Here's a little piece regarding the architectural evolution of Oakland Hills that has so far been absent from the discussion. As Donald Ross grew older, he saw the way the game of golf was changing, and to respond, made plans to relocate the fairway bunkers at Oakland Hills. Unfortunately, Ross died in 1948, never carrying out the plans he had envisioned. The result, Robert Trent Jones was called in, was given access to Ross' plans and incorporated many of his bunkers. The problem, he didn't know where to stop, over bunkering the course into a penal scheme that virtually eliminated options. Here's what Ron Whitten had to say in the June 1996 issue of Golf Digest;
"...Jones wasn't the club's original choice to rework the course. Donald Ross himself had a prepared hole-by-hole revision of Oakland Hills after the war. On it, he had proposed relocating bunkers out to the 230-250 yard range, the same general areas that Trent wanted...Trent not only knew of those plans, he used them. A set is still in Trent's office, showing where he red-penciled additional revisions atop those of Ross. He followed some of Ross' proposals, such as moving the 2nd tee to the left to make it a more pronounced dogleg par 5. But where Ross had wanted to heavily bunker one side of a hole, Trent heavily bunkered both. Trent didn't expand the greens into larger, more generous surfaces the way Ross had envisioned. Instead, he surrounded most of them with even more bunkers to make them impenetrable to all but high, arching approach shots. The greens themselves were barely touched. Jones admired the way Ross had contoured Oakland Hills' greens. The older Trent got, the more he raved about those greens. In his 1988 autobiography, he was positively gushy about them: "Uniquely his and uniquely great", he called them, "Ross' great greens, with their crowns, swales, terraces and slopes, were large enough and needed little revamping, except for the installation of a tongue area here and there".
If only we could get rid of those extra bunkers!!