledon's chief executive Ian Ritchie recently stood up and described tennis as "arguably the world's most competitive individual sport".

You can't blame a guy for sticking up for his game, of course, but as a great tennis player once said: "You cannot be serious". Ask 10 people who follow sport who they thought would finish first and second in the French Open and all 10 would have answered Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. That's not competition, that's a procession.

Ask 10 people for the 1-2 this week and all 10 would give you a different answer. You can't get any more competitive than that.

Naturally, Tiger Woods will start favourite, and if he can keep the ball on the fairway he will win because he holes more 10-foot putts than anyone who ever played the game. But it's a pretty big if, isn't it?

Neither can he do what he did at The Open last year and keep his driver sheathed.

You can't play four irons to these greens because the ball simply won't hold. And if it won't hold you won't get many pars because not even Woods can get down in two all day round here.

Listening to some comments, such as Sergio Garcia's wry take — "it's pretty straightforward if you think of par as 78" — there's every chance that Oakmont will simply prove beyond all of them, that we'll be left with a survivor as much as a winner.

When Miller won his U.S. Open here in 1973 he did so with a final round 63. In the Oakmont grill room they doffed their caps and vowed it would never happen again.

It will certainly not happen this week and that's just how Fownes would have wanted it.

Who's going to win the 107th U.S. Open? One thing's for sure, he will be neither clumsy, spineless nor an alibi artist.

How do you play the course?

They might be getting worried about Oakmont's 288-yard par-three eighth hole and the 667- yard par-five 12th.

But by common consent the hardest hole on the hardest course in championship golf is the 462-yard par-four 10th.

"It's quite simply the toughest par four in America," Phil Mickelson's short game coach Dave Pelz said, while Johnny Miller, a former winner here, describes it as a hole designed in hell'.

Why? Miss a fairway narrowed from 43 to 32 yards and it is an almost certain bogey, given the severe bunkers on left and right.

Miss a green that slopes severely both from front to back and from right to left and a bogey is a decent result.

Land on the wrong side of the hole and three putts are likely.

"Holes seven to 10 represents the toughest stretch in all of golf," Mickelson said.

"And by the time they've finished with the 10th, the majority of the field will have been eliminated."

TOP TEE TIMES

FIRST TWO ROUNDS (US unless stated, x denotes amateurs) 1st hole today, 10th hole tomorrow:

12.33, 6.03: N Dougherty (GB), (x) T Kuehne, R Barnes.

12.44, 6.14: R Imada (Jpn), V Taylor, M Campbell (NZ).

12.55, 6.25: J M Olazabal (Sp), S Garcia (Sp), P Martin (Sp).

1.06, 6.36: T Woods, (x) R Ramsay (GB), G Ogilvy (A).

1.17, 6.47: J Leonard, R Sabbatini (SA), Jerry Kelly.

1.28, 6.58: R Goosen (SA), L Donald (GB), A Cabrera (Arg).

6.03, 12.33: T Immelman (SA), S Cink, P Casey (GB).

6.14, 12.44: V Singh (Fij), D Love, H Stenson (Swe).

6.47, 1.17: D Howell (GB), JJ Henry, R Pampling (A).

6.58, 1.28: L Westwood (GB), C Campbell, C Pettersson (Swe).

7.09, 1.39: B Quigley, A Wall (GB), H Mahan.

10th hole today, 1st hole tomorrow.

12.00, 5.30: M Putnam, (x) R Davies (GB), L Williams.

12.22, 5.52: (x) John Kelly, G McDowell (GB), K Triplett.

12.33, 6.03: C Montgomerie (GB), C DiMarco, T Clark (SA).

12.44, 6.14: E Els (SA), Z Johnson, P Harrington (Ire).

12.55, 6.25: T Bjorn (Den), B Curtis, S Ames (Can).

1.06, 6.36: KJ Choi (Kor), D Toms, M Weir (Can).

6.14, 12.44: K Yokoo (Jpn), P Goydos, K Ferrie (GB).

6.25, 12.55: I Poulter (GB), R Moore, S Katayama (Jpn).

6.36, 1.06: P Mickelson, A Scott (A), J Furyk.

6.58, 1.28: C Howell, J Rose (GB), S O'Hair.

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