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.
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, essentially putting a hardwood frame around one of Ross’ Mona Lisas.
Good thing he didn’t plant kudzu or the place might have been buried forever.
A few hundred of Williams’ trees are gone now, part of a quiet but meaningful deforestation project that was central to the course restoration that began four years ago, but it’s still apparent how and why the place got its name.
The removal of trees wasn’t on the level of Oakmont’s nocturnal neutering of hundreds of its leafy friends a few years back, a transformational project that essentially hid in plain sight until there were no trees to look between any more. Along with Green’s brilliant reimagining of Ross’ original work, it knocked the dust and the fallen acorns off the old place.
The result is spectacular, giving this PGA Championship its dominant character before the first official tee shot is struck Thursday morning. The story eventually will be about a handful of players – Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler, ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the world, respectively, are likely to figure in the plotline at some point – but Oak Hill looks and feels like more than a grassy stage.
One of the dominant themes in golf these days is how the game balances what it was with what it’s becoming. It’s both unsettling and inspiring, whether it’s the disruption caused by LIV Golf’s arrival or the swelling numbers of women and young people drawn to the game.
Oak Hill, where Cary Middlecoff, Lee Trevino and Curtis Strange won U.S. Opens, Jack Nicklaus, Shaun Micheel and Jason Dufner claimed PGAs, and where the United States lost a Ryder Cup that it should have won 28 years ago, seems to offer the best of both then and now.
“I think that when a player steps on the property for the first time and they walk around and they see this place, they might literally say that it might be the best course they’ve ever played,” Micheel said.
The 54-year-old is understandably partial to the place, having won the 2003 PGA Championship here with the help of a heaven-sent swing with a 7-iron on the 72nd hole that remains one of the great finishing swings in major-championship history.
Others who weren’t here previously have been similarly struck by what they have discovered.
Zach Johnson played the 2013 PGA Championship at Oak Hill, won by Dufner.
“I remember it being an absolutely phenomenal test. I remember leaving here, like, man, that’s one of the more proper golf courses I’ve ever played, meaning you’ve got to have everything, tee to green, short game, et cetera. I think based on what I’ve witnessed so far, that still holds true,” Johnson said.
Defending PGA champion Justin Thomas liked Oak Hill immediately.
“This place reminds me a little bit of a Winged Foot just in terms of the greens – not the severity of the greens. They’re not like Winged Foot; nothing is. But just the designs of them and some of the pin locations and how the fairways kind of canter against the slopes or whatever you want to call it.
“I love old-school golf courses.”
Oak Hill is old school but with contemporary touches, such as stretching nearly 7,400 yards while playing to par-70 with two par-4s measuring more than 500 yards and a pair of 600-yard-plus par-5s.
“I love the way the courses look up here, just the definition of the fairway to the rough and the cutting of the bunkers … the kind of sharp edges on the greens,” Thomas said.
Oak Hill is old school but with contemporary touches, such as stretching nearly 7,400 yards while playing to par-70 with two par-4s measuring more than 500 yards and a pair of 600-yard-plus par-5s.
Max Homa compared it to Winged Foot and Bethpage Black, brutish layouts similarly trimmed by thick, punishing rough.
Without getting too deep into course architecture theory and construct, among the things Green did at Oak Hill is return lost edges and corners to the putting surfaces to create more diabolical options and turn the bunkers into things of menacing beauty with steep, grass-covered edges and flat, sandy bottoms.
Green built a new par-3 fifth hole and transformed the par-3 15th into a small hole with a small target, as potentially dangerous as it is inviting.
The three-hole finish is one par-4 punch to the mouth followed by another.
“Not that it wasn’t before, but it’s a great golf course,” said Kerry Haigh, chief championships officer for the PGA of America.
With no shortage of acorns in the fall.
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