Players expect quite a challenge when Open gets under way

Despite some showers that blanketed Oakmont Country Club on Wednesday afternoon, most if not all of the 156-player U.S. Open field are expecting a grueling test this weekend.

By Dave Shedloski, PGATOUR.com Senior Correspondent

OAKMONT, Pa. – It’s former moniker was “Old Brute, but Rory Sabbatini has now rechristened it. Call this year’s U.S. Open site, “Oakmonster.”

The 107th U.S. Open commences Thursday on a golf course that is no stranger to the U.S. Golf Association and is not strange by any conventional measure of an Open site. At Oakmont Country Club, in suburban Pittsburgh, the greens are fast, the fairways are narrow and the rough is penal. The converted par-70 layout that hosts its eighth Open and its 14 USGA event has seen some great champions, from Bob Jones in the 1925 U.S. Amateur, to Tommy Armour, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miler and Ernie Els in the U.S. Open.

It is the complete examination that the USGA strives to make every Open layout. And it is a little bit more.

“This golf course,” Sabbatini says, “will test every single shot you ever thought you’d need, every single shot you never thought you’d need, and it will test every single shot you’ll never need.”

“It’s like any other U.S. Open; you can’t have just one shot, you have to have them all,” says Scott Verplank. “You can hit every drive down the middle, but if you miss greens or put the ball in the wrong spot or putt poorly, it will catch up to you. You need everything you can muster.”

Except maybe length. Oakmont might be considerably longer than the last time it hosted the Open in 1994. That year, at par 71, it measured 6,946 yards. This year it’s at 7,230, but that is still manageable in relation to other championship venues, including the Masters two months ago where Augusta National Golf Club set up at 7,445 yards.

That means that most of the 156-player field is capable of getting it around the course. The question, even with heavy afternoon rains on Wednesday softening the course, is who can keep it in play and manage their games on and around the greens.

“The greens here are the obvious challenge,” said defending champion Geoff Ogilvy. “Everything else out there is similar to any U.S. Open. (But) they are amazing greens. The key here is to keep it inside the rough and below the hole on the greens. That is similar to Winged Foot, but it’s more obvious here. You probably had a small amount of a chance from above the hole at Winged Foot. Here you have none.”

Mike Davis, the USGA’s Senior Director of Rules and Competitions, went around with a putter and two Titleist balls Monday morning testing the speeds of the greens, and he and the executive committee decided that the target speed of 13 ½ on the Stimpmeter probably wasn’t fast enough.

“We’re finding that 14 is the optimal speed,” he said. “In terms of what works with the hole locations and how each green plays, that’s what we’re finding is the best test.”

Contrary to what many think – particularly the players – Davis seeks to adjust the course set so that each U.S Open is contested in conditions that are considered as fair and consistent as possible. Making Oakmont more nettlesome is not his aim. “Once the week arrives, I spend the majority of my time trying to find ways to soften the course, just to make sure we don’t go over the top,” he said.

Of course, weather he can’t control, and the heavy thunderstorms that moved through will make the course softer and longer. This will be of some aid to the field in that balls will more easily stay in the fairways –which average 28 yards in width – or on the roller-coaster greens. The downside is the two cuts of rough – 2 ½ and 5 inches, respectively – will be much more penal. Wetter is not better. And it was already tough enough considering that the likes of Tiger Woods and Bubba Watson, two of golf’s strongest men, have had trouble moving the ball out of the thick stuff.

Tim Moraghan, USGA agronomist, said the course is likely to be a bit easier in the morning, but that the 4/10ths of an inch of rain that hit the course didn’t change things dramatically. “We had it right where we wanted it this afternoon, and we’ll work to get it back to that,” he said. “It’s not what we’d like to have. We thought we’d have a true, hard test. But we think we can get it close to where we had it.”

Even softer and slower from the rain, Oakmont’s iconic greens will be a test unlike anything players have encountered before in a tournament setting.

"Once you get to the greens," Woods, a two-time U.S. Open champion said, "boy, that’s the challenge right there – 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 that it’s going to be one great test."