My Oakmont Redemption: Tracked and told by Arccos

USA Today

10-06-2025

My Oakmont Redemption: Tracked and told by Arccos Arccos captures shot data, provides analytics and can even be your caddie. It's also an amazing time machine every golfer will love.
I'd been looking forward to playing Oakmont Country Club for weeks, and when it was finally time to hit my tee shot on the first hole, I nearly missed it.
No one laughed—there may have even been a few consoling words—but I couldn't hear anything except my heart beating out of my chest. And after just one swing on the course that hosts this year's U.S. Open, I felt like I should head to the parking lot and drive straight back to the airport.
That abomination of a tee shot went 83 yards. Eighty-three. I know that because, as a guest of Sal Syed, one of the co-founders of Arccos, there were Arccos tags in all my clubs, and the company's app was tracking my round.
Erik Anders Lang—the globetrotting, golf-loving filmmaker who founded Random Golf Club—was there, as was Erika Larkin, one of the top teaching pros in the country. As accomplished players and Arccos brand ambassadors, their presence made perfect sense. Mine, however, did not.
But the golf gods giveth just as quickly as they taketh away. After a 237-yard hybrid to get myself out of view of the clubhouse crowd, it happened. From the rough on the right side of the fairway—a spot so bad it deserved hazard tape—I hit a sand wedge that bounced 30 feet short of the green, hopped, rolled onto the putting surface … and into the hole for the most improbable birdie of my life.
Sal screamed. Lang and Larkin laughed. A foursome walking up the ninth fairway cheered. In the span of 15 minutes, I went from wanting to be anywhere but Oakmont to skipping over the bridge above Highway 76, eager to reach the second tee.
Arccos does a great job helping recreational golfers track performance, learn how far they hit each club, and understand their on-course tendencies. That data powers its AI Caddie, which combines your shot history with real-time regional data—wind direction, elevation, hole layout—to offer analytically driven club recommendations.
But one of my favorite features of Arccos, and other shot-tracking systems, is how they act like a time machine. They let you replay rounds from years past, shot by shot. Stories about that day at Oakmont in 2022—and that miracle birdie—have been retold often. So has the birdie on 17, after driving the green and two-putting the par 4.
On the 18th tee, Syed informed our group that someone needed to make par or better to reach a goal score he had set, which would earn us a credit in the Oakmont pro shop.
That birdie on 17 gave me the honor on 18, and unsurprisingly, Arccos Caddie recommended driver. If I found the fairway, it predicted I'd have either a 4-hybrid or 5-iron into the green.
Riding the high of having just birdied a hole that cracked both Jim Furyk and Tiger Woods in 2007, I found the left side of the fairway, then hit a 5-iron 177 yards to the left side of the green. Two putts later—from 64 feet—I was exchanging high-fives on the walk to the pro shop.
Early the next morning, wedged into an economy seat, I scrolled through the shots Arccos had captured, wearing an Oakmont hoodie. It's still my favorite.