Newsmakers 2007: Boo Weekley

By Geoff Russell

Photo By Stephen Szurlej

November 23, 2007

As is the case most years, the real winner at the 2007 U.S. Open was the course: venerable Oakmont CC, which extracted a stroke average of 75.72, a winning score of five-over 285 and a palpable sense of weariness and dread in all 156 competitors. Perhaps J.J. Henry summed it up best when he said it was the only course he ever played where he stood on all 18 tees thinking double bogey was a realistic possibility. But this was a new Oakmont. From the time of its construction in 1903, the suburban Pittsburgh layout was regarded, indisputably, as one of American golf's greatest tests (it hosted the 1919 U.S. Amateur 16 years after it opened, and its first U.S. Open followed in 1927) and has become its most experienced championship venue. Oakmont's character mirrored that of the Iron City itself: a supreme test of muscle and strength, its numerous furrowed bunkers and massive, frighteningly fast greens the ideal immovable object to combat the irresistible force of generations of the game's most talented golfers, from Jones to Hogan to Nicklaus to Watson. Then came the physical and technological advancements of the last 15 years, the resulting distance explosion, the "shrinking" of most of the game's oldest and most revered layouts and -- finally -- the movement to modernize those courses: by slicing and stretching and bending and breaking until, in many cases, the finished product barely resembled the one you were trying to protect in the first place. Expanded length was still utilized (the 2007 U.S. Open, it will be remembered, featured the first 300-yard par 3 in major championship golf). But the overall approach Oakmont officials took was radically different: They chose to remove just about every tree on the property, perhaps as many as 8,000. This exposed a forgotten (and long out-of-play) series of ditches and burns, and allowed the return of the tall fescue that originally blanketed the layout. The result was dramatic. America's premier parkland course had been transformed into a yellow and brown landscape resembling a links (though it was nowhere near the sea) or -- more accurately -- a track more commonly found on the plains of Kansas or Nebraska. Of all the descriptions ever applied to the old Oakmont, one that was never used was "beautiful." The new Oakmont is as hard and punishing as the old one. But now it is also beautiful. Even to a tour player making double bogey.