After Rees Jones’ tweaks for 2008 PGA, Oakland Hills never looked better
Oakland
Hills, host to next summer’s PGA Championship, is closing in on its
100th birthday and never, since it opened in 1916, has it looked better.
I drive by the suburban Detroit course almost weekly, but hadn’t driven
in and played there in the three years since the United States Ryder
Cup team went down to its worst defeat. The course sparkled then under
cloudless blue skies, but it was nothing to what it is now thanks to
Rees Jones, who may be doing some of the same magic at Cog Hill.
Oakland Hills has a rich pedigree – designed by Donald Ross, then
modernized for the 1951 United States Open by Robert Trent Jones, Rees’
father, tweaked a bit by Arthur Hills and then, after the Ryder Cup,
got an incredible “spa” treatment by Jones, the “Open Doctor” who
besides his own superb courses has “treated” many U.S. Open courses
including next year’s Open site at Torrey Pines.
Thanks to a tree removal effort by Rees Jones, the clubhouse at Oakland Hills CC can be seen from all over the course. The trees weren’t in the original Donald Ross design; they were added by members over the years. (Photograph by Montana Pritchard/The PGA of America)
So the world’s best golfers will play two of their major championships
on courses that Jones has not only muscled up, but beautified as well.
No one has an exact count, but Jones removed many trees. The course had
few trees on it when Ross designed it, but over the years, club members
planted a lot of trees. Now it has an open, airy look again. The day I
played, a perfect fall day with pure blue sky and leaves on the
remaining trees turning colors, the huge white clubhouse could be seen
from many holes on the course.
Like his father, who had watched the post-World War II players fly
their tee shots over bunkers that were relics of the 1920s and 1930s,
Rees added big sand pits beyond the ones the pros flew during the Ryder
Cup.
Like his father, he enlarged and drastically deepened greenside
bunkers. On the dogleg par-4 15th hole, which had one bunker in the
center of the fairway where it turned left, there now are three bunkers.
The par-4 seventh was a nothing hole that never seemed right, although
Rees’ father tinkered with it and even flattened the putting surface,
which was strange at Oakland Hills, where its best feature are its
greens with more movement than a hula dancer. Rees did not touch the
greens.
Rees drained the small pond leading to the right side of the green, dug
deep for dirt to build a new elevated tee to make it a 449-yard hole
and greatly expanded the water. Even more expanded is the lake on the
par-4 16th, Oakland Hills’ signature hole where Gary Player flew a
9-iron shot over willow trees to within four feet of the pin for a
birdie that clinched the 1972 PGA Championship.
Great players win on great courses and Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and
Jack Nicklaus have won at Oakland Hills, as well as two-time U.S. Open
champions Andy North and Ralph Guldahl, PGA and Open champion David
Graham, and World Golf Hall of Famer Gene Littler.
The willow trees are gone and the hole has a clean, green look… and a
greatly enlarged lake that curls around the back of the green.
On the day after the Buick Open this year Oakland Hills hosted the
American qualifier for the British Open and many of the Buick players
showed up, including J.B. Holmes and Tom Pernice.
Holmes hit one of his monster drives on the hole, leaving only a wedge
to the green. Then he turned into Kevin Costner in “Tin Cup.” Splash.
Splash. Splash. Three water balls. He putted out for a 10 and threw
that ball into the water, too.
A woman spectator said “Eleven.”
“No, lady, Holmes said. “Ten.”
He didn’t make the flight to Carnoustie.
Neither did Pernice, who complained that Jones shouldn’t have put so
many humps into the 10th fairway which slants drastically from left
downhill to the right.
Sorry, Tom. The glaciers did that a few thousand years ago.
But Jones did put a bunker down at the right side of the landing zone,
which might be just a little too devilish and don’t blame the Glacier
Age.
Some players complained the course was too hard. Oakland Hills members,
a bit touchy after Billy Haas and Ricky Barnes torched the course in
the 2002 U.S. Amateur, smiled. Music to their ears.
