Joe:
Thanks for the great tours of these courses. I'm not sure I've seen Oakmont's greens captured so well -- a difficult thing to do in photos. I'm struck moreso by the tilt of the greens than the contours -- most of the greens seem to capture the "lay of the land" feel to them, with some additional contouring, but I can easily see where being on the wrong side of the hole on those greens is semi-terrifying.
A few other things that stood out:
-- There seems to be ample width there -- I didn't see anything in the pictures that made it seemed confined off the tee. Maybe that's a reflection of the tree clearing that gives the entire place a more open feel than in its incarnation a few decades ago, but the course strikes me as one with ample width but severe penalties the second you drift off the fairway.
-- The manner in which the holes capture the broad contours of the land is really superb. Some abrupt land movement uphill leading to blind or semi-blind shots, and then the swooping nature of a hole like 12. Great routing.
-- Boy, the par 3s really strike me as intimidating. For some reason the par 3s at Oakmont perhaps don't have the notoriety of some of its other holes, but they all look really good and just plain difficult.
I also think that something that gets lost sometimes in evaluating Oakmont is how varied the course is -- some notably short par 4s, but also mixed in with some lengthy par 3s and par 5s and demanding par 4s. Its flow of holes is also really terrific, it seems, and for a championship course, it starts and ends like one should -- with tough pars.