Oakmont Country Club: 8 Things To Know About The 2025 US Open Venue

Oakmont Country Club is hosting its 10th US Open in 2025, having done so for the first time in 1927. The Country Club itself was opened in 1903 and has since gone on to watch over one of the most famous golf courses anywhere in the United States.

The 7,431-yard par-71 was designed by Henry Fownes - the architect's only project - and took around a year to complete via 150 men and roughly 20 mule teams, who transformed old farmland into a golf course.

Oakmont's key characteristic is its large, undulating and lightning-fast greens. Sam Snead once said that he tried to mark his ball on one of Oakmont's greens but the coin slid off.

While the Pennsylvania layout is immensely difficult and has turned out several over-par winners of the US Open previously, low scores have also been produced from time to time as well - such as Johnny Miller's course record 63 (-8) on his way to winning in 1973.

Below, we've listed a number of other facts you might not have known about the iconic US Open layout.

National Historic Landmark

Oakmont Country Club was designated as a National Historic Landmark on June 30, 1987. Only around 3% of 90,000 buildings, districts, objects, sites or structures listed on the country's National Register of Historic Places are recognized as NHL "for their outstanding historical significance" by the United States government.

Upon being confirmed as an NHL, the 'statement of significance' regarding Oakmont read: "Noted for its nationally significant golf course, this is the oldest top-ranked course in the United States. Its original layout is virtually intact and still in use for club and tournament play.

"Generally considered to be among the most difficult golf courses in the world, it has hosted 19 major national championships and seven US Opens, with two more scheduled - the U.S. Open in 2007 and the U.S. Women's Open in 2010. Restoration of the course back to its original design is continuing and nearing completion."

Pennsylvania Turnpike Highway

The Pennsylvania Turnpike separates a total of seven holes (2–8) at Oakmont from the rest of the course, with players, caddies and fans needing to cross a bridge to reach the other side of the highway.

All but the eighth green at Oakmont can be classed as original - only the aforementioned putting surface was moved in the late 1940s when the road was built right through the heart of the course.

Brutal Course Rating

Oakmont might not be the toughest course in the United States of America, but it's not far off. With a Course Rating of 77.5 and a Slope Rating of 150 out of 155, there are fewer than 20 other layouts in the country (which has around 16,000) deemed to be tougher.

The front nine is marginally harder than the back, with the official USGA Course Rating And Slope Database listing the front nine as having a 153 Slope Rating and the back offering up a much more friendly 147... For context, a male golfer with a handicap of 9.9 would be given 21 strokes off the Championship tees.

Newspaper Column Caused Significant Changes

Henry C. Fownes only built one golf course, but it was an extremely good one. The steel businessman created Oakmont to satisfy his own desires of playing a difficult yet enjoyable links layout. Instantly a classic, Oakmont remained largely how it had been designed until the 1960s, when a newspaper columnist declared the course to be ugly and barren.

The board at the time were quite upset by this accusation so set about planting hundreds of trees across the site in order to combat that. From the 60s to the early 90s, Oakmont was unrecognizable compared to its former self, so the board in 1994 decided they would restore Oakmont to its former glory and took up 99% of the trees in a flash.

Not only did it make aesthetic sense, but practically it worked well, too. So many of the trees had become huge and were sucking up too much water and blocking too much sunlight - thus making maintenance on the actual golf course too difficult. For 2025, Oakmont looks similar to 100 years earlier, just how Fownes had intended.

Church Pews Bunkers

The fact here isn't that one of golf's most famous bunkers exists at Oakmont - you are likely to have already known that. It's that while there is now just one long and easily-recognizable sand trap, it used to be made up of eight separate ones between the third and fourth holes.

The move from eight to one was made in the 1920s, later followed by the broadening and lengthening of the bunker behemoth in 2005. It is now over 100 yards long, 18 yards wide at its narrowest point and 43 yards wide at the base. There are also 12 three-foot grass banks littered along it, making you ask the spirits for some divine intervention if your golf ball lands somewhere in the vicinity.

20 Major Championships

Since opening in 1903, there have been 20 Major championships contested at Oakmont Country Club. Nine US Open Championships, six US Amateurs, three PGA Championships and two US Women's Opens.

The first one was the 1919 US Amateur, won by Davidson Herron, while the maiden US Open was not held here until 1927. Tommy Armour triumphed over Harry Cooper on that occasion, winning in a playoff after the pair both posted 13-over - the first of three times to date that the US Open was won with an over-par score.

The Source Of Inspiration For The Stimpmeter

Long known for their rapid green speed, Oakmont was ultimately the source of inspiration for an invention which is now common practice in the modern game - the stimpmeter.

Said device came about after a keen amateur golfer, Edward Stimpson attended the 1935 US Open and watched Gene Sarazen putt off a particularly zippy green and into a bunker.

The former Harvard collegiate golfer felt greens were becoming so fast they could be unfair to the players, so he went away and devised a very basic wooden track with a notch for a golf ball to be held at and a consistent angle which would allow for accurate testing.

Stimpson took it to the USGA and presented his idea, but the governing body was in no particular hurry to use it, waiting until 1976 to use the contraption in a national championship for the first time. It measured the greens at Atlanta Athletic Club as seven, potentially less than half what they might be at Oakmont in 2025...

A Famous Arnold Palmer Quote

There have been a number of famous quotes in relation to Oakmont Country Club and its greens over the years, from Rocco Mediate's quip that they are "almost impossible" to Lee Trevino's claim that he knew every time he two-putted at Oakmont, he was passing somebody on the leaderboard.

But it was arguably Arnold Palmer - a legend of the game who grew up right near Oakmont - who best summed up the severity of the putting surfaces at the Pennsylvania layout when he said: "You can hit 72 greens [in regulation] in the Open at Oakmont and not come close to winning."

Unfortunately for the seven-time Major champion, he knew that fact all too well. Palmer was desperate to win a pro event at Oakmont and especially the US Open, but his career would end without managing it. The closest he came was a victory at the 1949 West Penn Amateur, with Palmer's sole US Open success arriving via a two-stroke margin over some amateur called Jack Nicklaus at Cherry Hills in 1960.