Xander Schauffele plays a practice shot from one of Oakmont's deep bunkers.
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OAKMONT, Pa. — Just learning about Oakmont this week? That course that everyone seems to think is the toughest in the world? You’re not alone. In fact, a lot of players in the field are playing it for the first time. And if it isn’t their first time, it’s their first time after the recent renovations Gil Hanse made to the venerated club.
So, what is everyone learning? We’ve compiled a notebook dump of those lessons below. Enjoy!
1. No. 8 is about ego
The Oakmont hole that catches more attention than it deserves is the long, downhill, par-3 8th. But it had Collin Morikawa properly confused for just a second on Monday. He’s playing Oakmont for the first time this week and when he got to the 8th, he did just as any amateur would do.
“I honestly asked Joe [Greiner], my caddie, and everyone in the group,” Morikawa began, “I was like, is this like a — do you go for this par-4 or do you lay up?”
You go for it, Collin. Because it’s a par-3. The press tent had a good laugh at that one, but the hole is a serious test of the Tour player’s ego. Morikawa would take four pars and run away happily. Scottie Scheffler played driver during his Tuesday practice round. For as long as the modern pro can hit it, somehow they still might be pulling their longest club just to get on the dance floor. That’ll be weird.
“I think you might hurt a few egos if you see guys pulling driver or some long clubs in there,” Xander Schauffele said, “but at the end of the day, however you feel you’re going to make the best score in there is how you should play it.”
2. No. 1 is about par
If it wasn’t the rainiest spring in recent Allegheny County history, we’d be talking a bit differently about the 1st hole. But this course has been pummeled by rain in recent months, keeping it from the typical firmness of U.S. Opens of the past.
The 1st is a 488-yard par 4, but plays much shorter, entirely downhill. Were it firm, you’d have some drives running out in the 360-yard range. Instead, it’ll be soft and slow, just like 2016, when it played as the most difficult hole in the previous U.S. Open. It feels fitting that Oakmont has more of a hand-slap opener than a handshake opener. Grab your par and scoot on across the highway.
3. The bunkers are brutal …
Scheffler shared a new term with us in his press conference Tuesday: “Walled bunkers.” As in bunkers with walls, similar to their pot bunker cousins of the United Kingdom. Oakmont’s typical bunkers have a grassy wall hump on the front of them, which just adds difficulty to any approaches played from the sand. Schauffele said, due to the shallow nature of the sandy portion, the ball tends to roll up toward those walls, rather than hit a sandy face and roll back to the bottom.
Okay, what does that mean?
Balls that bound into bunkers will be in trouble. Balls that trickle into bunkers will likely have a different story.
Then there are the iconic church-pew bunkers between the 3rd and 4th holes, which look so orderly and pretty from the sky, but punch a lot harder up close. In a 15-minute span, we watched Erik Van Rooyen blade a long iron from a flat lie in the pews on Tuesday. “Don’t hit it here,” he told us. Ben Griffin had his heels backed up to one of the pews, just barely missing the fairway but then battling to get back into it. One group later, Brian Harman fanned his drive right into the center of one of those sandy cross-sections. The center of that area is good. Harman had a full swing and played a mid-iron forward. Two yards ahead he would have been in trouble. If you’re looking for a place where luck is everything, it’s in the pews.
4. But the rough is worse
I chatted with Chris Gotterup, a long hitter who played his way in via final qualifying. He’s seen enough of the rough in practice rounds that he’d much rather play from the bunkers, even with their heavy, grabby faces. The bunkers at least pretend to offer you the chance to advance the ball to the green. I was told on Monday that Max Greyserman played a full practice round and every single time he missed the fairway, he could not advance to the green. In other words, this is Can’t Advance It Country Club.
Justin Lower moved forward from the teeing ground on the driving range to an area of thick stuff and continued his range session from there, trying to better understand the launch of his lower woods from the rough. Nowhere else do you see players doing that.
5. Validation via Ted Scott
Nick Taylor is not a long hitter by any means. The 17th hole, to him, could be a tricky one, with a 285-yard, uphill carry over the walled bunkers short of the green that is drivable for most. Do you try and muscle your way up there? Lay up for a wedge?
His caddie, Dave Markle, has been trying to figure that out. During their practice round, Markle suggested, Hey, maybe we think about getting into this specific bunker. Why? Because from the front-left bunkers is the only angle to use the entire length of the angled green. From any other direction, the green gets very thin.
Caddies don’t make the calls, though, and Taylor didn’t love the idea. At least not at first. Late Tuesday night, Markle was out on a separate scouting mission, walking a few holes with Ted Scott, maybe the No. 1 Looper in all the land. When Markle asked Scott where he thinks a great miss would be on 17, he was completely validated.
“This bunker here,” Scott told him. Missing into a walled bunker on a drivable par-4 and calling it a tiny victory? That’s Oakmont.
6. The wedge goes farthest
Part of the beautiful battle at this course is how it upends reality. In most every case, all season long, the 7-iron is going farther than the pitching wedge. But in the rough at Oakmont, which has been grown and cut in a specific way to manage the “structure” and “crown” of the grass, the balls fall to the soil level much easier. All of which means, players need to attack them steeply, de-lofting their clubs and turning that 7-iron into a 5-iron, and that pitching wedge into an 8-iron.
“This is just thick,” Morikawa said. “Clubs will turn over. You’re going to see guys trying to hit pitching wedge out and it’s going to go 45 degrees left because that’s how thick the rough is. That’s just how you have to play it.”
7. Miss your spot? Play there again
During a walk-and-talk up the 17th hole with Patrick Cantlay Monday afternoon, I tripped onto a perfectly Oakmont mentality. Cantlay flared his drive right of his target and into the rough, short-sided to the hole location, with next-to-no chance of making birdie. I asked what he’s supposed to do in that scenario and his answer was so simple that it also might be brilliant. Just play back to where I was trying to get to in the first place.
In other words, his goal on the tee was to reach the front part of the green. From there, he wants to two-putt for birdie. His tee shot took birdie out of play, but why not just try and get to that front part of the green for a two-putt par then? It feels like a novel concept, but maybe it shouldn’t be (and won’t be!) at Oakmont.
8. Missing on purpose could be the move
A lot of Oakmont runs back and forth. No. 3 runs along No. 4, which runs along No. 5, which runs along No. 7. Hole 9 runs between 1 and 10, and on the other side of 10 is 11. What does this mean for the championship? Not much with the brutally thick rough in between these holes, but if players were to purposefully miss in a major way, they could be rewarded by finding another fairway.
The idea has been bandied about in press conferences, in part because it happened a great deal during the 2021 U.S. Amateur at Oakmont. In particular, players played from the 11th tee into the 10th fairway. For starters, it’s more receptive than the slopey 11th fairway, but also because it opens up players to the full length of the 11th green. For the Amateur, according to one caddie who looped that week, it was an obvious choice. To Bryson DeChambeau, it wasn’t… at least at the beginning of the week.
Q: Is that something you’ve thought about doing?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: “Not specifically, but it’s a great idea, thank you, so I’m going to go check that out now.”
We’ll see what he (and the rest of the field) has in store Thursday morning.
Sean Zak is a senior writer and author of Searching in St. Andrews, which followed his travels in Scotland during the most pivotal summer in the game’s history.
