{"id":13,"date":"2016-06-12T00:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-12T04:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen\/?p=13"},"modified":"2016-06-13T12:39:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T16:39:37","slug":"conquering-oakmont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/2016\/06\/12\/conquering-oakmont\/","title":{"rendered":"Conquering Oakmont"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only one club in America has staged more major championships than Oakmont Country Club, and that\u2019s Augusta National home of the Masters.<\/p>\n

Yet, from the time Oakmont welcomed its first major championship in 1922 and the Masters began in 1934, only five players in history have the unique distinction of winning a major at Augusta National and Oakmont. And they are some of the greatest names in golf.<\/p>\n

Ben Hogan. Jack Nicklaus. Sam Snead. Gene Sarazen.<\/p>\n

Sarazen (1922) and Snead (1951) won PGA Championships at Oakmont. Hogan (1953) and Nicklaus (1962) won a U.S. Open there. But there is one more player on that list, and an unlikely one at that.<\/p>\n

Angel Cabrera.<\/p>\n

Cabrera won the U.S. Open the last time it was held at Oakmont in 2007 and followed that two years later with a victory in the 2009 Masters. Only seven players who are in the field this week have a chance to add a U.S. Open trophy from Oakmont to their green jacket and join that club \u2014 Phil Mickelson, Jordan Spieth, Bubba Watson, Danny Willett, Adam Scott, Zach Johnson and Charl Schwartzel.<\/p>\n

\"2007<\/a>
2007 final-round scorecards for Angels Cabrera, Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk. (Ben Howard\/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOakmont is the toughest U.S. Open venue there is,\u201d said past champion Johnny Miller, who won the 1973 U.S. Open with a final-round 63 that is generally regarded as the greatest round in golf history. \u201cIt\u2019s all about the setup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cabrera became the first player from Argentina to win the U.S. Open and the first to win a major since Roberto De Vicenzo won the British Open in 1967. He did it with a final-round 69 that gave him a 72-hole total of 5-over 285, good for a one-shot victory over Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk.<\/p>\n

And he did that by making five birdies in the final round and overpowering Oakmont with his length. Cabrera hit drives of 379 yards at the par-5 12th and 346 yards at No. 18. He hit a pitching wedge to 18, a 52-degree sand wedge to the 477-yard ninth and 9-iron to the 500-yard 15th, the latter setting up a birdie.<\/p>\n

\"Angel<\/a>
Angel Cabrera kisses the trophy after winning the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club. (Peter Diana\/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Known as \u201cEl Pato,\u201d which is Spanish for \u201cThe Duck,\u201d Cabrera looked the part on the final day when he was the only player to shoot a sub-par score. Despite furiously dragging on cigarettes as he stomped down the fairway, Cabrera looked calm on the outside while his nerves churned feverishly on the inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a perfectionist, and sometimes a missed shot bothers him more than it should,\u201d Charlie Epps, Cabrera\u2019s swing coach, said in an interview on PGA.com. \u201cHe has a hard time letting go of a bad shot and bouncing back. I told him a couple months ago, I said, \u2018Angel, you\u2019re letting things get to you too much. Your anger is hurting you.\u2019 He said, \u2018Listen, I won two majors with this attitude.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Yeah, but you could have won eight more.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Said Cabrera, after winning the Open: \u201cThere are some players that have psychologists. I smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, even in this age of power golf, where 23 players average over 300 yards in driving distance on the PGA Tour, length is not the key to winning at Oakmont. Putting is. At least, that\u2019s the opinion of three of the four players who won the U.S. Open at Oakmont before Cabrera.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutting is always the key,\u201d said Nicklaus, who won the Open, his first victory as a pro, in 1960 in an epic playoff with Arnold Palmer. \u201cThe difficulty about Oakmont is it\u2019s really impossible to put the ball below the pin. You have so many things that run away from you, and, if you let it run away from you to get it below the pin, you\u2019re running off the green all day long. You\u2019re not hitting the ball below the pin. You\u2019ve got to use the slope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicklaus had only one three-putt in five days at Oakmont in 1960, and it came on the first hole in the final round when a helicopter was flying overhead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t leave where we were,\u201d Nicklaus recalled. \u201cUsually, I wait until the helicopter leaves, but it wouldn\u2019t. My mind went right back to Cherry Hills two years earlier, I\u2019m playing the last round with Ben Hogan, on the fourth green, a helicopter is doing the same thing and I three-putted the darn green. My mind just went right back to it, and I three-putted the green.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller was so precise with his shot-making in 1973 that he hit all 18 greens in regulation and left only one putt \u2014 at No. 12, where the green slopes maddeningly from front to back \u2014 above the hole. He began the final round six shots from the lead and with 11 players in front of him, but he birdied the first four holes and put together a round that was so frighteningly impressive it\u2019s almost astonishing he didn\u2019t shoot lower than the course-record 63.<\/p>\n

Consider: Miller had a 90-foot sand shot at No. 4 hang on the edge for what would have been an eagle, lipped out a 12-foot birdie at No. 17 and a had a birdie putt at the 72nd hole go halfway down in the cup and slide right back out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the secret to that round \u2014 putting uphill all the time,\u201d Miller said last week at the Memorial. \u201cNumber 10 is the craziest green in the world. That 10th green, man, that thing is devious. So is No. 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Ernie Els won in 1994, he needed 20 holes on an extra day to defeat Colin Montgomerie and Loren Roberts in a Monday playoff. He also needed a couple favorable rulings \u2014 including an incorrect one \u2014 on the final day of regulation from Dr. Trey Holland, chairman of the USGA\u2019s rules committee. But despite an errant driver that forced him to chop shots from the rough \u2014 he hit only seven fairways Sunday \u2014 Els survived because of his putting. Curiously, Els said he thought he led the field in putting that week, but the reality is his two playoff combatants \u00ad\u2014 Montgomery (26.8) and Roberts (27.8) \u2014 finished Nos. 1 and 3, respectively, for the week in average putts per round.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no modern machinery that went into building those greens,\u201d Els said. \u201cIt was basically the greens would lay on the land that you saw. Like the very first hole \u00ad\u2014 they didn\u2019t try to tilt the green back this way. A lot of modern designers now would tilt that green this way because everybody would complain. That is the way Oakmont is. What you see is what you get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Els added, \u201cI loved putting at Oakmont. I just loved putting there. I just love the slopes and everything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and Twitter @gerrydulac<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Driving, putting and, well, smoking has helped some of golf’s best tame one of the game’s most difficult courses.\n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,10,5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2016\/06\/7r600k6h.jpg?fit=1000%2C691&ssl=1","wps_subtitle":"Driving, putting and, well, smoking has helped some of golf's best tame one of the game's most difficult courses","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7unGv-d","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}