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2 days ago
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2025 U.S. Open Preview: At stately Oakmont, carnage awaits (plus our picks to win)
OAKMONT, Pa. — There are mountains, and then there's Everest. There are tournaments, and then there is the U.S. Open. There are golf courses, and then there's Oakmont. If you've managed to score an invitation to play here, in this tournament, at this moment, you may think you're ready. Advertisement You're not ready. This week, Oakmont hosts the 125th U.S. Open, the 10th time this venerable old battleship has hosted the national open. No course has hosted more U.S. Opens, and no American course outside of Augusta National has hosted more majors. Oakmont has been the site of some of golf's finest moments — Arnold Palmer lost in a playoff in 1962 to a beefy youngster winning his first tournament, an Ohio kid by the name of Jack Nicklaus. Eleven years later, Johnny Miller authored one of the greatest Sunday rounds in major championship history, carding a 63 to capture the U.S. Open. Most recently, Dustin Johnson overcame a mid-round rules controversy to win the 2016 U.S. Open. The Course Designed by Henry Fownes, a steel industry magnate and amateur architect — he designed just this one course — Oakmont opened in 1904, immediately establishing itself as one of the toughest courses in the country. The course initially played to a par 80, even featuring a par 6 hole. For the 2025 U.S. Open, the course will run 7,372 yards and play to a par of 70. Advertisement One of Oakmont's most notable features is its sloping, ultra-slick greens. The entire green surface slopes either toward or away from play, posing a challenge no matter where approaches land. Sam Snead once joked that when he put down a dime to mark his ball, it slid all the way off the green. The course's signature elements are its two distinctive bunkers, the Church Pews — islands of fescue in the middle of a bunker between the 3rd and 4th holes — and the Piano Keys — similar peninsulas adjacent to the 15th. They're visually distinctive, and fortunately for today's players, they don't still have one of Oakmont's most diabolical creations: long furrows, carved in the Allegheny River sand by a hundred-pound rake called the 'Devil's Backscratcher.' Oakmont delights in tormenting players, but that was too much. Key Storylines Can anyone stop Scottie? Advertisement No one is riding higher right now than Scottie Scheffler, three-time major winner and golf's reigning alpha dog. He's flirted with the U.S. Open — he has three top-seven finishes in his last four Opens — but even he will need to be at the top of his considerable game to bring this one home. Rory's next act After completing his life's mission by winning the Masters back in April, Rory McIlroy has, understandably, slowed down considerably. He posted unspectacular rounds at the PGA Championship in May, and missed the cut last week in Canada — not exactly the way you want to come into a major. The Bryson Empire There's nobody in golf — heck, nobody in sports — quite like Bryson DeChambeau, who has completely remade himself from sullen nerd to affable YouTube star … and, amazingly enough, he's one of the best players in the world besides. He won last year's U.S. Open in one of the most dramatic finishes you'll ever see, and he's primed to delight his millions of social media viewers with an encore. Advertisement Career salvation Several recent U.S. Open champions — Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Collin Morikawa — have found themselves unexpectedly adrift in recent years. All three could use another win to realign the trajectory of their careers. Another missed opportunity — or, worse, another missed cut — and the already-loud questions will grow deafening. The Great Unknown Since Tiger Woods captured that epochal U.S. Open victory in 2008, a few future Hall of Famers (McIlroy, Rahm, Koepka) have captured titles — but a whole lot of one-major champs have had the best week of their lives on the biggest week of their lives. Guys like Graeme McDowell, Webb Simpson, Lucas Glover, Gary Woodland, Matt Fitzpatrick and Wyndham Clark have stepped up when the spotlight was the brightest. Will we have another champion come from out of (almost) nowhere this week? He'll earn it, no matter who he is. Scottie Scheffler enters the U.S. Open as the overwhelming favorite. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) Expert picks Jay Hart: Collin Morikawa — Have you heard the rough is thick at Oakmont? If you haven't, you will within 30 seconds of the start of Round 1 on Thursday. So it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you're going to have to stay out of trouble this week to survive. For that reason, I'm going with Morikawa, who's ranked second in hitting fairways this season. A win would also put him one leg (The Masters) from the career grand slam. Advertisement Ryan Young: Scottie Scheffler — This is the easiest pick out there, and it doesn't need much of an explanation. Nobody in the golf world is playing better than Scottie Scheffler right now. Not even close. He's won three of his last four starts without much of an issue whatsoever, so why would things be any different at Oakmont? It's only a matter of time before Scheffler breaks away from the field this week. By Sunday afternoon, he'll have won his second straight major championship. Jay Busbee: Bryson DeChambeau — This is what I get for picking last. I don't have confidence in Rory McIlroy's driver or Jon Rahm's closing speed, so they're out. I also am not entirely thrilled about the state of Bryson DeChambeau's iron play — he effectively shot himself right out of both the Masters and the PGA Championship with his balky approaches — but distance is a serious weapon at Oakmont, and DeChambeau appears willing to just blast the hell out of the ball and figure out what to do next when he's down in the shadow of the flagstick. How to watch Since this is a multi-day sporting event in the year 2025, naturally all coverage is spread out over a range of networks and streamers. NBC has the broadcast rights this year, which means you'll need to locate USA Network on TV and sign up for a free preview — er, log in to your Peacock account in addition to watching on broadcast NBC. Full day-by-day schedule is right here; naturally, no two days are anywhere close to alike. The U.S. Open begins Thursday morning. But if you happen to miss this one, don't worry. The tournament is coming back to Oakmont in 2034, 2042 and 2049. Oakmont is going to be part of the U.S. Open story for a long, long time.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
U.S. Open: The story behind the Oakmont Chainsaw Massacre
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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement '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.
