Oak Hill: The planting of a masterpiece

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK | It is Donald Ross and his New Age course whisperer Andrew Green who justifiably get most of the credit for constructing and reconstructing Oak Hill, which is hosting its seventh men’s major championship this week with the PGA Championship, as winter’s icy fingers touch this place one last time before springtime’s promised return this weekend. But let’s not forget a retired local physician named John Williams, who provided the acorns. Yes, acorns, proving again the old adage about how from small acorns mighty oaks grow. So, too, do tournament logos, which are as prevalent here as the trees themselves. More than 30,000 acorns were shipped from Europe and planted at the Oak Hill site in the 1920s. Safin Hamid, AFP via Getty Images A fan of giant oaks and sensing the need for some foliage on the piece of property that the club acquired in a trade with the University of Rochester when the school wanted to move closer to town in the early 1920s, Williams planted approximately 30,000 acorns he’d carried home from Europe...