Restored Oakmont is Faithful to Founder Fownes’ Vision

The late Henry C. Fownes, the founder and designer of Oakmont Country Club, famously said, “A shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost.”

Founded in 1903 and officially opened in 1904, Oakmont was soon considered among the toughest courses in the country. Was Fownes obsessed with making sure that Oakmont was labeled the toughest? He was said to monitor competitions on the only course he ever designed, and when a player went unpenalized for what Fownes considered a poor shot, he often decreed that a bunker immediately be added to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again. At one point, Oakmont had more than 330 bunkers; it now has “only” 175.

Mind you, Fownes was an accomplished player, and his son and successor as the keeper of Oakmont’s stern reputation, William C. Fownes Jr., won the 1910 U.S. Amateur before going on to serve as president of the USGA in 1926-27.

“National championships are in Oakmont’s DNA because of the Fownes family,” said William Fallon, a 35-year club member and a past member of the USGA’s Executive Committee. “The membership embraces H.C. and W.C.’s philosophy that it was built to identify national champions. Since this will be our 10th U.S. Open, I think we’ve stood the test of time.”

For the fourth time in his USGA tenure, Jeff Hall will be part of the U.S. Open course setup team at Oakmont, having worked on the 1994, 2007 and 2016 championships. This record 10th edition at the venue will be different from the previous three, according to Hall.

“It’s had very different looks across these four U.S. Opens,” said Hall. “In 1994, we had all the trees on the property, then the tree removal process started. This year, we are going to have a restored Oakmont – a ‘sympathetic’ restoration by [architects] Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner that ensures the first U.S. Open on a true Fownes golf course in many years, with regard to both the landscape and the course itself.”

An article on the club’s website estimates that 10,000 trees have been removed since 2000. Combined with the Hanse team’s 2023 restoration and gnarly 5-inch rough that has already garnered wide reaction, Fownes Sr. and Jr. somewhere must be smiling in anticipation.

The father-and-son tandem tweaked Oakmont continually over a 40-year period that brought several USGA championships to the club. Alterations to the Fownes stamp began shortly after the 1962 U.S. Open, a classic battle between local hero Arnold Palmer and young upstart Jack Nicklaus, won by Nicklaus in an 18-hole playoff.

“The writer Herbert Warren Wind referred to Oakmont ahead of that championship as ‘an ugly brute of a course,’” said Fallon. That description stung the club’s post-Fownes hierarchy, which set out to beautify the layout by planting thousands of trees.

“Mind you, there were barely 50 trees on the golf course at the time of that 1962 Open,” said Fallon. “When the newly planted trees matured, it changed the way the course played, in particular the influence of the wind.”

Bob Jones played in a pair of U.S. Amateurs at Oakmont, losing in the 1919 final to Oakmont member S. Davidson Herron, and easily taking home the Havemeyer Trophy in 1925. During match play of that 1925 championship, Jones and his fellow competitors battled a very challenging wind, an element that Ben Hogan also noted when he described his dominant 1953 U.S. Open victory. It came as a surprise to Fallon and club members who were researching it.

“We were dumbfounded when Hogan immediately mentioned the wind,” said Fallon. “That likely wouldn’t have happened in the 1973 or 1983 Opens, because those mature trees acted as a buffer from the wind.”

Oakmont’s demands during its initial heyday suited nine-time USGA champion Jones, who shares that record total with Tiger Woods. “It’s a wonderful course, a punishing course, with a heavy penalty for those who stray from the straight and narrow,” he said in 1925.

Hanse calls the Fownes masterpiece “unapologetically difficult,” while noting that he and Wagner pored over the entire portfolio of father-and-son design modifications in the club archives. Thus, the 1927 version of the first hole might be the best version for today’s play, while the 1935 edition of the second hole might work better, and so on. As Hanse described it, it’s a bit eclectic as opposed to picking a single snapshot in time.

Preliminary coverage has focused on course setup that will feature the elimination of graduated rough. There will still be a narrow strip of 1½-inch rough closest to the fairways and greens, but no “intermediate cut” of say, 3 to 4 inches – it’s straight to the 5-inch stuff.

“We can make any golf course difficult,” Hall noted at a U.S. Open preview event in May. “That’s not hard to do, but is it difficult for the right reasons? Are we differentiating average golf, good golf and great golf? That’s really our job as a setup team. If good shots and bad shots are finishing in the same place, we haven’t done our job properly.”

Although at 7,372 yards, the 2025 U.S. Open scorecard yardage is only 118 yards longer than in 2016, there are additional wrinkles: expanded green surfaces (an average of 1,200 square feet per green recovered by Hanse’s team in its restoration), fairway bunker positioning that better reflects current driving distances, and fairway contouring that embraces the Fownes philosophy.

“I would say that every green has at least one additional option for a hole location, and a number of them have two more than in 2007 and 2016,” said Hall. “And as you know, these are some of the most challenging greens in golf.”

As difficult as the putting surfaces are, they don’t provide all the challenge at Oakmont.

“The attention to detail that you’ve got to have, as far as where you place the ball, is paramount to any kind of success,” said Hall. “Let’s not forget that Oakmont is not particularly long by today’s standards, with several par 4s at 400 yards or less. So in keeping with the way the game has changed, we've decided this lack of intermediate rough was an appropriate way to present the test at Oakmont. You’d better keep it in the fairway.”

In the 2020 U.S. Open, one played in September without fans due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bryson DeChambeau seemingly overpowered Winged Foot Golf Club in his six-stroke victory, with little emphasis on whether he hit the fairway or not. Could that approach work at Oakmont?

“The premise of ‘the shorter the shot, the easier the approach’ is, I think, generally accurate,” said Hall. “That may work on some holes at Oakmont, but it may not work on others. I would also say that Bryson’s short game was exquisite in 2020. He had a lot of great up-and-downs, made a lot of nervy putts for par. It wasn’t as if he just drove it farther than everybody.”

Both Hall and Hanse admire – and are a bit fascinated by – the Oakmont membership’s insistence on the course playing extremely difficult on a day-to-day basis.

“Oakmont is one of the few courses in our country that – if we ever had a catastrophe and had to move the Open from another venue – inside the ropes, we could have a whale of a U.S. Open in very little time, because of the consistency with which they maintain it,” said Hall, who added: “The members seem to love going 15 rounds with Mike Tyson every day.”

To which 35-year member Fallon replies, “Playing that course every day, I've become a better player, because I’ve learned where to miss. Also, there’s the challenge and enjoyment of playing a course where Jones, Hogan, Nicklaus and [Ernie] Els won. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, then I would argue that you’re not a real golfer in your heart of hearts.”

Ron Driscoll is a contributing writer and editor for the USGA. Email him at v-rdriscoll@usga.org.