OAKMONT, Pa. — There are a lot of spots at Oakmont where you don't want to hit your golf ball. But there's one spot at Oakmont where you really don't want to hit your golf ball because for most of the first round, it was an automatic bogey.
That spot is right here, about 60 yards down and to the right of the second hole.
The hole itself is short—just 346 yards during Thursday's first round—and the green slopes severely from back to front. As you can see from StrackaLine's greenbooks of the hole, a vast majority of the green portion is sloped more than four percent. It means that when a ball gets rolling down them with any kind of speed, it's just not going to stop.
During Round 1, the pin was tucked right in the back left, which means golfers had to hit their ball either through or over all of that severely sloping portion of the green. Especially when approaching from the front right of the green.
For most, it didn't end well.
Looking at the morning wave of golfers, most ended up in this black hole in one of two ways.
A few golfers attempted to get greenside with their driver. If they missed a little to the right—but not so much that it drifted into the right rough—they'd end up in the black spot.
But most hit their second shots into this spot. With a wedge, they'd hit their approach too far right with too much backspin, then watch it roll all the way off the green and into the black hole.
Regardless of how they got there, almost nobody got it up-and-down: Of the nearly 20 players who hit their ball here during the morning wave of the first round, only two (a paltry 13 percent) got their up and down: Maverick McNealy and Cam Smith.
Players actually had a better chance of getting their ball up-and-down if they started from the gnarly U.S. Open rough, because they could chunk-and-run it up the hill. Rory McIlroy actually got up and down from here doing exactly that.
But from the tight fairway lie, players had to nip it just right, with enough spin to grab but not enough to roll backwards to the same spot where it started—two players suffered that fate.
After his opening round 75, I asked Cam Smith for some specifics about the shot he used to pull it off:
"It's definitely a hard shot, you have to hit it perfect," he said. "I wanted to try to hit it low with a bit of spin. Seven or eight yards short; skip it off that then grab. You're trying not to think about it coming all the way back down, but the thought is definitely in there."
When it comes to the nuts and bolts of the shot, Cam said it came down to a few things:
- Ball position further back in the stance
- Slightly open clubface—but not too much
- Quick hinge of the wrists on the backswing
- Throw the clubhead down into the ball
- Keep the follow through short
You can go deeper on how to hit this shot right here.
Do all of those just right, and you'll navigate one of the trickiest shots of Oakmont. A spinny pitch up a steep hill to five feet, and a par on one of the