The Oakmont Files: 15 Things You Probably Didn't Know About America's Great Championship Course
Oakmont Country Club, situated just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is the venue for the 2025 US Open. Here's a deep dive into the legend, lore and legacy of one of golf's most iconic courses.
Welcome to golf's most unapologetically difficult test.
At most private clubs, members complain when greens run too fast. At Oakmont Country Club, they have to slow them down for the world's best players.
As the US Open returns to Oakmont this week for a record 10th time — 98 years after its first — there's no better moment to dive into what makes this Pennsylvania powerhouse the ultimate case study in championship golf.
Including premium operations, prohibition-era lockboxes, $200,000 initiation fees and secret woodcutting in the dead of night, here are 15 things that reveal the 122-year story behind how Oakmont became one of golf's most exclusive battlefields.
Oakmont Country Club: Foundation & Vision
1. The Carnegie Steel Fortune and the Great Misdiagnosis
The entire history of golf might have been different if not for a spectacular medical error. In 1898, Pittsburgh steel baron Henry Fownes was welding a bicycle tyre when he noticed some spots in the periphery of his vision. A doctor visit and diagnosis later gave him the news that he had arteriosclerosis, and possibly no more than 18 months to live.
Seeing the writing on the wall, Fownes acted fast. And golf was at the center of his motivations.
He sold his Cary Furnace Company to Andrew Carnegie (who later sold it to JP Morgan to create US Steel), traveled to Scotland to fulfil a lifelong dream of playing the great links courses, and came home to see out his few remaining days.
But something strange happened.
The spots disappeared.
A second opinion delivered a different diagnosis: “welder's flash”, painful but temporary eye damage from exposure to ultraviolet light.
Fownes would live another 35 years.
What could have been one of history's greatest malpractice suits instead became a gift to the golf world. With his Carnegie millions and a newfound lease of bonus life, Fownes set out to build America's most challenging golf course.
2. The Ultimate Membership Exclusivity
Today's Oakmont membership reflects Fownes' premium vision. Initiation fees reputedly range from $80,000 to $200,000 depending on membership class, with annual dues exceeding $10,000. The waiting list is long, and selection is based on achievements and community contributions. It’s said that even Hollywood stars and Fortune 500 CEOs find themselves waiting in line.
The club caps membership at around 550, and it’s exclusive in more ways than just financial — befitting its status as one of golf’s most difficult courses, around a third of Oakmont members carry handicaps in the single digits.
3. Hand-Digging Perfection
In fall 1903, Fownes assembled a crew of 150 men and 24 horses and mules to hand-dig his masterpiece from 191 acres of farmland.
Working through winter into the spring of 1904, they created what opened as a 6,406-yard, par-80 monster.
The course utilized natural terrain so effectively that most people today would argue it should still be par 80. This was infrastructure investment at its most ambitious — no GPS, no modern earthmoving equipment, just vision and brute force.
As John Bodenhammer of the USGA said,
“Oakmont is a little bit longer [now] and a little less par, but it's basically the same venue [as 1904].”
4. The USGA Anchor Site Guarantee
In 2021, the USGA designated Oakmont as only its second “anchor site” (after Pinehurst), locking in US Opens through 2049.
The commitment includes three more Championships after 2025 (the US Open will return to Plum, Pennsylvania in 2034, 2042 and 2049), as well as two US Women's Opens, a Walker Cup and a US Women's Amateur.
This represents hundreds of millions in guaranteed economic impact for a region that is already one of America’s most bullish golf economies — according to the USGA citing data from America’s National Golf Foundation, Pennsylvania includes 671 golf courses, employs over 50,000 people and has an annual economic value of approximately $2.3 billion.
The anchor site model also involves joint capital investment. For 2025, the USGA and Oakmont jointly funded complete practice range reconstruction and purchased property across from the second hole for vendor compounds and bus loops.
As the USGA's John Bodenhammer noted in an interview with Gary Williams on 5 Clubs this week, “Without them, we can't conduct the U.S. Open.”
Oakmont Country Club’s Prohibition-Era History & Operational Excellence
5. The Prohibition Lockboxes
If you’re ever fortunate enough to step into Oakmont's locker room, you'll find there one of golf's best-kept secrets.
