Saturday, June 16, 1962 at Oakmont. The final rounds of one of the best majors ever played. Thirty-six holes, standard then for the U.S. Open. A newly minted, but still winless, professional named Jack Nicklaus walks the fairways as the only man standing in the way of western Pennsylvania's native son, beloved Arnold Palmer. For having the audacity to challenge the king, Nicklaus pays a price: Cries of "fat boy!" and "fat Jack!" follow him from tee to green. It gets so bad that it even rattles Palmer.
Only two men finish under par, and the hero, Palmer, has a birdie putt on 18 that they call 12 feet but which on the video looks more like 10. He misses high. That means 18 more holes on Sunday in a two-man playoff. There's a tradition that when there's a playoff, the winner gets the gate—all the money the spectators pay on the extra day. As a magnanimous gesture, perhaps because he thinks he's going to beat the rookie, Palmer offers to split the gate with Nicklaus. But Nicklaus says no—winner take all. It pisses Palmer off, lights a fire.
Nicklaus wins.
Palmer never wins—not at Oakmont. In 1953 he was an amateur, and he missed the cut. In 1973, his final real crack, he came into Sunday tied for the lead. And then Johnny Miller shot a 63. In 1994, the start was almost entirely ceremonial, another missed cut in his final appearance in a U.S. Open.
• • •
Sunday, August 6, 1978 at Oakmont. Tom Watson, establishing himself as one of the great champions of the era, carries a five-shot lead into the final round. Seven shots behind, a recovering alcoholic named John Mahaffey, best known for losing the 1975 U.S. Open in a playoff, has no prayer. At least until he does. A scintillating 66, second only to Johnny Miller's famous 63 in the annals of Oakmont Sundays, helps him overcome the massive deficit—tied for the largest in PGA history, with Justin Thomas in 2022—to force a playoff. On the second hole, he buries a 12-footer to take the title. Like Palmer, Watson's résumé falls just short of the career slam. Only the PGA escapes him.
Watson leads again at Oakmont in 1983, with Seve Ballesteros after 54 holes, when a Vietnam veteran named Larry Nelson clips him by one. Needing a birdie on 18 to tie, Watson sails his approach over the green. Even in 1994, late in the day, he’s just three shots off the lead heading into Sunday. Oakmont keeps his name off the list.
• • •
Sunday, June 17, 2007 at Oakmont. Tiger Woods wins the 1994 U.S. Amateur, but it happens in August, and qualifies him for the majors in 1995, where he plays his first at the Masters. That meant he missed the Oakmont U.S. Open in 1994, and he missed it again with back surgery in 2016, and he's going to miss it this year again because of his achilles. His only chance comes in 2007.
Prior to the tournament, he’s the star of a photo and video shoot with American Express—the first time the U.S. Open has entered a commercial partnership of that type. At the 2:25 mark of the video below, you can see Tiger in the famous church pew bunkers. He refuses to take a shot for the cameras, because he never intended to hit there, and thinks this would be "practicing negative thinking." But he does agree to stand inside, just for a moment:
“This is all you’re going to get.”
He doesn’t hold the 54-hole lead, but on Sunday, after Aaron Baddeley instantly ejects with a triple on the first, he holds the 55-hole lead. At that time, Tiger never loses a Sunday lead at a major. On the third hole, he avoids the church pew bunkers just like he promised, but then everything goes to hell. Two awful chips relegate him to double bogey—his only double of the day—and he loses by a stroke to Angel Cabrera.
Tiger Woods will never win at Oakmont.
• • •
Let me be the first to admit that if you want to believe in a superstar curse at Oakmont Country Club, you'll need to take a leap of faith. Yes, we have the parables of Arnie and Tom and Tiger, but we also have a fearsome list of champions over time: Gene Sarazen, Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and, of course, Nicklaus. These names are unequivocally not the counter-evidence you want in an argument.
So why do I believe? It begins and ends with two men: Henry Fownes and his son, W.C. Fownes.
Henry, the patriarch of Oakmont, was a first generation immigrant to the U.S. His father died at age 15, he quit school, and he learned the steel industry from his uncle. He was one of the original turn-of-the-century self-made men, and in 1898 he sold an iron furnace to Andrew Carnegie and became wealthy beyond imagination. He was misdiagnosed with heart disease shortly after, quit all his business ventures and dedicated himself to relaxation and leisure. But for Fownes, "relaxation and leisure" only meant a new kind of hard work. By the time another doctor told him that the spots in his vision were from welder's flash, not arteriosclerosis, he had decided his home club wasn't hard enough and bought a tract of farmland south of the Allegheny River on which to act out his sadistic (or is it masochistic?) impulses.
Oakmont is harsh because Henry Fownes wanted it harsh. He put in more than 300 bunkers, made the greens absurdly fast and even raked furrows into the bunkers with the so-called "devil's backscratcher." The original design included a par-6 hole.
His son, W.C., really did have heart disease, and had to give up the family business young. He turned himself to golf, became incredibly good, winning the 1910 U.S. Amateur at Brookline, and eventually became president of the USGA. He maintained every bit of his father's grim perspective on life, that triumph should only occur through soul-grinding struggle. He would walk around Oakmont saying things like, "Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artist stand aside! A shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost!"
As a measure of his zealous outlook, when Oakmont membership opted to become a social club after World War II, in opposition to the golf-only vision of Henry, W.C. Fownes resigned himself and his whole family from the club. He lived two doors down from the club for four more years before the heart disease killed him.
To believe in the superstar curse, even with the evidence against, means believing that the harsh philosophies of the Fownes men prevail at Oakmont, either through pure historical momentum or perhaps some spectral intervention. Look again at the list of superstars who have won: Sarazen, the son of poor immigrants, hit hard by pneumonia as a child, who worked with maniacal devotion to become the best. Bobby Jones, who battled similar health issues as a boy and would suffer again near death, and who had to lose a final at Oakmont before he could win. Ben Hogan, who should have died in a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus, who broke seemingly every bone in his body and who some doctors thought would never walk again...just before he endured a grueling comeback and put together one of the greatest seasons ever. And then Nicklaus, who endured constant abuse in the shadow of a giant and retained such an uncompromising sense of self that he wouldn't even agree to split the gate in a playoff.
Scottie Scheffler played as an amateur with his sister Callie on the bag at Oakmont during the 2016 U.S. Open.
Sam Greenwood
All of them, to a man, embody the Fownes spirit. They may have been superstars, but they suffered, they took a hard path in life and their triumphs at Oakmont were won through blood and sweat.
In the absence of that quality? Oakmont has been consistently unkind to the biggest names in the game. Players like Palmer and Watson and Tiger haven't just lost—they've had their hearts broken.
There is no player in the world in 2025 who looks like more of a sure thing at a course this punishing than Scottie Scheffler. Just don't be surprised if the ghosts of Oakmont have other plans.
