PITTSBURGH – Oakmont’s already big greens will get even tougher when the men’s US Open returns next summer for a record 10th.
The club on Pittsburgh’s north side has restored more than 24,000 square feet of green over the past two years as part of a renovation led by golf course architect Gil Hanse.
Hanse was initially brought in to focus on the bunkers. During his travels to the course, he came across photos from the 1920s and 1930s and noticed that vegetables used to be big before several factors — time and erosion above all — started to affect them.
He spoke to the club, whose membership enthusiastically agreed that the renovations were an opportunity to make the fast greens more difficult than when Dustin Johnson won his first major at Oakmont in 2016.
While the changes this time around won’t be as visible as they were in the past — Oakmont has spent much of the past 30 years removing thousands of trees in hopes of returning to its windswept, links-style roots — the 155 players who will join defending champion Bryson DeChambeau can get the pins set. to places never before reached during previous Open stops at the prestigious course that opened in 1904.
“The greens are the No. 1 defense on the course,” superintendent Mike McCormick said Monday. “Oakmont, in today’s world, is not a crazy long golf course. There are a lot of holes here that players will be hitting and it puts a lot of emphasis on (the green).”
The course will play at 7,372 yards as a par 70 in 2025, a mark from the 7,219 yards it played at in 2016.
One of the new pin options is the extended greens offered by the USGA on the 182nd, par 3 13th hole. Pin placement was previously limited to the left side of the green, with little wiggle room in terms of yardage. Now there are many options, including the right back pin that sits in the middle of the bowl, rewarding a good shot but almost inaccessible to some parts of the green, especially the front right.
US Open scores are trending lower of late. Only one of the last four majors posted a four-round total comparable to Johnson’s 4-under 276, and the last six majors all finished at 6-under or better.
Scott Langley, the USGA’s executive director of player relations, thinks Oakmont remains one of the toughest courses because it doesn’t have as many options as Pinehurst No. 2 (2024) or Los Angeles Country Club (2023) offering.
“You’ve got more tactical range (in those areas), you can play more angles,” Langley said. “There are places where you do that. But generally, Oakmont hits well or you don’t. And if you don’t, the penalty is pretty much the same.”
The most notable changes off the greens are the new-look fairway on the 485-yard, par-4 seventh hole that gives players two choices: play it safe and short right but stay in the blind or aim left and try to carry a 320+ yard drive over of the fairway bunker which when installed correctly allows you to see the pin in your approach with a short iron.
Oakmont rebuilt all the hazards and renovated nearly 200 of the course’s bunkers while updating the drainage system. The club was hit with nearly 3 inches of rain during the opening rounds of the last US Open tour, forcing grounds crews and volunteers to get creative while releasing sand traps.
“The bunkers have deteriorated significantly from 2016 to 2022,” McCormick said. “There’s a lot of new technology and ways to remove bunkers and capture sand and limit contamination. So the club has had an opportunity to make sure the performance of the fairways (remains the same).”
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