Oakmont Country Club

Favorite Hole

No. 12, par 5, 632 yards

A true three-shot par 5, the 12th at Oakmont played as long as 684 yards in the 2016 U.S. Open, making it the longest hole in championship history. The fairway banks sharply from left to right and jogs between staggered bunkers. The green races away from the line of play, feeding toward the back-right corner at a two- to three-percent grade. 

The game of the hole is easy to understand but hard to master: to end up with a reasonably short third shot into the well-defended, severely sloped green, you must thread both your drive and second shot between the high bunkers on the left and the low ones on the right. Deciding which bunkers to take on and which to stay short of is an engaging puzzle. -GM

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Overall Thoughts

Oakmont Country Club is often cited as the paragon of penal golf architecture. It is an unforgiving course, viciously disdainful of mediocre ball-striking. Its long rough and deep bunkers give no quarter to the high handicapper and the wild driver. As the club’s co-founder and longtime architectural director William C. Fownes once said (according to lore, if not verifiable historical record), “Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artist stand aside. A shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost.” It is no surprise that Oakmont has hosted more U.S. Opens (10) than any other club.

This depiction of the course tells only part of the story, however. Oakmont is indeed hard — relentlessly so. But a penal golf course is not simply (or even necessarily) difficult. Penal design is better understood as an approach to hazard placement. As Tom Doak puts it in his book, The Anatomy of a Golf Course, the penal architect “lay[s] out hazards from the tee forward to the green, placing bunkers to punish a topped drive, a hook or a slice, or a wayward approach.” The primary intention of such hazards is to punish poor strikes of the ball.

Strategic golf courses, on the other hand, use hazards to distinguish multiple potential lines of play and to create risk-reward scenarios that different players may navigate in different ways. “The essence of this style,” Doak writes, “is for the green to be heavily defended on one side or tilted significantly, so there is a distinct advantage to placing the drive in a certain part of the fairway. Fairway hazards are placed only to make the optimum lines of attacking the green risky.” Whereas penal holes are often linear, with trouble on the sides and safety down the middle, strategic holes tend to adopt unbalanced, tilting, diagonal, bending, zigzagging, or staggered forms. 

With these definitions in hand, it should be clear that Oakmont’s design is not entirely penal.

Predominantly? Sure. The first, fifth, 10th, and 14th holes in particular are classic examples of the penal school. Their fairways are bordered by rows of bunkers resembling lines of infantrymen in an 18th-century battle. These configurations emerged during the course’s early decades, as Henry and William Fownes responded to advances in club and ball technology by adding hazards farther downrange. They wanted to send an unmistakable message to the player: stay away from the edges, or else.

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On other holes, however, the Fowneses presented more nuanced challenges.

The second hole — a short, uphill par 4 — creates strategic angles with opposing diagonals: the fairway moves from left to right, with bunkers guarding the right side, while the green moves from right to left. The player who makes the longest carry over the fairway bunkers on the right earns the cleanest look at the green. (An additional bunker, 50 yards from the front edge of the green, complicates decision-making for today’s long hitters.)

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On the par-4 third hole, those who challenge the famous church pews on the left will gain a sightline to the hilltop green. Those who shy away will find themselves blocked out by a rise.

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Like the second hole, the par-5 fourth generates strategic interest through the contrasting diagonals of its fairway and green. The landing zones for drives and second shots bend from left to right and are bunkered heavily on the right. Meanwhile, the green runs from right to left. Players who bite off large chunks of danger on the right side will end up with a short, straightforward third shot.

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With fairway bunkering restored by Gil Hanse, the par-4 seventh hole poses a strategic dilemma from the tee: a safe drive short of the right bunker results in a long, blind approach, whereas a more aggressive play to the well-protected elbow of the fairway on the left yields a view of the green.

On the par-4 11th, a ditch crosses the fairway on a right-to-left diagonal, defining the strategic options from the tee. Carrying the ditch leads to the shortest possible approach, while playing short of it on the left produces an inviting angle into the elevated green.

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The par-5 12th, as I detailed in the “Favorite Hole” section above, combines a canted fairway, staggered bunkering, and a fallaway green to create strategic tension.

Finally, the short par-4 17th hole presents a risk-reward scenario right out of the strategic school’s playbook. The farther players bail out to the right, away from the huge central bunker, the more precise their approach must be in order to hold the skinny, tilted green. This hole wouldn’t feel out of place on a George Thomas course.

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The strategic character of these holes was easier to perceive in the 1920s and 30s, when Oakmont’s fairways were wider. For instance, the 17th once provided more room for players to chase both aggressive and conservative lines. On the fourth hole, the approach to the green was much broader, allowing players to swing a risky second shot out to the right, over a crescent of three bunkers, in pursuit of an ideal angle. 

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Partly because of its championship-hosting responsibilities, the club has tightened these and other fairways. This is understandable, given the pressure on U.S. Open venues to guard against distance gains and other advances in the elite game, but it’s slightly sad. Restored to its vintage width, Oakmont would be an even greater marvel than it is now.

That said, Hanse’s recent renovation work involved widening many fairways and recovering certain long-lost angles of play. Today, the course’s strategic moments stand out more clearly than they have in decades.

Oakmont’s mixture of penal and strategic design is just one aspect of its greatest strength: hole-to-hole variety. I could write separate “Overall Thoughts” sections on how the routing continually finds new ways to use the two hillsides feeding into the Pennsylvania Turnpike; or how each of the greens registers as unique yet part of the same family; or how the course’s naturalness — kept intact since its construction by horse and shovel in 1903 — allows the inherent variety and eccentricity of the landscape to shine through.

Oakmont is one of the richest texts in the world of golf architecture. That, not its difficulty, is why it has stood the test of time, and why not even 10 U.S. Opens seems like enough. -GM

3 Eggs

(How We Rate Courses)

The land is muscular and full of character, the design generates outstanding hole-to-hole variety, the turf is as firm and fast as the Allegheny River soil permits, and the overall presentation of the course is faithful to the Fowneses’ vision. But the biggest reason Oakmont deserves three Eggs is its absolute originality. It created its own genre, and it remains the only example. -GM

Course Tour

Front Nine

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Back Nine

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Additional Content

Year-Round U.S. Open Conditioning: How Oakmont Stays Championship Ready (Video)

Oakmont Deep Dive (Designing Golf Podcast)

Oakmont Reactions (Fried Egg Golf Podcast)

Interviews with Mike McCormick and Gil Hanse (Fried Egg Golf Podcast)