The world's loneliest tree stands tall above this U.S. Open

New York Times

a day ago

OAKMONT, Pa. — They've come like pilgrims, not for a savior, but for shade. Or to find one another. Or to rest for a while. This one spot. Out here in the southwest corner of Oakmont Country Club. Everyone from club members to golf fans from far-flung places; everyone from elderly people sitting atop motorized scooters to college kids from Pitt and Duquesne. Johnson Wagner, the mustachioed Golf Channel analyst, showed up around noon on Thursday, walking under a heavy summer sun alongside one of this U.S. Open's featured groupings. With sweat soaking the back of his shirt, he extended his arms like a man coming upon a mirage. 'Finally,' he cried, walking beneath the canopy.
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This towering elm. It climbs over the expanse between Oakmont's second green and a ropeline leading from the third tee to the third fairway. It is, simply, a tree.
It can also feel oddly like a lot more. If you let it.
A witness. A landmark. Whatever you want to call it. Gil Hanse, the architect who recently restored the 121-year-old course, has his preference. 'A fighter.'
The story of Oakmont's vast tree removal has been told, retold and retold again over the last 20 years or so. About 7,000 trees came down before the club hosted the 2007 U.S. Open. Another 7,000-plus came down in the years leading up to the 2016 affair. Drama often followed around every corner, making for stories polished smooth for every playing of a major tournament. The reality was never in doubt, though, that very few of the trees removed from Oakmont were organic to the original 1903 course design. The trees had instead been planted in the 1960s, a so-called beautification effort intended to make Oakmont more closely resemble Augusta National Golf Club and the affluent, venerable parkland country clubs dotting the Northeast. As a result, what was originally a course built on farmland was crowded with crab apples, flowering cherries, blue spruces and loads and loads of pin oaks.
Time, as it does, proved such decisions to alter what was original as ill-advised. Not only were the trees not natural to the land, but they also became overgrown and proved too taxing on the turf. Both in covert missions under the cover of darkness and right out in the open, Oakmont's trees all came down. First, they were thinned out. Then, they toppled en masse.
Few were spared. Inside the routing of the course — land lined by Oakmont's perimeter of trees, and decorated by a few sycamores and oaks in front of the clubhouse — a couple of elms were left dotting the property.
'They were big, beautiful, old trees,' says John Zimmers, the Oakmont superintendent from 1999 to 2017. 'The intent was, hey, those are magnificent elm trees, and they were never slated to come down like the evergreens or the pin oaks, so they'll stay.'
Nature had other plans. Dutch elm disease, it turns out, is just as lethal as a chainsaw. Carried by European and native elm bark beetles, the fatal fungus invades its host and ends its autumns. Leaves turn from green to yellow to brown. The bark of wilted branches turns gray. Death comes in as little as a few weeks or drags out over a few years.
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Those last remaining elms at Oakmont met such a fate.
Except one.
Over by the third hole.
'It got to a certain point,' Zimmers says, 'where I'd always think, 'Man, that's gotta be one nervous tree.''
In a sport so often told by fables and false memories, Oakmont's history is about as well-chronicled as any club in the country, even if there is some spare mythology. But only one point of perspective on the property has actually seen all the waxy stories so often told today. It was there, and there's proof.
Hanse spotted it immediately. When working on Oakmont's 2023 face-lift, the renowned course restoration artist studied all available aerial photos of the land. Some dated back to the turn of the 20th century, offering the earliest looks at Henry Fownes' routing. He didn't have to squint to know what he was looking at.
'In the old photos, it looks like it's about 20 feet tall,' Hanse says.
His guess? That elm is roughly 150 years old.
Imagine the rings.
It's seen a humble farm turn into a hulking golf course. It's seen a railroad turn into a turnpike. It's seen thousands of trees rise and nearly every one of them fall. It's seen 10 men's U.S. Opens, two women's U.S. Opens, six U.S. Amateurs and three PGA Championships. It leaned forward for Nicklaus and Palmer in a playoff. It bristled over Miller's 63. It became a spire overlooking church pews.
'Elm trees are spectacular,' Hanse says. 'I think they're the most beautiful tree. So graceful. And they're rare because of Dutch elm disease. But that one has survived.'
The ones that didn't? All those Oakmont trees? Thousands were turned into mulch, later laid upon the land. At one point, former superintendent Larry Napora says, a portable lumber mill was brought on-site to slice rough-cut lumber for boards later used as siding for various small storage sheds and structures. Some hunting blinds were built from Oakmont's lumber.
One elm, meanwhile, is still here for the people. Old-timers have stopped over the last two days to sit and lay in the wispy tall grass, in the expanse of its shadow. Some kids have ducked under the rope line to sit in deep crevices in the base of the trunk. One by one, passersby have walked into the shade and smiled. And one by one, they caught a toe on the tufts of some exposed roots too large to hide in the earth.
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Trying to locate a friend, one ticketholder looked over toward the merchandise tent on Thursday and said into his iPhone. 'I'm near the tree.'
And after a pause …
'What do you mean, which one? There's only one.'
Hard to miss.
Fans and friends will keep showing up this weekend, only for a different kind of cover. The rain is a'coming and there'll be nowhere else to hide. Oakmont, unguarded, is about to get wet and everyone here is trying to figure out what'll happen Saturday and who'll win Sunday.
It'll all be nothing new for the old tree on 3. For everyone else at the 125th U.S. Open, the present will feel like history.