Why did players almost boycott an open US in Oakmont

In that of next week We openYou will see the Oakmont Country Club bunkers meticulously, perfectly and sparkling with wonderful white sand.

But it was not always the case.

In fact, the very difficult course of the championship was even more crazy decades ago, and the bunkers were especially the reason why players almost boycotted an open US there.

Golf recently visited Oakmont Historical Club with David Moore, Curator of Oakmont collections, and Moore took us behind the scenes and Into the closet roomsRoom Grill, Swat Room, Library and more while also explaining the importance of dozens of historical parts on the screen or walls. (You can watch the full video tour here.))

One of those exhibition was on the stairs outside the living room, and dedicated to the original Oakmont bunkers.

Oakmont ‘wild’ bunkers ‘wild’ furrowed

“One of the things that has been lost in history here in Oakmont is the story of wild bunkers,” Moore said. “When the course was first established, the sand bunkers were not your prototype golf sand that you are used to today. The original bunkers here were filled with river sand from the nearby alienyny river. It was thick, it was full of pebbles, and the way they really found it to find a penalty Brazdat. ”

According to Moore, the club used heavy steel strips-weighing about 50 pounds each with four inches to grab the bunker perpendicular to the hole and create deep grooves. The balls would be placed in those ridges and, with the sand tumulus before and after the ball, the only way to make clean contact would be to go aside.

So they wanted Oakmont designer Henry Fowns and his son, William Fowns, wanted the players to be penalized. The golf course had no water, so the bunkers had to be a real penalty.

“A wrong blow was an irreversibly lost shot,” Moore said. “So if you found the bunker, what they wanted to do was go out.”

Although if you know anything about pro -day players, you know they don’t like being humiliated. The same can be said for the past.

“(Bunkers) There was such a controversy that in 1953 the players actually threatened to boycott the US Open until there was a deal for the grooves to be extracted from the Fairway bunkers but remain around the Greenside bunkers,” Moore said. “Fowns believed in a real Darwinian test of man against the golf course.”

Geoff Shackelford’s Quadrilateral Recently reappeared the theme of Oakmont wild bunkers, even finding older fragments of newspapers.

“When the WC Fowns had those 240 hijacked bunkers, so they left furry one and a half deep, he eliminated one of the best shots in Golf – recovery from a bunker,” said Olin Dutra, the US OPEN champion, told the Associated Press before the ’53 open ‘.