Oakmont CC - What exactly did Fazio do?

[Jeff Schley]

It is like the Sports Illustrated cover girl - Oakmont is easy to love.  I know Fazio worked as a consultant at Oakmont back in the early 2000's.  I'm trying to figure out exactly what he did there.  We all know that hundreds of trees were removed if not thousands, but was that a decision of the membership and Fazio was brought in to confirm the decision based on Fownes original architecture as archived via historical photos?

I have seen several articles that speak of Fazio as the consultant, but not that he came in to do a master plan and came up with the idea to remove trees and got the ball rolling.  Does anyone know or have any articles that point out his involvement? Or is kind of like being Michael Jordan's coach where he has natural ability and you just don't screw it up?

[MCirba]

Jeff,


My limited understanding is that he had nothing to do with the tree removal work that was instituted internally but that he created some new back tees and deepened and repositioned quite a few bunkers.


Thankfully I don't believe any of the original greens were harmed in the making of this "restoration".

[Mark_Fine]

He did A LOT!  Maybe someone can post his Master Plan.

[Joel_Stewart]

Anything he suggested was scrutinized to the 10th degree and evaluated by multiple groups within the club. There's still a faction of new guard members that want him replaced.

[Jeff_Brauer]

One thing I do remember is that they used about 50k cubic yards of fill to move 17 teeback so it would be a tweener reachable 4 in the US Open.

[Tom_Doak]

Primarily the Fazio team moved a lot of the bunkers in closer to the centerlines, so it wouldn't be obvious how much the fairways had been narrowed.

[Anthony_Nysse]

Anything he suggested was scrutinized to the 10th degree and evaluated by multiple groups within the club. There's still a faction of new guard members that want him replaced.

I was under the impression, as of a year or 2 ago, they were going to be working with C&C going forward. And for what its worth, I think that Tom Marzolf did most of consultation work the last 15 years.

[Ryan Farrow]

Primarily the Fazio team moved a lot of the bunkers in closer to the centerlines, so it wouldn't be obvious how much the fairways had been narrowed.

Tom,


I think that really mischaracterizes the work that the Fazio team did at Oakmont. I can only point to one hole where the bunkers were moved closer to the fairway and that was the left cluster of bunkers on #5. There were slight tweaks like the right side of 3 where they were brought in a few yards closer but they were actually tighter in the 1938 aerial with a slightly different configuration. You can nitpick a few bunkers here or there but #5 was the only major change.


I would say that in general the bunkers were made much deeper. The church Pews were reconfigured by adding a few "rows" on each end and the fairways were tightened on about 9 holes in select spots. The back right of #2 green was expanded and a few back tees were added, #4 & #7.

[Ryan Farrow]

Anything he suggested was scrutinized to the 10th degree and evaluated by multiple groups within the club. There's still a faction of new guard members that want him replaced.

I was under the impression, as of a year or 2 ago, they were going to be working with C&C going forward. And for what it's worth, I think that Tom Marzolf did most of consultation work the last 15 years.

Yes. The Fazio team restored a back right pin location prior to the '16 open and filled in a back bunker that was added in the 60's. A GCA poster must have seen hole #6 under the knife and started a thread about it but the work is all wrapped up now.  I'm not going to get into the work that C&C did as that is the club's business and they or Bill and Ben can discuss the work that was done. I will say that the goal was to get the 6th hole closer to what the Fownes, father/son duo had created and refined.

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