{"id":306,"date":"2016-06-17T23:55:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-18T03:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/?p=306"},"modified":"2016-06-18T00:02:34","modified_gmt":"2016-06-18T04:02:34","slug":"no-6-at-oakmont-living-up-to-its-1903-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/2016\/06\/17\/no-6-at-oakmont-living-up-to-its-1903-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 6 at Oakmont living up to its 1903 heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the magical things about Oakmont Country Club is how it has remained largely unchanged over the years. The course the golfers are playing this week is similar to the eight previous U.S. Open championships that were played here.<\/p>\n

When Oakmont began preparations for this year\u2019s championship one of the few tweaks to the course was on No. 6, where the back-right corner of green was rebuilt and made bigger.<\/p>\n

And when the world\u2019s top golfers played the course Friday morning, with the pin location in the new portion of the green, they played it as golfers did in 1903, the year Oakmont opened.<\/p>\n

Oakmont members found original drawings of the course designed by founder H.C. Fownes and saw how the green at No. 6 was extended behind the right greenside bunker when the course was built in 1903.<\/p>\n

Over time, the back of the green eroded and groundskeepers simply made it smaller.<\/p>\n

The expanded green, along with the soft conditions, allowed players to score well on the hole in the second round when the pin location was moved to the front of the green.<\/p>\n

\n

There were about twice as many birdies as bogeys on the par 3 that played 185 yards with second-round, front pin location. But when the pin location was in the back for the first round there were 43 bogeys and only 10 birdies.<\/p>\n

\"20160617lf_Golf04\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sergio Garcia was one of the few to make birdie at the back pin location. His tee shot came within 15 feet of the cup, and he was able to roll his putt in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I hit a lot of good shots,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cI made a couple of good putts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kevin Streelman ran into trouble on No. 6 in his first round. His tee shot landed only 18 yards from the hole, but he ended up making a bogey.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s interesting,\u201d Streelman said. \u201cAs wet as it got it didn\u2019t necessarily get easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the players who spent time near the top of the leader board Friday had trouble with the back pin location. Bubba Watson and Henrik Stenson also made bogeys.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key around any of these venues, no matter what course it is, you\u2019re going to make bogeys,\u201d Watson said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to make a bogey at some point throughout the week, or multiple bogeys. It\u2019s not just because of bad golf. It\u2019s because of the difficulty.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Added Stenson: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t super easy out there. You never expect it to be. It\u2019s definitely getting firmer. If we keep this weather for the next couple of days I would imagine we\u2019re getting closer and closer to what we saw early in the week, wicked putts and firm little bounces on the greens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray Fittipaldo: rfittipaldo@post-gazette.com and Twitter @rayfitt1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In many ways, the Oakmont course has remained unchanged.\n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":126,"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],"tags":[],"coauthors":[12],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2016\/06\/OAKMONT_trophy_2016.jpg?fit=1000%2C667&ssl=1","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7unGv-4W","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306"}],"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\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/usopen2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}