In order to get 300 more yards on the course, Jones put some tees so
far back that three of them are just about in backyards and if anyone
drops a pan in one of those houses it will be heard on the tee.
Ted Woehrle, who left the superintendent position at Beverly Country
Club [Chicago] for Oakland Hills and served there for 24 years, returned for a
look this summer at the course he prepared for two PGA Championships,
U.S. Open and two U.S. Senior Opens.
“It’s as nice as it can be. It’s gorgeous. They’re the most elaborate changes I’ve seen there. I love it,” Woehrle said.
Oakland Hills is ready for another closeup. And it’s never looked better.
RYDER vs. PRESIDENTS Several times during the American victory
at Montreal, the TV heads wondered why the Yanks didn’t play that way
in the Ryder Cup.
It’s a simple answer: The core group of the European Ryder Cup team is
from Great Britain and Ireland. Putting it simply again, they hate us.
In contrast, the International team in the Presidents Cup, doesn’t have
a core group and they like us, or at least don’t have any great
animosity.
They’re from all over the world, Korea, Argentina, South Africa,
Australia, Fiji and Canada. And now they live in the United States, in
Florida, Texas, Utah and Arizona.
On paper, the U.S. sends far superior teams to the first tee than the
Europeans. The Euros had only one winner of a major championship on
their recent teams – Jose Maria Olazabal, winner of two Masters. The
American team at the last Ryder Cup had four winners of majors, Tiger
Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk and David Toms. But the U.S. got only
four points out of their stars in the 18½ to 9½ pasting.
The Euros got 15½ points from the singles and games in which at least one of the partners was from GB&I.
Great Britain and Ireland long have had an inferiority complex when it
comes to America. They resent the huge pots of the American tour. They
resent the fine golf courses and practice facilities. Or maybe it’s
jealousy. They feel they play a finer game despite more difficult
conditions, hop-scotching all over Europe to courses that aren’t as
finely prepared, and now, even to Dubai and Qatar for European Tour
events while Americans turn their noses up at traveling overseas when
they can stay at home, be comfortable, and win so much more money.
And the PGA Tour is the “home” tour for almost all of the Presidents Cup’s Internationals.
All that comes together at the Ryder Cup when the Euros relish the role
of Underdog beating up on Uncle Sam. And there’s none of that in the
Presidents Cup. The Internationals want to win, of course, but it’s a
sports event to them. It isn’t for Queen and Country. The
Internationals don’t show up with a recognizable team flag.
Meanwhile, the Americans have been freezing up ever since GB&I
enlisted strong players from Spain and Sweden and occasionally Germany,
Italy and Denmark.
PREZ BUT NO PRESS PGA
Tour Commissioner Tom Finchem came up with the Presidents Cup as the
Tour’s answer to the four major championships and Ryder Cup, none of
which is owned by the Tour. But it doesn’t come close to the Ryder cup
in coverage. Not even The New York Times staffed the Presidents Cup and
gave the first day’s play only two paragraphs in Sports Briefing.
The event was buried by NCAA football’s Upset Saturday, the NFL, the
close of baseball’s regular schedule, the opening of the National
Hockey League season, and NBA training camps.
Woody Austin’s plunge into the pond on the 14th hole Friday was the
Cup’s TV highlight and then Aquaman’s goggles when he arrived at the
14th on Sunday. At 43, Austin gave the American team a jolt of energy
and fun that’s been lacking on Ryder Cup teams and I hope he makes the
Valhalla team next year. I feel John Daly should have been a Ryder
Cupper after he won his second major, the British Open on the Old
Course, but he was too much wild man for our stiff upper-lipped team.
Nice for Phil Mickelson to find a relatively straight-and-narrow game
and win matches to break his 0-for-9 streak in Ryder and Presidents
Cups.
And, please, get rid of that stuffy Foursomes and Four-Balls
terminology. No one knows what they are. That’s Olde English. Over here
it’s Alternate Shot and Best-Ball.
