Oakmont Relishes a Rich History of Watching World’s Best Golfers Struggle

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: June 14, 2016

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It’s become a rite of summertime passage for golf fans, as predictable as both the broiling temperature readings and simmering tempers at the world’s toughest major championship, the U.S. Open.

Each June, usually by Tuesday of tournament week, a prominent player will utter a daunting proclamation about the venue, describing it as the most punitive Open site he’s ever seen, before forecasting a dire outcome.

This time around, five-time major winner Phil Mickelson got a head start on sounding the calamity klaxons.

Mickelson spent a few days in early June playing suburban Pittsburgh’s notorious Oakmont Country Club, which will play host to the U.S. Open for a record ninth time on Thursday. A veteran of 25 U.S. Open starts, he came away licking his wounds, not licking his chops, per se.

“I really think it is the hardest golf course we've ever played,” Mickelson told reporters last week prior to the FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis, Tennessee.

That sentiment represents orchestral music to the ears of the Oakmont membership, which not only enjoys pushing its beloved course’s playability to the edge, but adding a hard shove between the shoulder blades, too.

Oakmont, with stomach-churning reason, is routinely described as the toughest course on the planet—the sort of place where hardhats and gag balls should be sold in the pro shop, not golf caps and Titleists.

“This course was not designed to offer a grandmotherly hug,” said former PGA Tour regular Bob Friend, a Pittsburgh native and a member of the Oakmont board of directors. “It was designed to be a punch in the mouth.”

It’s like gnawing on a jawbreaker, for sure. For the last man standing on Sunday night, the week feels more like a prosecution than a procession.

“I know that if you win a U.S. Open at Oakmont,” defending...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Golf

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