I had the privilege of playing Oakmont C.C. in 1987 when playing in the Pennsylvania Amateur.
Back then, the golf course was right around 7,000 yards long, and from what I gather, it is between 7,300 and 7,400 yards now. It will play to a par 70, but it was a Par 71 back then.
Dustin Johnson is the most recent winner at Oakmont, posting 276 in 2016. Angel Cabrera won the previous addition at 285.
Going back to 1962, when Jack Nicklaus won his first professional major, the trend has been for relatively long hitters to win at Oakmont.
Johnny Miller won in 1973 and was not known to be a short knocker.
The lone short hitter to win was Larry Nelson in 1983.
That year Nelson shot 65-67 on the weekend to beat Tom Watson by a shot. As I recall, the weather was wet that weekend.
In 1994, Ernie Els won, but that was in a playoff against Loren Roberts. Roberts was a short knocker but he was a pretty straight driver and putting was his strength.
It’s been a fairly wet Spring in Pittsburgh so far this season and the rough is incredibly thick, as you can see in this video.
The latest weather forecast calls for sunny and dry weather on Thursday and Friday, but 50% chance of thunderstorms from Saturday through the middle of next week.
With that said, the course is not extremely long by today’s standards.
Oakmont is notoriously difficult due to the number of bunkers on the golf course and the difficulty of the greens. Its greens are typically the fastest the tour players will see.
In order to play well at Oakmont, it is crucial that you drive the ball well.
The longer you can hit it, the better. However, you need to hit the fairways, which are not super narrow.
Tee shots off line will find either a bunker or the heavy rough.
If you find the fairway, you are still faced with a daunting approach shot. If you miss on the wrong side of the hole, you are in danger of three putting or worse.
Not only are the greens extremely fast they have significant undulation.
Therefore, long and straight off the tee is quite ideal so you can have shorter irons into the difficult greens.
With all this in mind, Scottie Scheffler is a prohibitive favorite. If he plays well, he wins this easily.
Rory would’ve been in contention this week, but his swing appears to be way off based on his showing in Canada this past week.
I have trouble thinking Bryson will do very well due to his lack of distance control with the irons this year. That hurt him at Augusta, and it will do so again at Oakmont if that is still an issue.
No other players really come to mind as giving Scottie a run for his money, so it will be interesting to see how things turn out.
