Opinion & Analysis
The redesigned holes at Oakmont that are new for the 2025 U.S. Open
The championship history of Oakmont Country Club is legendary and needs no introduction. But along with that major championship legacy, a significant part of its history relates to the changes made to the golf course since opening for play in 1904. The most recent entry to that history was penned by Gil Hanse in 2023 who was tasked by the Club with two major objectives: restore the golf course to how it played prior to the 1950s, while ensuring it would continue to challenge the best players in the world.
In pursuit of the Club’s objectives, Gil Hanse focused on three key areas for improvement: bunker adjustments, defined and expanded landing areas, and above-ground features. The post-renovation results I observed were visually familiar yet different from the previous times I saw the course. While in general the playing corridors were expanded, somehow, the visual intimidation expanded with them. This becomes quickly apparent standing on the second tee. The second hole has always provided a choice off the tee between laying back short or driving the ball as close to the green as possible. However, the flurry of six smaller bunkers that once flanked the right side of this fairway has been consolidated into three larger bunkers, the first of which was pushed further left out into the fairway to create a distinct elbow in the landing area. While the result of this minor change was an increase in fairway size, visually the layup shot off the tee no longer looks as inviting to hit as it did before.
As a result of the changes, taking on the additional risk of pushing driver as far up the right side as possible seems in some ways more inviting than the layup. Properly executed, the elevated green opens to pitch shots from the right-hand side. I feel there are many similarities between this hole and the Road Hole at St. Andrews, with the only difference being the former’s shorter yardage. Like the Road Hole, a drive up the right side of the second hole has to carry hazards and challenge out of bounds. Hitting up the left side is safer but leads to a more difficult, if not impossible, approach to any pin left of center. Playing your ball short right on the green is similarly as safe as doing the same at the Road Hole, and while there is no road long, should a player find their ball over this green they will not be able to recover with less than bogey. While this hole appears very early in the round its impact on the championship will be significant.
Looking up to the second green from the fairway bunkers on the right
Changes made to the iconic third hole have made one of the hardest holes on the course even harder. Similar to the second hole, the bunkers on the right side were expanded and pushed further left into the fairway. This gives the third hole’s fairway added shape and a higher level of perceived visual difficulty to hit. The large closely mown area over the back of the green has been reduced, but the diabolic front left approach to the hole is as closely mown as ever and poorly played shots can travel very far back down the rise to the green. In the first effort we see to prevent the kind of cross-country golf that was on display during the 2021 U.S. Amateur, a new back tee was added behind the 2nd green, not only creating a longer carry over the Church Pews to the 4th fairway but also a more difficult angle from which to do so thanks to having to navigate the only remaining trees on the interior of the golf course.
The par 5 fourth hole, over 600 yards from the Championship tees, now features an expanded fairway landing area. What this change does provide is a visually inviting target line over the first cluster of fairway bunkers on the right, baiting the bold to bite off as much as they dare to chew between them and the opposite side of the Church Pews. The penalty for a miss in either direction here results in not only the elimination of any possibility of reaching the green in two but also any opportunity to advance the ball a measurable yardage for the second shot. Even if you don’t find trouble, the layup shot has further consequences thanks to the addition of a diagonal cross bunker that nearly bisects the entire fairway between 175 and 200 yards from the center of the green. For those who safely find the fairway off the tee and attempt to reach in two, that challenge has been made increasingly more difficult thanks to Hanse’s first use of above-ground features in the form of large mounds on the right that obscure any view of the green. Additional bunkers have been added to what was already a large constellation of traps on the approach to the green.
Plenty of land movement on the third hole
The 487-yard par four seventh hole saw significant changes made to its fairway landing area. Previously a narrow fairway pinched by fairway bunkers, Hanse expanded the landing area short of the cross bunkers on the right as well as over them. Players who position their tee shots short of this bunker complex will have a blind view of the approach to the green. Those who can successfully carry the cross bunkers and find the fairway will have a clear approach to the green with a wedge in hand. Regardless of the route taken, the expanded fairway has restored an element of strategy to the hole that was lost to time.
