The U.S. Open Golf Championship is being held this week at the famed Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is most known for its fast greens and distinctive series of sand bunkers called the Church Pews located between the two parallel fairways of the third and fourth holes. (I don’t recall ever visiting that heretical church)!
Oakmont C.C. has now hosted fifteen major championships: twelve U.S. Opens, more than any other golf course, and three PGA Championships. I played there and made the 36-hole cut in the 1973 U.S. Open that Johnny Miller won and the 1978 PGA Championship that John Mahaffey won.
Dustin Johnson, at four under par, has a one-shot lead on the field after 36 holes, the half-way point of the tournament. He has been knocking on the door to win his first major. Dustin has eleven top-ten finishes in the four majors. He’s a crowd favorite because of his cowboy, gunslinger look and walk, but mostly due to the fact that he hits the ball so far and has good control of it.
There are several top PGA Tour players who are in the hunt. Johnson, Sergio Garcia at 2-under par, and Lee Westwood at 1-under par have been vying for some time to win their first major. But there are several very good players at even par, including one of my favorites for a U.S. Open, Zack Johnson, Adam Scott, and Louis Oosthuizen. Scott and Oosthuizen have absolutely perfect golf swings that make then such a contender on a tough golf course like Oakmont.
The U.S. Open was always my favorite tournament. I competed in twelve of them and made the 36-hole cut in eight. My best chance to win was the 1972 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in the beautiful Monterey Peninsula in California. I was leading the tournament during the the last round but finished sixth to Jack Nicklaus after I three-putted from close range (six feet and twenty feet) and made an 8.
This should be another interesting major golf championship to watch this weekend. The greens at Oakmont are very fast with many slopes. Dustin Johnson lost the U.S. Open last year to Jordan Spieth when Johnson three-putted from only about fifteen feet on a very fast, downhill putt. It certainly was drama at its best when Dustin blasted a drive and a five iron to have that eagle putt for a win on the last hole, a par five. But nobody suspected he would three-putt to lose. Sometimes golf tournaments are not really won, but lost.
Dustin has the game to run away from the field this weekend and thus redeem himself from last year. But he’s been here before in majors and bungled it, such as the PGA Championship at Whistling Straights where he inadvertently grounded his club the last round in what he didn’t know was a rogue fairway sand bunker that fans had been walking and standing in. Then there was the big mess-up at Pebble Beach on the second hole beside the green the last round of the U.S. Open. Both of these tournaments he had the lead during the last round. I think a lot of people are pulling for Dustin Johnson to finally break through and win this week.
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