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U.S. Open at Oakmont: One tough course awaits

OAKMONT, Pa. - William C. Fownes, the son of the man who designed Oakmont Country Club, once admonished club members who had complained that the course was too difficult by saying, "Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artist stand aside."

OAKMONT, Pa. - William C. Fownes, the son of the man who designed Oakmont Country Club, once admonished club members who had complained that the course was too difficult by saying, "Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artist stand aside."

An offensive remark amid the genteel world of golf? Absolutely, but Oakmont was tough when Henry C. Fownes built the course and opened it in 1904. It still was tough when government officials decided to run the Pennsylvania Turnpike through it in the late 1940s. It has remained that way through many stagings of the U.S. Open.

The Open, which is being hosted by Oakmont for a record ninth time, begins Thursday. The field of 156 players will find a tough, relentless course where lightning-fast greens, high rough and brutal length will be physically and mentally draining for the contestants, a survival test of the highest order.

"I think from Day 1, it's been unapologetic in saying, 'This is going to be a tough golf course,' " said Gil Hanse, the renowned Malvern-based golf course architect who is working on Fox Sports' telecast of the Open. "It is designed to be difficult. It's always been difficult. The membership embraces the difficulty and the USGA certainly embraces that as well.

"When you look at how perfectly this golf course is laid on the land, especially now with the trees down, you can really see what [Fownes] was thinking when it was designed, and I think that's brilliant, especially for a guy who just did one golf course."

Oakmont removed about 7,000 trees before the 2007 U.S. Open, and more than 7,000 since then.

In many respects, Oakmont is the quintessential U.S. Open course. The greens will run this week at 14 as measured by the Stimpmeter, a device that was invented as an answer to protests about the speed of the greens at the 1935 Open here. The rough is thick and tough; the USGA has ordered it mowed to 3 to 31/4 inches in the first cut and 4 inches farther in.

Oakmont features long holes such as a 667-yard par-5 (No. 12) and a 288-yard par-3 (No. 8), which played at 300 - the longest par-3 in championship history - on the final day of the '07 Open.

The prospects of playing a hole so long led Paul Goydos to quip, "In my two decades of playing the PGA Tour, we have never had a hole where you could have a long-drive contest and closest to the hole on the same hole."

There are short holes as well. Five of the par-4s this week will play at less than 400 yards. The uphill 17th, which is 313 yards from the back tee, provides the ultimate risk-reward possibility under the suffocating pressure of a U.S. Open final round.

Whether it's a long hole or a short hole, however, focus and discipline are the keys to playing well.

"You have to be so disciplined," former Open champion Rory McIlroy said. "One of the real challenges about this golf course, especially after taking so many trees away, is that it's a big, wide-open space now and you're hitting into these tight fairways. There's not really a whole lot of definition out there. So you have to be so zoned in to where you want your target to be."

Players know that keeping the ball below the hole is of the utmost importance, or as McIlroy said, "I'd much rather have a 30-foot putt up the hill on these greens then even have an 8-footer down the hill."

Oakmont hasn't changed a whole lot since the Open's last visit here. USGA executive director Mike Davis said the course for 2016 is "the same exact yardage" as was played in 2007, 7,219 yards.

"Very little change has occurred," Davis said. "What you're seeing out there in so many ways is everyday Oakmont. It's what the members encounter. This really is a golf course we can come to. It's U.S. Open-ready seemingly all the time."

For the next four days we'll find out: Are the players ready for Oakmont?

jjuliano@phillynews.com

@joejulesinq