| Oakmont Overhaul
U.S. Open 2025: The five big changes to a new-look Oakmont
Lee Trevino once said that Oakmont Country Club was so tough that it was the only course in the country that could host the U.S. Open on demand, without advance notice. The members, who play in quasi-Open conditions daily, are slightly more modest—they say they need two weeks to get ready.
What happens at Oakmont during those two weeks? Not much. It’s more about what doesn’t happen: The rough isn’t mowed, and the greens are barely watered, making them even firmer than usual. The club does, however, cut the greens—Oakmont’s are often so fast that they need to be slowed down when the professionals come to town. A fortnight later, you have the country’s most established U.S. Open course, host to the national championship nine previous times dating to 1927 (as well as another three PGA Championships, two Women’s Opens and six U.S. Amateurs).
The core ingredients that combine to make Oakmont the most prolific and most exacting U.S. Open test have been immutable for 100 years, namely a legendary set of formidable greens that play like tilted basketball courts, urn-like fairway bunkers forbidding players from advancing the ball very far and wrist-breaking rough, four to five inches in height.
Glazed greens and penal bunkers may be constants at Oakmont, but that doesn’t mean the course never changes. For almost 45 years after it opened in 1903, founder H.C. Fownes and son W.C. Fownes (pronounced “phones”) shifted greens and added hazards with almost religious zeal, marshaling it from an open, countryside course with no bunkers to one that at its height had some 350 of them (W.C. famously insisted that “a shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost”). Extra tweaks preceded most major tournaments—by Fownes, by superintendents and by consulting architects, including the lengthening of the design’s original 6,400 yards (it was one of the longest courses in the U.S. right out of the box), ongoing bunker modifications (including the creation in the 1930s of the famous Church Pews bunker), the planting of forests of trees between holes and, decades later, their total removal.
The latest round of upgrades ahead of Oakmont hosting its USGA record 10th U.S. Open next week have been carried out by Gil Hanse and partner Jim Wagner. Nearly 150 yards have been added with new tees on holes like three and 11 that extend the championship length to 7,372 yards, playing to a par of 70 (the uphill par-5 ninth for members will be a 472-yard par 4). More significantly, the greens were expanded to their former perimeters. Hanse and Wagner studied photos of the course from the years prior to 1947 when the Fowneses were still in charge and observed a consistent theme of greens that were much more squared off than they would become, with grass banks dropping off into the recessed bunkers the way a tablecloth falls over the sides of a table. The majority of the work involved enlarging and recreating the plateau edges and connecting them more dramatically to the rebuilt bunkers (as well as to numerous historical bunkers that were revived), adding about 15 percent more putting surface and numerous new hole locations.
Since the Fowneses constantly added and removed bunkers, there was no definitive version of Oakmont to guide the design details. Hanse and Wagner attempted to recapture what they and the club determined to be a best version of each individual hole, independent of others—the model for one might have been a 1938 aerial, and for another a 1926 plan or ground-level perspective. The result is a kind of all-star lineup of Oakmont holes, a team of historical greats all playing together in their prime. Every hole at Oakmont has seen substantial changes, including the new green structures, but these five will have the biggest impact on how Oakmont looks and plays for the 2025 U.S. Open.
HOLE 2: PAR 4, 346 YARDS
LANDING ZONES: An expanded fairway and rearranged bunkers entice play at the second.
“Creating an enticing space”
With a ditch guarding the fairway left, bunkers on the right and one of Oakmont’s most severely sloping greens pitched back left to front right, many players elect to hit an iron for safety off the tee on the short, uphill second. To entice them to select longer clubs, the previously narrow fairway has been expanded on the right to create a landing area more attractive to hybrids and metal clubs. Hanse and Wagner also repositioned a string of bunkers on the right to cut diagonally into the fairway to more clearly divide the short landing zone for irons from the second expanded area. Of course, some long hitters will still launch driver near the green, though an additional bunker short right and an extended cross hazard 30 yards short of the putting surface offer more robust defense.
HOLE 3: PAR 4, 462 YARDS
“Deadly front hole locations”
Oakmont’s third has undergone several significant changes but remains one of the most recognizable holes in golf due to the Church Pews bunker framing the left side of the fairway. New tees add nearly 40 yards, and Hanse and Wagner installed an additional pew in the bunker, bringing the total number of the grass berms to 13 and increasing its length to 108 yards front to back. The five deep bunkers on the right were also rearranged in a crescent, the first and fifth of which now pinch the fairway to just 25 yards across. The shaved chipping area that fell away behind the green has been converted to rough, and the pot bunker short left is bigger and more dangerous, protecting forward hole locations in tandem with a monstrous false front. “It is very intimidating looking up and just seeing the skyline of green,” Hanse says. “If you come up short, you’re rolling all the way back down, and if they use the front-left hole position, that’s going to be really interesting.”
HOLE 7: PAR 4, 485 YARDS
“A new carry at 290 yards”
The seventh hole underwent the most fundamental change to any hole at Oakmont. Previously the drive played to the crest of a hill and needed to be placed between flanking sets of bunkers. The architects found an early photo that depicted a cross-bunker cutting across the landing zone from the left and an alternate fairway offset to the right. With this arrangement reproduced, players must either carry their drives 290 yards over the new bunker to the slender crest of the fairway for a clear look at the green surrounded by four bunkers, or hit a cautious drive to the larger right fairway but face a longer, blind approach over the ridgeline. This type of dynamic is rare at Oakmont but shows that at points in its past the design did present strategic options.
HOLE 13: PAR 3, 182 YARDS
POLISHED GREEN: Players will see new hole locations at the par-3 13th.
“Reviving lost putting contours”
The slightly uphill par-3 13th, set against a hillside, is often overlooked considering its placement following the extraordinary par-5 12th and the five round-defining holes that follow it. It’s difficult to look past it now after the expansion and sharpening of the green edges. “It’s an amazing hole,” Hanse says. “There was this little up and over slot in the middle of the green that was kind of muted in the way it played because the back-left hole location was too steep to use. But now if you’re on the front right of the green, you can putt over that ridge, and it will take the slot and just feed the ball into the back-left pin. That green is very different from what it was, and it’s exciting because of the possibilities with the recaptured hole locations.”
HOLE 17: PAR 4, 312 YARDS
“Five bunkers made into one”
The 17th, an uphill par 4 that’s reachable from the tee, is always determinative in tournaments at Oakmont, often because players try to drive the green and fail. The primary task here was to reduce the variables of the tee shot. Six bunkers left of the fairway have been combined into one large and one small bunker that are shifted closer to the green, and players who want to play conservatively for position will have slightly more fairway available. The five bunkers that circle the small, perched putting surface leave terrifying recoveries, particularly the Big Mouth bunker short right, so players would avoid them by driving up to the left of the green for a clear chip from the rough (see top photo). That area is now planted with long fescue. If they try that play now, Hanse says, “they’re probably going to get something they don’t want.”