Did they cut too many trees at Oakmont?

[Rory Connaughton]

No.
Oakmont may actually be underrated.

[BHoover]

On the Memorial broadcast today, Jack Nicklaus said he does not like the trend of removing trees from golf courses, particularly those in the North. He did not mention Oakmont specifically, although he did say now you can see things you used to not know were there, like turnpikes.


However, when he won the 1962 US Open, how many trees were actually in play at Oakmont?

[Tony Ristola]

On the Memorial broadcast today, Jack Nicklaus said he does not like the trend of removing trees from golf courses, particularly those in the North. He did not mention Oakmont specifically, although he did say now you can see things you used to not know were there, like turnpikes.


However, when he won the 1962 US Open, how many trees were actually in play at Oakmont?

https://youtu.be/aTqHhCf9Syw



A clip from when "Ohio Fats" won the 62 US Open.  You can see rows of young trees that have been planted in areas.
There's also a couple shots from the 1927 US Open. Fairways looked pretty broad back then.
Some clips from 1953.

[Charlie Goerges]

1926 image:


Oakmont 1926 by goerges_family, on Flickr

[Jason Thurman]

Thanks Charlie. I did a little quick lookback at Oakmont on HistoricAerials.com yesterday as well. The thing I'm trying to figure out is: Just how divided were the holes at Oakmont in its original design? A lot of the fairways out there are routed very close together (12 and 14, 5 feels like it's probably always been a natural route to consider from 4 tee, 18/15/14/12 are all separated from each other by shared hazards or very thin sections of rough).


It's conceivable to me that a largely treeless early 1900s design might have been presented as more of a "field of play" in its early days, much like so many true links courses where one hole's fairway bleeds gently into another's and players can take many different routes. If that was an aspect of Oakmont's original design, for better or worse, it certainly disappeared in the forest in the last few decades of the 20th century.

[George Pazin]

It's amazing how flat Oakmont appears in Charlie's posted photo. Anyone who has been there knows how not flat it is, and the hills are incredibly well utilized in the design. As I've said many times on here, the topography of Oakmont is like most of western PA, and all of the many golf courses in the region, yet there is only one Oakmont. Virtually every other course uses hills in the more traditional ways, and they are lesser for it.


As for Jack's comment, that is just silly, pointing out the turnpike. You don't even really notice it, other than when you're crossing the bridge. And with the trees, the course is MUCH more disjointed.


Know trees, no peace. No trees, know peace.