COVERAGE: USGA Gushes Over Open’s Return to ‘Cathedral’ of Oakmont

OAKMONT, Pa. — When the United States Golf Association announced during the 2021 U.S. Amateur that Oakmont Country Club would serve as an ‘anchor site’ for decades’ worth of future national championships, it was an expression of mutual respect between governing body and golf course.

As the USGA returns to the Brute on Hulton Road for the first time since that announcement, it’s clear we might have to upgrade that partnership to a full-on love affair.

“When you fit, you can feel it,” USGA President Fred Perpall told an assembled media day crowd Tuesday morning. “The U.S. Open and the USGA just fits so well at Oakmont.”

“When you fit, you can feel it. The @usopengolf and the @USGA fit at Oakmont.”

USGA President Fred Perpall welcomes assembled reporters and dignitaries to the property for media day.

(Video: @MikeDarnay for @pghgolfnow) pic.twitter.com/0uu3f5ErrP

— Matt Gajtka (GITE-kah) (@MattGajtka) May 6, 2025

If you ask the average golf fan what comes to mind when thinking about Oakmont, it’s the difficulty of the course. That’s a tradition that dates back more than a hundred years to the origin of the layout, when founder Henry Fownes set out to design a hilltop haven that could adequately challenge the skills he and his sons had developed.

To this day, in the Oakmont pro shop, you can buy a ball marker emblazoned with the following saying attributed to Fownes: Let the clumsy, the artless, the alibi-maker stand aside. A shot poorly played should be a shot irrevocably lost.

Now that’s the kind of rhetoric that gets any U.S. Open lover’s attention. And needless to say there are plenty of those hardy souls within the Oakmont membership.

“Our members have three requests,” said club president John Lynch, his tongue at least partially in cheek. “One, they want that rough at five-plus inches. Two, please use some of those hole locations (made possible by) the new restoration. Three, please do everything in your power to have that winning score over par.”

USGA Chief Championships Officer John Bodenhamer demurred a bit on that last point, saying that the old even-par-or-worse standard “isn’t our metric anymore” and that the USGA “has got to be careful” with the notorious Oakmont green speeds and potentially unfair hole locations.

But lest we think the USGA is going a little soft …

“You give us firm and fast conditions and we’ll work on that” over-par winning score, Bodenhamer said.

Clearly the specter of the 7,300-yard, par-70 test is a large part of what makes Oakmont and the Open such a natural match. But Bodenhamer and company spent much of their media day presentation playing up the romance of the whole thing.

Beyond a little of the expected church-pew schmaltz, Bodenhamer emphasized the USGA’s desire to return to “cathedrals” of the sport, a cohort of which Oakmont is a prominent member — as evidenced by its nine previous U.S. Opens and several other national championships.

“We go to America’s greatest venues,” Bodenhamer said. “It matters where the pros win their championships.”

Oakmont’s track record is unmistakably burnished by the caliber of players who have won here, from Hogan and Nicklaus, to Miller, Els and Johnson. However, the USGA’s opening message honed in on the “democratic” aspects of the championship, from the record 10,000-plus entries this year to the fact that roughly half the spots in the tournament are reserved for qualifiers.

“You earn your way in,” Bodenhamer said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what clubs are in your bag, the shape of your swing or the color of your skin. If you can get your golf ball in the hole, you can play in the US Open or any of our championships.”

“You earn your way in. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what clubs are in your bag, the shape of your swing or the color of your skin. If you can get your golf ball in the hole, you can play in the US Open.” – @USGA Chief Championships Officer John Bodenhamer@pghgolfnow pic.twitter.com/JLjDwcg2vA

— Matt Gajtka (GITE-kah) (@MattGajtka) May 6, 2025

Or, as USGA Managing Director Jeff Hall put it: “This is the major for dreamers.”

The USGA is trying to thread an interesting needle here. On the one side you have the prestige of Oakmont, with its exclusive membership, pristine conditions and pantheon of past champions. On the other side, you have the everyman aspect of the Open, a zeitgeist Bryson DeChambeau and his legion of rowdy followers tapped into last June at Pinehurst.

Can you have it both ways, drawing from both sides to attract the largest amount of public interest? The powers-that-be at one of the sport’s primary governing bodies seem to think so, as Oakmont prepares to host its 10th U.S. Open, with at least three more guaranteed over the next quarter-century.

Fun fact: This will be the 94th time the state of Pennsylvania hosts a USGA national championship, with Oakmont and Philadelphia’s Merion carrying much of that load. Maybe this really is the Open’s spiritual home, a la St Andrews.

We’ll leave that for debate, but there seems to be nowhere else the USGA would rather be for its annual summer spectacular.

“That’s why the legacy of lifting that trophy is so powerful,” said USGA CEO Mike Whan. “It’s go time.”