Ryan Potts,
I've never heard an Oakmont member or a member of the Professional staff refer to the playing experience at Oakmont as one that inflicted pain and enduring suffering.
Perhaps the media likes to create sensationalism through exageration.
Or, sometimes, perhaps not.
Watching the Golf Channel just now, I heard -- with my still-serviceable ears -- Bob Ford (Oakmont's head professional, isn't he?) say that Oakmont members "like to be punished, and they like their guests to be tortured."
Or maybe he said they like to be tortured, and they like their guests to be punished.
But he said it, one way or the other. It was no journalistic contrivance.