Oakmont Country Club Review

Fownes built Oakmont in a single year on farmland above the Allegheny River with one idea in mind: a badly played shot should be irrevocably lost. There is almost no water, the Pennsylvania Turnpike cuts the property in two, and the course is still rated the most difficult in the country because of two things. The greens are enormous, tilted from back to front and kept faster than any other championship surface, so a putt from above the hole can trickle off the front and gather speed.

And the bunkering is relentless, a hundred and sixty eight of them, including the Church Pews between the third and fourth fairways, a trench the length of a long iron shot with a dozen grassed ridges standing inside it. The club spent the 1990s and 2000s felling thousands of trees planted mid century, restoring the bare look Fownes intended, and Hanse and Wagner tightened the bunkers and green edges before the 2025 U.S. Open.

J.J. Spaun won it at one under, the only player in the field to break par, which makes the point better than any description. Nothing about Oakmont is pretty. It looks like what it is, a private Pittsburgh club beside a motorway, and it takes no visitors. As a test of golf it has no equal in America.