The first dubbing was made by a sports cartoonist, Willard Mullin, and it was then picked up by the newspaper guys around Detroit during the week leading up to the 1951 U. S. Open being played on the course. Hogan used the epithet after winning the event, at seven-over par, saying, “I’m glad I brought this course, this monster, to its knees.” A star athlete cops the term and gets credit for it, while the really creative people get shorted. So what else is new!
The original South Course (there is a North, but it has never been used for championship play) was the work of the legendary Donald Ross, and it was a pretty good test. Mike Brady won the 1922 Western Open on it at four-over par (when it was a par-72 course), and Cyril Walker won the first Oakland Hills U.S. Open, in 1924, at nine-over. But in 1951 it became a monster when Robert Trent Jones, Sr., did a major do-over. Reason being, the course-proud membership did not like the fact that Ralph Guldahl won the 1937 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills with a seven-under par 281. That set the Open winning-score record. It was the first time a venue for a major championship had been reworked so extensively, and Jones became in his own right the first Open course “doctor.” His son, Rees, has taken over that role (although Tom Fazio, among others have also been doing this work), and indeed, in 2006, he did the most recent up-dating or up-grading of the South.
Photo: © PGA of America/ Golfobserver | | Oakland Hills was design by Donald Ross and Walter Hagen was hired as the resident professional while the course was being built, but resigned when the course was open in true Hagen style. |
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But what did Jones, Sr. do in 1951 to monsterize the layout? He added some yardage, and especially re-located the fairway bunkers farther down to where the players were now hitting their drives. Yes, even before the graphite shaft, the two-piece, aerodynamically-enhanced ball, the super-dooper double babaloon kryptonite metal head, and six-foot-three, 215 lb. weightlifting pro golfers, Hogan and Snead and Boros and Mangrum and all the other pros of that time were hitting it farther than when Donald Ross built the course, in 1917-18. The fairways were also narrowed and the rough grown long, but that wasn’t so much Jones’ doing as it was the USGA’s. And, par went from 72 to 70.
For this year's PGA Championship, Rees Jones made several changes, starting with the fairway bunkers once again being pushed to
accommodate the length of today’s best players. All will require carries of between 310 and 320 yards, with one, at the 12th, needing 390 yards. Point being, they are going to be very much in play. And, the total number of bunkers on the course has risen from 117 to 135, with most of the new ones cinching in the tee-shot fairway landing areas. Furthermore, the entire course has been stretched. It is now, at 7,439 yards, a quarter-mile longer (love that description) than it was back in ’51. The par-threes alone average 222 yards (the longest is the 256-yard 9th). Par is still 70, although that is really a meaningless number. Actually, RT Jones, Sr. and the Oakland Hills membership were about 50 years ahead of the curve. Oakland Hills is no more a “monster” now than what they’ve made of other U.S. and British Open venues, and Augusta National, not to mention sites of the Mercedes-Benz, the Wachovia, the Reno-Tahoe and some 70 percent of the other tournaments on the PGA Tour.
Oakland Hills was a forerunner in the
enhancement of the modern-day major championship venue. But, it has been party to other, one might say more interesting elements in American golf history. Its first professional has always been noted as Walter Hagen, but he never really served in the post. He was hired prior to the course being finished and the club opened for business. When that happened, in 1919, Hagen resigned. Sir Walter, the first professional golfer, and a noted bon vivant world-traveler, was not about to hang around a pro shop fixing clubs, peddling golf balls, and standing in the sun giving lessons to hackers. When that loomed in his immediate future he took off, and recommended Mike Brady for the job. Hagen had beaten Brady in a playoff for the 1919 U.S. Open. Effectively, Brady was Oakland Hills first pro, remained so for many years, and as noted, won the first major event played at the club.
Photo: © PGA of America/Getty Images/USGA | | Both Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer have won at Oakland Hills in U.S. Senior Opens. |
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In all, thirteen major golf events have been hosted by Oakland Hills—the Western Open, six U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, two U.S. Senior Opens, a U.S. Amateur Championship, and a Ryder Cup Match. The list of winners is a mixed bag of giants of the game, and some lesser lights historically speaking. In at least one case, the winner was close to a virtual midget. That was Cyril Walker, winner of the 1924 U.S.Open. Walker, an Englishman, was not only physically of jockey-size, he had no other competitive accomplishments in the game either before or after his achievement at Oakland Hills. Except perhaps for the fact that he was a notoriously slow player, and also had a fine taste for the stronger beverages. Paul Runyan told a story of Walker being warned to speed up his play in an early-1930s Los Angeles Open. He refused to speed up on the grounds that he was a U.S. Open champion and could play as slow as he damn well pleased. After being disqualified early in the second round he had to be carried off the course by a couple of cops. “He was kicking his legs like a banty,” Runyan recalled. “They threw him off and told him not to come back or he’d go to the pokey.”
The next Oakland Hills South U.S. Open winner, in 1937, was Ralph Guldahl, who had come back from a slump in his competitive fortunes to snatch victory from the hands of the young Sam Snead, who was in his first year as a touring pro. Snead was leader in the clubhouse, and was taking congratulations for his “certain” victory when Guldahl came blazing through the darkening afternoon with a closing 69 to win by two. Snead, as we all know, would contend numerous times in the future for the national championship but always came up short. If he had won at Oakland Hills in ’37 he might have won the title four or five times. Maybe more.
Photo: © PGA of America/Getty Images | | The European Ryder Cup team was victorious at Oakland Hills in 2004. |
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The most famous Oakland Hills South U.S. Open was the one Hogan won, in ‘51. He did it with a closing round of 67, one of only two rounds in the 60s that week. (His other rounds were 76-73-71.) The other was by Clayton Heafner, who finished second by two shots after a final-round 69. It was at Oakland Hills where Gene Littler, who was expected to win many, won his only professional major, the 1961 U.S. Open. Gary Player won the second first of his two PGA Championships, in 1972, and Arnold and Jack won U.S. Senior Opens at Oakland Hills. But again, more or less in the Cyril Walker mold, two Oakland Hills U.S. Opens were won by darkhorses. There was Andy North, who won in 1985 (it was actually his second U.S. Open victory, but it still came as a surprise because, while recognized as a fine player he had always been beset by serious injuries), and Steve Jones, winner of the 1996 U.S. Open. It was in the ’85 Open where T.C. Chen blew a four-shot lead that included a quad on the fifth hole in the final round when he committed one of the game’s rarities, a double-hit.
Sorry to say, for those who take the Ryder Cup seriously, it was at Oakland Hills where the U.S. team took its worst defeat, in 2004 losing 18 ½ to 9 ½. Lots history of all sorts at Oakland Hills, and we can no doubt expect more of the same this year. With Tiger out of the picture we could get another (Cyril) Walkerian victory. Then again, when Walker won in ’24 he defeated Bobby Jones by two shots. As Fats Waller put it, “One never knows, do one?