Every member locker — from the original 1904 wooden lockers to those built in more recent years — contains a small lockbox installed in 1920 to circumvent Prohibition.
While the club could maintain plausible deniability, members were able to stash some booze for post-round celebrations.
All in all, it’s brilliant business thinking: when regulations threaten your member experience and/or business model, you must innovate around them.
The secret locker lockboxes are not the only iconic woodwork in the Oakmont locker room — the benches there date to 1904 and bear the pockmarks of 120 years of wear and tear from metal spikes.
Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods have all changed their shoes on these benches, making them a piece of living history you can touch — if you’re ever lucky enough to get inside the door.
6. The "SWAT" Betting Game Sanctuary
The SWAT room in the men's locker room serves as sanctuary for Oakmont's member betting game.
Members play several times per week, forming four-person teams (A, B, C and D players, all selected by handicap mark) for some high-stakes gambling.
Teams gather before rounds to form teams, return afterward to settle bets and sit with a few beers — now legal and above board, of course — to reminisce about their rounds and lots more besides.
7. Championship-Level Daily Maintenance
Oakmont's maintenance operation reads like a university recruitment brochure.
The 45-person crew includes 30 staff members who either have or are pursuing turf management degrees.
US Open conditions are contained year-round — and its members expect nothing less.
One staff member, Stevie Buynak, has worked 48 seasons and this will be his fifth US Open Championships.
At a time when so much golf course management resorts to seasonal employment, usually by necessity, Oakmont stands apart with its focus on career-level commitment and lifelong operational excellence.
Innovation & Invention
8. The Birthplace of the Stimpmeter
Golf's most important measurement tool was born at Oakmont.
In 1935, accomplished amateur Edward Stimpson watched Gene Sarazen putt a ball off a green and into a bunker during the US Open.
Convinced the greens were unfairly fast, Stimpson went home and invented a 30-inch wooden device to measure green speed objectively. The USGA eventually adopted it in 1976, and today every serious golf operation uses stimpmeter readings.
Innovation through problem-solving — classic entrepreneurship from a curious and driven golf amateur almost a century ago.
Not that Oakmont is perfectly suited to stimpmeter readings!
The course’s legendary commitment to difficulty is so extreme that several of its 18 greens are too sloped to get accurate stimp measures — the ball just keeps rolling.
For context, most tour events run greens at 12 feet, championship venues push to 13-14. Oakmont's measurable greens regularly hit 15-16. On the unmeasurable ones? Can anybody really know for sure?
9. The Club That Has to Dial Down the Difficulty for the US Open
Whether it’s grounded in absolute truth or a tasty piece of legend-building, it’s hard to 100% sure, but the word is that Oakmont has long since had to dial back its standards of difficulty to accommodate the major championships.
In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper article ahead of the 2007 US Open, USGA Senior Director of Rules and Competitions Mike Davis confirmed they ask Oakmont to slow their greens for the US Open because regular member conditions would be “scary fast” even for the world's best players.
Another newspaper report, back in 1973 ahead of the fifth US Open at Oakmont, stated:
“Most Open courses have to narrow their fairways for the big event. The USGA forced Oakmont to widen two fairways for this year's Open!”
Ahead of the 2025 Championship, Andy Johnson from The Fried Egg noted that Oakmont often runs member events at 18 stimp — faster than any Major championship in the world.
The full truth and nothing but the truth, or golf's ultimate business positioning statement? It can be both, right?
Oakmont’s Architectural Evolution
10. The Great Tree Wars
Oakmont's restoration story spans decades of conflict between tradition and modernization.
Trees were planted in the 1960s-70s, transforming Fownes' links-style design into what critics called an “arboretum”.
In the 1990s, committee members launched a secret tree removal program, cutting down select clusters under cover of darkness. When word leaked, member lawsuits erupted over the removals. The committee held firm, and by 2007, a major renovation eliminated a further 5,000-8,000 trees in one project alone.
11. The Curious Case of Oakmont’s 9th Green
Oakmont's 9th green — measuring more than 22,000 square feet and described by the USGA as “one of the most iconic green complexes in the game” — is the only putting surface in major championship golf that doubles as a practice green during tournaments.
Players warm up on the back portion while others play their approach shots to the front.
During the US Open, a spray-painted line across the middle separates practice from competition.
While in play, it doesn’t really matter if your approach shot finds its way to the practice portion of the green. You just face a mighty long putt.
But cross the white line while practising and disqualification awaits.
12. The Church Pew Bunkers Evolution
Originally seven separate bunkers, the famous Church Pews were connected almost 100 years ago to create one of golf's most recognizable hazards.
Measuring roughly 100 by 40 yards to the left of the 3rd hole and the right of the 4th holes, the bunker complex measures 28,000 square feet and features twelve grass-covered ridges resembling church pews.
During the recent restoration led by legendary course architect Gil Hanse, they added 15 yards to ensure modern power players couldn't simply fly over them, bringing the pews back into play.
13. National Historic Landmark Status
In 1987, Oakmont achieved National Historic Landmark designation—only 3% of properties on the National Register achieve this status.
The USGA's statement of significance called it “the oldest top-ranked course in the United States … with original layout virtually intact”.
14. The Gil Hanse Restoration Masterpiece
Oakmont's 2022-2023 restoration represents golf's gold standard in infrastructure investment.
Among a series of improvements, Gil Hanse's team:
expanded greens by 24,000 square feet
rebuilt every bunker
installed new irrigation
added strategic length
All while going to great lengths to maintain the course's unapologetic difficulty.
While the project costs don’t seem to be in the public domain, comparable restorations could run to between $15-30 million.
Most importantly, Hanse worked from historical photographs to restore features not seen since the Fownes era, creating hole locations that haven't existed in generations.
The restoration delivered something unprecedented: as the USGA's John Bodenhammer noted while speaking to 5 Clubs, this is “the first U.S. Open since the 1930s that is being played on the Fownes golf course.”
15. Froggy's Bar from Downtown Pittsburgh
The Champions Grill features a bar that tells Oakmont's story perfectly. When downtown Pittsburgh's Froggy's tavern closed 20 years ago, members bought the entire bar and moved it to the club.
Why? It was an iconic piece of Pittsburgh history and dated from 1903 — the same year Oakmont was founded.
You can still see outlines of old drink specials etched in the mirrors. It's a vital piece of authentic history, creating irreplaceable member experience and an atmosphere that’s rare because it’s not manufactured.
Oakmont Country Club: The Bottom Line
Oakmont's business model seems almost perverse: charge premium prices for an experience designed to frustrate customers!
Yet it works because authenticity and excellence compound over time into something irreplaceable.
While other clubs might chase more manageable conditions for broader appeal, Oakmont doubles down on difficulty and exclusivity.
The result is a 122-year-old golf brand that has become so strong that the governing body of golf in America has made it an anchor venue and guaranteed it will stage Major championships for at least the next quarter century.
For golf industry leaders, Oakmont's lesson is clear: premium positioning is all well and good, but to follow through on that positioning requires premium delivery, every single day, in every single detail.
Tears and Prayers: A Few Lines of Poetry About Oakmont’s Legendary Difficulty
These were cited by Williams in that aforementioned 5 Clubs broadcast.
I’ve struggled to find any way to corroborate the actual source — I could only unearth a cut-off excerpt of the piece from that 1973 newspaper cutting above, albeit without any mention of Grantland Rice.
A few lines about Oakmont Country Club, attributed to the legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice, and said to have been written in the 1930s:
“As each one disappears below, a niblick in his hand,
And you’ll hear their groans across the course, as putts slide by the hole,
Where none is master of his fate, or captain of his soul.
The bunker’s beckon near and far, the ruts are strong and deep
And more than one who dreamed of par will tear his hair and weep
And more than one who sought a four will curse his wretched fate
As some grim scorer, standing by, is marking down an eight.
And when you stand upon the tee and see the carry there
The best club is a howitzer — and then you say a prayer.”
What are your thoughts on Oakmont Country Club? And who will join some of the game’s all-time greats as an Oakmont US Open winner this week?