Smoother Ride

The golf course at Oakmont Country Club has stood for more than a century as a ruthless, rigorous and unforgiving test, a place of which William C. Fownes, the son of the course’s designer, once said “Let the clumsy, the spineless, the alibi artists stand aside” in response to criticism of the course’s difficulty.

It’s a place for even the sport’s best to flounder at times, a place where cartoonish under-par scores are nothing more than a fantasy. It’s not an easy course to traverse because it wasn’t designed to be.

For many years, the same applied to the area surrounding it. While that kind of setup was an endearing challenge for the world’s top golfers on the course, it made for a maddening logistical inconvenience for the thousands of people trying to get there for high-profile events like the U.S. Open.

In recent years, however, select projects near and around the club — from the construction of new bridges to new parking lots — have combined to alleviate any such problems in advance of the 2016 U.S. Open.

The changes haven’t been widespread or all-encompassing, but, as club officials see it, they will make an important impact.

Perhaps, the most noticeable will be an initiative at the former site of Oakmont East, an 18-hole public course. There, beyond Oakmont’s second green and third fairway, the club brought in bulldozers to flatten the land and create an extra 50 acres that can be used for parking and whatever the USGA deems to be necessary or useful.

Oakmont purchased the land more than a decade ago and, for the 2007 U.S. Open, it used part of the area for parking and several large tents. The work was completed in late 2014.

The additional room has been valuable for a geographically land-locked course that doesn’t possess the same kind of vast acreage other major tournament venues do. For the U.S. Open, that boost will be more apparent.

“It was a game-changer,” said Oakmont director of golf Bob Ford. “The USGA is just ecstatic about it.”

Further away, there’s another change that is not as visible from the course, but it might have a similarly indelible impact.

The 107-year-old Hulton Bridge, which spanned the Allegheny River between Harmar and Oakmont, closed Oct. 5, 2015, and was imploded three months later. In its place stands a new $65.7 million four-lane bridge that provides easier access to Oakmont than its two-lane predecessor.

The new structure, according to Ford, already has provided an apparent difference for anyone trying to get to the club, especially since the fourth lane of it opened this month. The easier access and improved infrastructure could also help Oakmont’s case in playing host to future U.S. Opens.

At the very least, the sometimes-nightmarish bus rides for thousands of spectators across the old, narrow bridge are now a thing of the past as the club and borough look ahead to what they believe will be a more promising future.

“I don’t miss it at all,” USGA president Diana Murphy said of the Hulton Bridge. “I think we’ll be very pleased to know that there won’t be too many people feeling somewhat claustrophobic. So I really do commend everybody that’s been involved in helping us transport and move thousands of people that week.”

Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG