- Lives
- Traverse City, MI
- Handicap
- 5-9
- Age
- 55-64
- Skill
- Advanced
- Plays
- Once a week
About
I've played all around the world but mostly while traveling and never on a regular schedule, so my game is somewhat erratic. I used to have a great short game, and I've always favored courses that had short game interest, because that's a skill that's not beyond the physical capacity of any golfer to excel at. I hate looking for golf balls in trees or thick rough; I love to play fast and think the last thing any golfer needs are obstacles which impede them from making forward progress.
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Reviews
Oakmont Country Club
Played On 09/30/2015It's All About The Greens
I've been to Oakmont several times over the years to study what makes it so great. It's a fairly broad, hilly site that few would have identified immediately as a great site for golf, but all the elements of what makes the course great were there -- the starkness of the landscape, the tough soils that required a network of drainage-ditch hazards to tame, and the always-sloping topography.
They've made fewer changes to Oakmont for the upcoming U.S. Open than at any course to host the championship in the past 25 years. The reason it has stood the time as a test of golf so well is that it has numerous greens that fall away from the line of play [toward the back of the green]. Even if you're hitting an 8-iron to the green today, instead of a long iron or fairway wood back in the day, you can rarely count on it to stop where it lands ... you have to allow for the bounce and roll-out, and that makes it very difficult to make birdies at the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 10th, 12th, and 15th. Combine that with the heavily contoured greens and the wicked green speeds, and it's a course where you are never comfortable over a golf shot. Every single shot can get you in trouble ... even the tap-ins.
I'm not a good enough golfer to want to play a course like this every day, and that's why it doesn't get a 10 on The Doak Scale. But it's a solid 9, because there is no place else quite like it. Everyone should take the chance to play Oakmont if it comes their way.
