The next time it’s Halloween, or your kids are out camping and everyone wants to tell ghost stories and other tales of horror, I’ve got the mother of all bloodthirsty slashers for you.
Nevermind the guy with the razor blade fingernails, or the dude with the Ghostface mask. Forget about Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Not even Vincent Price or Edgar Allan Poe have anything on Henry Fownes, designer of Oakmont Country Club, host of its 10th U.S. Open.
He built a golf course that eats the golfers.
Fownes was the steel magnate who designed and built Oakmont as his one and only golf course. His vision was to build the toughest golf course, and through the century-plus of its existence the members have held true to that ethos. Throughout its 98-year history of hosting U.S. Opens, its razor-sharp talons and slavering jaws have devoured and dismembered a century of golf’s most decorated champions.
When it comes to bone-chilling terror, Fownes tops Victor Frankenstien 4 and 3.
On two single occasions has Oakmont succumbed to golfers, and both were due to torrential rains, a situation that tears away the defenses of every golf course. As even herdsmen in Outer Mongolia know, Johnny Miller shot a 63 on Sunday in 1973 to zoom past everyone and win the first of his two majors. The second was the opening round of 2016, when rains again turned the course to Soakmont, and a shocking 11 players finished under par.
But this year the Oakmonster returned in all its ferocity, turning the field to mere flotsam and jetsam, and not caring who it turned its baleful eye upon. The following major champions missed the cut this year, and rather ignominiously at that: Wyndham Clark, Lucas Glover, Cam Smith, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Gary Woodland, Justin Thomas, Justin Rose and Shane Lowry.
That’s a combined 18 major championships between them. They played the golf course in a combined 105 over par and posted a bloated 80.2 scoring average.
DeChambeau was the biggest name to leave Pittsburgh early. He proved prophetic on Thursday night when he warned, “I think the rough is incredibly penalizing. Even for a guy like me, I can't get out of it some of the times, depending on the lie. It was tough. It was a brutal test of golf.”
His second-round 77 featured nine holes where he scored bogey or worse. He hit a mere five fairways on Friday and a lackluster seven greens. A pre-tournament favorite of many, he finished 10 over for the two days, three shots adrift of the cut line.
For some, the grueling torture of a slide to the nether-reaches of the leaderboard wasn’t enough; the Golf Gods had to make them a laughingstock as well. Poor Shane Lowry, winner of the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush (the host club this year as well) was so brain-fogged he incurred a one stroke penalty for forgetting to mark his golf ball on the green before he picked it up.
That’s a pro golfer’s equivalent to your wife heading off to work with her bra on over her blouse.
“It’s probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done,” he laughed exhaustedly, shrugging off his 79-78, 17-over finish with the characteristic charm of the Irish. “I had the ball in my hand, turned around and Darren [Reynolds, his caddie] said to me, ‘What are ya doin??!!’”
Even newly-minted PGA Championship winner Scottie Scheffler bowed his head to Oakmont’s might and majesty.
“There were times today when you felt like you could give up,” he lamented.
And then there was the hapless plight of George Duangmanee a rookie pro from Fairfax, Virginia, and the University of Virginia golf team who was completely hanged, drawn and quartered by Oakmont. The Cavalier alumnus shot 5 under par at sectional qualifying to get into the field, but then the Oakmonster woke and dined on him to the tune of 86-89, 35 over par and dead last (156th place) by a full eight shots. The worst of the carnage was a 12-over 47 on the front nine Friday, where he carded exactly one par…at the ninth. Yes, there was even a dreaded snowman, a triple bogey at the eighth.
At the halfway point of the tournament only three golfers are under par. Sam Burns leads at 3-under 137 after a brilliant early morning 65, the third-best round ever shot at an Oakmont U.S. Open.
“There's no just kind of gimme hole. There's no hole where you can get up there and just hit it and not really pay attention to what you're trying to do,” Burns said. “I think it requires a lot of focus on every shot, and even when you're in the rough and you're trying to get it back in the fairway, it's just every shot is difficult. So really you're very focused and putting a lot into every shot mentally.”
Fellow American J.J. Spaun, the first-round leader, is one stroke behind at 2 under. Norway’s Viktor Hovland is in third place two strokes behind Burns at 1 under. The 2013 Masters champion Adam Scott, the only player on the top eight that has won a major, stands at even par along with American Ben Griffin.
For the fans, this is what they wanted to see: carnage at Oakmont. This is a return to the imprimatur of the tournament itself; the hardest golf tournament in the world. At a truly great U.S. Open, the course is the star, and for one week the pros look like all the Sunday golfers watching on TV.
“I’m definitely tired and exhausted,” Viktor Hovland breathed breathlessly. “It just feels like you have to play absolutely perfect and have some good breaks going your way, as well.”
“You know you're going to get penalized even on good shots, and that's just part of this golf course,” added Collin Morikawa, whose 4-over 74 has him 4-over total for the championship.
But this is what the pros get when the Open comes to Pittsburgh. And with the right kind of eyes, you can see the ghosts of yesteryear as well, still haunting both the course and memories of the men who suffered crushing defeat at the hands of Oakmonster. Tiger failed to conquer Oakmont, leaving the trophy on the ground for previously unknown Angel Cabrera to win. That one-stroke loss stung Tiger especially sharply; Cabrera, at the time, was obscure even in his own country of Argentina.
Arnold Palmer had the U.S. Open trophy cruelly dashed from his lips twice in his own backyard. In 1962, Jack Nicklaus made up three strokes on the back nine to force a playoff, and then defeated Palmer to seize his first professional victory, let alone first major. Then in 1973, when Miller came out of nowhere to vault over everyone and win, Palmer was one of the prime victims.
“Who the hell is 5 under?” Arnie moaned in shock as he played the back nine, suddenly realizing he was not ahead. That was the last time Arnie ever contended seriously at a major.
“Miller?” shrieked an equally flabbergasted Tom Weiskopf. “I didn’t even know he made the cut!”
Then in 1983 Tom Watson saw his chance of being the first repeat winner of the U.S. Open since Ben Hogan in 1951 shattered by Larry Nelson, whose 63-foot bomb across the 16th green gave him a lead he never relinquished and doomed Watson to second place. It was quite ironic, actually, as 50-foot putts were the kind of thing Watson would do to everyone else all the time. He called them “snakes” as in “I need a snake right now…”
And perhaps the grimmest fate of all was that of Sam Snead, who was only one stroke behind Ben Hogan after 54 holes, but Hogan made a 20-foot birdie putt on the par-3 13th and pulled away over the final holes to win by six strokes, forcing Snead to settle as runner-up for the fourth time.
So even though there are 36 holes left to play in the 2025 U.S. Open, we already know who the winner is: the Oakmonster. Someone will walk off woith the trophy and the medal, but Oakmont will once again be indomitable.
