Oakmont facts – very interesting!

[Mark_Fine]

Here are some interesting facts about Oakmont's recent changes and the set up for the U.S. Open courtesy of a talk I just heard yesterday from John Zimmer as well as conversations with him afterward:

- There “are only” 210 bunkers left on the golf course (down from close to 350).  

- All green expansions were done using aeration plugs (I like this technique especially for older courses with a mix of grasses).

- All the drainage ditches (which also function as hazards) were dredged, capped with old sand from the bunkers, and sodded with fine fescue.

- Everyone knows about all the trees taken out but number was actually over 5000 that have been removed from the golf course.  What some might not know is that there are only “two” trees left on the property that are not on the perimeters.  John joked that those “two” elm trees are “very nervous” trees!

- Some of the bunkering was moved to accommodate the U.S. Open fairway widths.  In other words, if the fairway was to be 24 yards wide, the hazards were pinched in to set them tight against the edges.  In some areas where the ditches were to be in play, the bunkering on the other side of the fairway was pinched in to allow the fairway to run closer to the ditches.  

Personally, I like the part about the fairway hazards being in play and right up against the fairway.  However, I don’t like the fact that everything was narrowed up and in some cases the lines of play altered.  More importantly, these changes will remain that way after the Open is played  John said the members evidently like it that way.  

As we all know, most of the great classic golf courses were meant to be played along the edges (not down the middle).  Now the edges at Oakmont will be very close to the middle!  Even on great courses, one dimensional U.S. Open set-ups get boring after a while.  I have to get back out there this spring to see the new fairway lines.  

John discussed many other things about the changes and different holes, etc. but I thought you might find some of these interesting.  

Mark

[Mark Chaplin]

I thought one of the main points of good golf course design was to give players options in how to get the ball into the hole. This is one area where good quality links courses excel.

Surely the USGA are continuing to encourage a boring one dimensional game.

[Mark_Fine]

Mark,
The tight USGA set up is not surprising.  But what is (at least to me) is that it will remain that way after the event is over.
For example, how would you like to play Pinehurst #2 or Shinnecock Hills everyday with a U.S. Open type set up!  It would wear you out.  

And remember at Oakmont, John is asked (told would be a better word) to keep the greens at 13 or more!
Mark

[Adam Sherer]

I got the chance to play Oakmont several times while the renovation was underway, including the "pinching" of fairways. Think of it this way: if you are a Tour player and drive the ball 300+ yards you may have to negotiate the 24 yard fairways. However, for the members, myself, and most of you reading this who are driving into the 200-275 yard landing area, it does not factor into the equation. You still have plenty of room to play holes through different angles because the fairways are not 24 yards wide throughout the entire length of the holes. Only on some of the holes do the fairways actually "bottleneck" into the USGA preferred width. For the average player (ie the Oakmont membership that will be playing the current Oakmont setup for years to come) the adjusted fairways are the least of their concern. The "Oakmont ditches", bunkers, and slippery greens are what give Oakmont its teeth.

Furthermore, John Zimmers does a great job with the course and will cater to the members once the Open has finished. As well, it is as much of the members and green committee that are driving the restoration and its alterations as it is the USGA, Marzolf, or anybody else.  The members are making the decisions and that, honestly, is the way it should be at an infamous national landmark.

[Mike_Cirba]

I got the chance to play Oakmont several times while the renovation was underway, including the "pinching" of fairways. Think of it this way: if you are a Tour player and drive the ball 300+ yards you may have to negotiate the 24 yard fairways. However, for the members, myself, and most of you reading this who are driving into the 200-275 yard landing area, it does not factor into the equation. You still have plenty of room to play holes through different angles because the fairways are not 24 yards wide throughout the entire length of the holes. Only on some of the holes do the fairways actually "bottleneck" into the USGA preferred width. For the average player (ie the Oakmont membership that will be playing the current Oakmont setup for years to come) the adjusted fairways are the least of their concern. The "Oakmont ditches", bunkers, and slippery greens are what give Oakmont its teeth.

Furthermore, John Zimmers does a great job with the course and will cater to the members once the Open has finished. As well, it is as much of the members and green committee that are driving the restoration and its alterations as it is the USGA, Marzolf, or anybody else.  The members are making the decisions and that, honestly, is the way it should be at an infamous national landmark.

Adam,

That's the silliest thing I ever heard, I'm sorry.

The shot dispersement at 300+ yards is way too risky for touring pros to attempt hitting a 24 yard wide fairway.
Only the foolhardy among the touring pros will try to drive the 300+ it would take to reach the "bottleneck".   Instead, they will lay back as Tiger did this year at Hoylake, and it will take any degree of risk/reward out of the equation.  

What is wrong with letting Oakmont play as Oakmont?   New back tees were already installed, bunkers were deepened, greens are their normal slickness, I'm sure the rough will be brutal, so why this ridiculous, Mickey Mouse, daft, hare-brained scheme?

As regards the members, doesn't it matter which tee selection is used?   I know guys who are 12 handicappers who can rip the ball over 300 yards.   How does the course make any sense for them and what set of tees should they be using?