For as long as the eighth hole plays, it has had a longer history of complaints. While the yardage has been well documented and may appear unfair on the scorecard, what often isn’t reported is the fact that this hole plays downhill with contours moving everything away from the tee towards the green. As a result, players have the option of playing low shots that run up onto the green in addition to trying to reach the green by air. A new cross bunker scrapes across the approach and has brought in a new factor of difficulty for those players who decide to take the route by land. The relatively flat nature of this green means that any player that safely finds short grass, whether the green or fairway, should have a relatively straightforward second shot to set up a chance at par. Understand that this is not a birdie hole. It is instead a call back to a time when par and a half-holes were the norm.
The changes on the 10th were specifically aimed at addressing championship play. A drainage area on the left side of the fairway some 340 yards from the tee was cut and extended across the fairway to the right side of the hole. Playing significantly downhill and with the prevailing wind, this new hazard presents players with a new way to strategize about how to play this hole. The options include trying to fly the hazard, chancing a good bounce short and then over it, or laying back short. Either way, the second shot on 10 is still one of the most thrilling on the course to a green that slopes significantly away and to its back left corner. It is very difficult to stop approach shots on this green, and great care must be taken for club selection, ball flight, and landing area to successfully do so.
The ninth hole plays significantly uphill with a sea of thick rough
A new tee further back and to the right on 11 was added to remove the option of playing up the 10th hole. The expanded fairway on 11 is quite remarkable looking and intimidating all at the same time; a hogs back that visually suggests that everything will run left or right away from the center of it. If it hasn’t been obvious to this point, this hole provides a great reminder of how much Oakmont’s land yaws and rolls like waves on the sea. After climbing up the hill on 11, players play back down the hill on the 12. It’s one of the great par fives in the world: a 660-yard par 5 that runs downhill with a fairway that slopes hard from left to right and a green that runs significantly away and to the back right. Hitting the fairway here creates a great opportunity for players to give it everything they’ve got with a fairway wood to reach the green in two. What makes this hole even more fun is that the contours of the approach and the conditioning allows players to use the ground to their advantage to access the green.
The shortest hole on the course, the 13th hits above its weight with the dangers it presents. Note the location of the player’s ball up against the bunker face on the left
New hole locations and added green contours on the 13th have made the shortest hole on the course much more interesting and strategic. Other than the second hole, being above the hole on 13 is the next worst place to be on the course. Hanse removed soil buildup around the edges of this green and now the right side of the green flows down into a bunker. The new back right-hole location here might be the hardest pin position on the entire golf course. The final most obvious change can be found on 17, where a large cluster of trees was removed on the right and the bunker complex was expanded on the left. This is a spectacular-looking hole from the tee now, an infinity hole that just makes it look like you’re hitting into the sky. The land’s movement obscures the perils that await a poorly played shot, and it’s best for the player to avoid the right side at all costs. The dangers that lurk and have to be navigated from that position have changed the course of golf history.
For first timers, it would seem the only target on the 17th is the sky
Another significant and less obvious change made was to the design of nearly every single bunker on the golf course, not just in their aforementioned sizes and locations. Whereas most of these bunkers previously had upslopes on their faces, now steep grass faces cascade into their flat sandy bottoms. This results in two penalties for the player, the first being the lack of upslope to help elevate sand shots. The second and more severe penalty manifests itself in the form of balls now rolling across the bottom of these traps and nestling right up against where their sand meets the grass. In many spots, these lies will create true one-shot penalties.
Steep grass faces with flat sandy bottoms…the “Big Mouth” bunker on 17 illustrates the difficulty of the reprofiled hazards.
Everyone involved in the decision to make these adjustments took a massive risk, but these adjustments have vastly improved how the golf course plays for members, guests, and professionals. The changes have maintained Oakmont’s core ethos of difficulty, and even with the expanded fairways and greens quite possibly have enhanced it. Oakmont is a world-class course with a world-class maintenance crew, a world-class staff, and a world-class membership. I’m thankful for having had the chance to experience it all firsthand, and I look forward to seeing this course present itself in the national spotlight for generations to come.
The all-American 505 yard par-4 finisher with Oakmont’s iconic clubhouse in the background.
Author: Vincent Fioravanti
GolfWRX Username: @italianstallion
Website: https://thefairwayreview.weebly.com
As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!
Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.
Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.
One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?
Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.
Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.
Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”
For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…
Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.
Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…
That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.
Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.
@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic
Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!
Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.
View this post on Instagram
“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.
That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.
As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.
I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.
One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.
The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.
If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.
Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.
As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.
It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.
David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.
In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:
“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Eventually, though, something shifts.
We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.
Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.
Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.
Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.
So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.
I see someone evolving.
He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.
It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.
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