U.S. Open: The story behind the Oakmont Chainsaw Massacre

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OAKMONT, Pa. — On the list of 'sounds you don't want to hear after midnight,' the angry whine of chainsaws is way high on the leaderboard.
So in the early 1990s, when the wife of Oakmont's club pro, up in the small hours to feed her infant child, heard the distinctive buzz of chainsaws radiating out from the course, she asked her husband what on earth could be happening. Bob Ford, Oakmont's longtime professional, attempted to dodge his wife's question, but finally came clean: the trees that had enshrouded Oakmont for decades were coming down.
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The Oakmont Chainsaw Massacre divided the posh private club, as well as the many pros who had battled its sloping fairways and rippling greens. But when the tree-ectomy was complete, when the course had been stripped nearly bare of its thick tree canopy, virtually everyone who came to the historic course understood: this was the original idea all along.
Designed by a steel magnate, amateur golfer and genuine hard-head by the name of Henry Fownes, Oakmont was always meant to stand alone. Fownes intended the course, which opened in 1904, to resemble the links of Scotland. In Fownes' mind, vicious rough, scorecard-devouring bunkers and grease-slick greens would provide more than sufficient challenge. No trees were needed, so he cleared them out.
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But as demanding as Fownes was, his son W.C. ratcheted up the tension and pressure even higher on Oakmont's players. The course's bunkers, already fearsome, frequent, deep and positioned to induce maximum fear, were raked in deep furrows, the Allegheny River sand carved by a hundred-pound rake called the 'Devil's Backscratcher.'
'The virility and charm of the game lies in its difficulties. Keep it rugged, baffling, hard to conquer, otherwise we shall soon tire of it and cast it aside,' W.C. Fownes allegedly once said. 'Let the clumsy, the spineless and the alibi artist stand aside!'
For nearly six decades, the clumsy, the spineless and the alibi artists — whatever those are — made their way around the vast links of Oakmont as best they could. But in 1962 came a decisive moment, and not just because a young, pudgy kid named Jack Nicklaus knocked off legend and local hero Arnold Palmer in a playoff. Writing of Oakmont, Herbert Warren Wind — the journalist who created the term 'Amen Corner' — called the course an 'ugly, old brute.'
That national shaming enraged Oakmont's members. Fred Brand Jr., also a member of the tree-laden Augusta National, undertook a mission to begin planting pines and pin oaks all over the property. More than 3,000 trees covered Oakmont by the time that Johnny Miller won the 1973 U.S. Open with a classic final round of 63, and thousands more blanketed the property by the time the tournament returned 11 years later.
By 1993, more than 3,000 trees lined Oakmont. (Fred Vuich /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
(Fred Vuich via Getty Images)
By then, it had become clear to many of Oakmont's more historically-minded members that in adding so many trees, something ineffable had been lost. No longer was Oakmont a Scottish challenge in western Pennsylvania; now it was simply one of hundreds of tree-lined courses, more distinguished by its name than its topography.
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So in the early 1990s, a group of members began an audacious, borderline reckless plan — the slow removal of trees. The idea, apparently, was the frog-in-boiling-water theory, turning up the temperature degree by degree, winnowing the course tree by tree, so slowly that no one — in theory — would notice.
But you can't really hide chainsaws, even if you clean up all the debris every single morning. So once the removal came to light, after an estimated 1,000 trees had vanished, Oakmont's remove-the-trees contingent pushed hard to get its way. The pro-tree contingent included a significant percentage of Oakmont's membership, as well as luminaries like Palmer, Nicklaus, Gary Player and Lee Trevino.
Today, the only trees at Oakmont are the ones lining the outer edges of the property. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
But groundskeepers and course professionals believed in restoring Oakmont to Fownes' original vision, and over the course of 20 years, untold thousands of trees all over the course eventually came down. The course is magnificent in its stark, open beauty now, and in perhaps the best testament to the Chainsaw Brigade's mission, many other old-money courses around the country, like Shinnecock, the National Golf Links and Chicago Golf Club, have pursued tree-removal initiatives of their own.
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'I always regard Oakmont as the finishing school of golf,' Bobby Jones once said. 'If you have a weakness, it will be brought to light playing there. It is not tough because it is freakish. The holes are all fair. They are fundamental from an architectural and scientific point of view.'
Today, you can stand at Oakmont's Scottish-inspired clubhouse and look out over the entire, sloping property. The Church Pews, the Piano Keys, the cut where the Pennsylvania Turnpike bisects the course — they're all out there, the vast emptiness making them all seem closer than they truly are.
Oakmont hides nothing any more, because Oakmont has nothing to hide. The challenge is all right there in front of you. Just because you can see what's coming doesn't mean you can defeat it.