It sounds to me that they're letting the same brain surgeons who are currently priming ANGC and Riviera for more stupid architectural decisons have the run of things at Oakmont, all in the name of saving par for four days once every 15 years.

That's really tooo bad.

[Chris_Clouser]

Adam,

That argument is what the techno guys and the course doctors love to hear but it only holds water if one thing remains constant, that we all use the same set of tees as the pros.  Which most of us would not, I would suspect.

If we play tees that are 25 yards farther up, which I would guess is a minimum on some of the holes, then all of a sudden those narrow fairways are directly in the line of fire.  So the alterations are for 140 or so players for one week of the year once a decade at best, but the rest of the world has to live with the changes until the next guy comes in and narrows them even further.

This is why the game of golf has been turned upside down.  All these changes in length, width and speed are all under the mindset that we have to have championship conditions to test these guys, if they show up, while the fun factor gets sucked out of the game and our classic courses get demolished.  The .1% is dictating the direction of design and maintenance for the remaining 99.9%.  And all the while we are being fed lines like that to mislead us as players into thinking that the course we are playing isn't being affected.

Wait I have to add a bit of red to the Mona Lisa's hair to make her have a more modern look.

[Mike_Cirba]

Wait...I have an even better idea.

Let's make the fairway 40 yards wide at 150 yards, 35 at 200, 30 at 250, 25 at 275, 20 at 300, 15 at 325, 10 at 350, and so on!!  

I can't believe that the members of Oakmont are actually listening to these numb nuts.

[Patrick_Mucci]

- There “are only” 210 bunkers left on the golf course (down from close to 350).  

Mark,

Is there any interest in restoring any of the 140 bunkers that were removed ?

- All green expansions were done using aeration plugs (I like this technique especially for older courses with a mix of grasses).

This seems to be the accepted and prefered practice today.

- All the drainage ditches (which also function as hazards) were dredged, capped with old sand from the bunkers, and sodded with fine fescue.

- Everyone knows about all the trees taken out but number was actually over 5000 that have been removed from the golf course.  
What some might not know is that there are only “two” trees left on the property that are not on the perimeters.  John joked that those “two” elm trees are “very nervous” trees!

That fact should be promoted.

- Some of the bunkering was moved to accommodate the U.S. Open fairway widths.  In other words, if the fairway was to be 24 yards wide, the hazards were pinched in to set them tight against the edges.  In some areas where the ditches were to be in play, the bunkering on the other side of the fairway was pinched in to allow the fairway to run closer to the ditches.  

Here's where I vehemently disagree, and where Oakmont is given a free pass.
I would also point out that if Rees Jones was responsible for those changes there'd be an uproar.

Baltusrol considered doing the same thing.
Perhaps this is where they got the idea.

Altering the architecture of a great golf course, solely for the purpose of testing the best golfers in the world, who will play there for 4 days out of every 3,650 to 4,750 days is absurd, and represents a disfigurement of the golf course.

Are memberships out of their individual and collective minds ?

Has tournament golf become so all consuming that it's clouded golfer's minds such that they wish to subject their members to the rigorous tests meant to only challenge the best players in the world ?

I don't find this to be a laudatory alteration.
I think it's a continued step in the wrong direction for golf and golf course architecture.

Personally, I like the part about the fairway hazards being in play and right up against the fairway.  However, I don’t like the fact that everything was narrowed up and in some cases the lines of play altered.  More importantly, these changes will remain that way after the Open is played  John said the members evidently like it that way.  

Mark,

If my memory is correct, and I'm pretty sure it is.
You took the Head Superintendent at Baltusrol to task in February of 2004 for the same proposal, moving the bunkers in to match the newly narrowed fairways.

You were quite animated in your protest.

Why the sudden change of heart ?

Baltusrol shouldn't be taken to task, and Oakmont praised  and given a free pass for doing the identical same thing with their roughs and bunkers,  which you, me, Brad Klein, Mike Cirba and many others found objectionable.

As we all know, most of the great classic golf courses were meant to be played along the edges (not down the middle).  Now the edges at Oakmont will be very close to the middle!  Even on great courses, one dimensional U.S. Open set-ups get boring after a while.  I have to get back out there this spring to see the new fairway lines.  

But, once the rough lines and bunkers are moved in to match, it's doubtful that their widths will ever be restored.

Will fairway widths be diminished to 12 yards with bunkers nearby, in order to test the best players in the world in U.S. Opens 20 years from now ?

It's a terrible trend

John discussed many other things about the changes and different holes, etc. but I thought you might find some of these interesting.

[Mike_Cirba]

Patrick,

You're absolutely correct.

This is a wrong-headed decision where sanity and reason gets turned completely on its head and you have the situation where that great student of classic design, Tom Marzolf is modifying Oakmont's 100 year-old architecture and fundamental design with ridiculous, faulty logic to accomodate a 4-day tournament once every 15 years.

Then you have the apologists citing Fownes as making the course tougher during his lifetime.   It's absurd.

[Chris_Clouser]

Patrick Mucci and I agree on something.

And I thought my day couldn't get any worse...  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Chris Clouser,

Everyone is entitled to my opinion.  

[Mark_Fine]

Pat,
I did say that about Baltusrol and my position is the same now as it was then.  You didn't read what I wrote!  

I said that "I don’t like the fact that everything was narrowed up and in some cases the lines of play altered".  I am a strong advocate of width, especially on these older designs where it was called for and I am NOT giving Oakmont a free pass.  

We are on the same page here and I specifically asked John this question and cited my concerns during the Q&A session after his talk.  Please correct your post.  Thanks,
Mark

Note:  What I said that I liked was that the fairway hazards have fairway next to them (not rough).  I just didn't like (at all) that the hazards were brought out to the fairway.  It should have been the other way around - the fairway brought out to the hazards.  

[Patrick_Mucci]

- Some of the bunkering was moved to accommodate the U.S. Open fairway widths.  

In other words, if the fairway was to be 24 yards wide, the hazards were pinched in to set them tight against the edges.  

In some areas where the ditches were to be in play, the bunkering on the other side of the fairway was pinched in to allow the fairway to run closer to the ditches.  

Personally, I like the part about the fairway hazards being in play and right up against the fairway.  

Mark, here's where I thought you were supporting their effort to match bunkers with new fairway lines.[/color]

However, I don’t like the fact that everything was narrowed up and in some cases the lines of play altered.  

More importantly, these changes will remain that way after the Open is played  John said the members evidently like it that way.  

I would hazard a guess that by "members" it's a phrase more representative of those in charge rather than the members at large.[/color]

[Mark_Fine]

Pat,
Sorry that part was confusing.  I was trying to say that I hate "fairway hazards" that are left languishing out in the rough.  I like to see fairway brought out to them (not the other way around) where the hazards are brought out to the narrowed fairway.  

Hope that is a little clearer.
Mark

Note:  By shifting everything over (as in my example where they did so to get closer to the ditches), you end up losing the strategy of playing along the other side of the hole.  

[JohnV]

I would hazard a guess that by "members" it's a phrase more representative of those in charge rather than the members at large.

Pat, I think you are wrong on that one.  Every member I've ever met from Oakmont takes pride in it being the toughest task in golf and given that I live in town and a lot of them play in our events I've met my share.  

As a matter of fact, a couple of members have bemoaned the tree removal to me because they think it will play to easy for the pros.  Needless to say, I disagree with them.

[TEPaul]

JohnV:

Yep, it'd true. more than any other golf club of my acquaintence Oakmont has managed over the decades to somehow condition their entire membership into being proud of being subjected to a form of a 4-5 hours torture session.

I did not know that 4 and 5 putting was fun but that's because I haven't had the sophisiticated education that Oakmont's membership has had.

Oakmont is definitely the Marquis de Sade of golf course architecture.  

Nevertheless what I saw there this year in an Ideal Maintenance Meld context was off-the-charts good. Best I ever saw.

[Mark_Fine]

John,
You are right about the members preference to have the toughest test in golf.  I think they do!  But they also could have the best as well but narrowing the playing corridors won't help.  

I agree with you, the trees coming out made that golf course even more difficult.  Now you can see all the trouble vs. having it hidden in the forest.
Mark

[Jeff_Mingay]

Just plain difficult: isn't that what the Fownes' wanted Oakmont to be?

(Those 'restored' ditches are pretty cool. In fact, I'd love to replicate those things on one of our new courses... just suspect that our client will think we're completely nuts!)

[Geoffrey Childs]

Pat - I agree with you entirely.

If moving a bunker at Bethpage by Rees is a monumental redesign then what is this work? Paging Tom MacWood.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark,

I think many bunkers are left lanquishing in the rough for two reasons.  Fairway contraction vis a vis irrigation systems and the concept of buffering or safety netting for errant shots.

The narrowing of fairways and moving bunkers inward to match will diminish the interest in playing golf through dictated, rather than selected routes of play.

The unfortunate part of this is that other clubs will point to Oakmont as an example in order to validate their narrowing of fairways and the moving of bunkers to match.

[George Pazin]

Here's a question:

If they had moved the bunker on one side INTO the fairway, making it even narrower, maybe splitting it into 10 yards on one side and 5 on the other, wouldn't many then be praising the cross bunkering for introducing more decisions?

If there were formulaic pinching bunkers on every hole, I would agree that it is wrong. If it's occasional, I don't have a problem with it.

The one thing that strikes me from Mark Fine's initial post is that I had been under the impression that virtually all bunker decisions were made with a restorative intent, not a renovative intent. The secondhand comments from Mr. Zimmers would seem to imply otherwise.

[Mark_Fine]

Guys,
First of all let me state that John Zimmers is in my opinion one of the best in the business!  I have great respect for him and what he has and continues to accomplish at that golf course.  He is a first class guy and has been a great help to me on several of my projects (our book included).  

Again, the two big things that surprised me in his talk were the moving of the bunkers and the fact that the narrow fairways, etc would remain after the tournament.