What Happened To The Trees?
By Randy Tantlinger

Oakmont C.C. has always been called a nasty brute. Well, boys, she just got a high and tight and now the old lady looks more like a drill sergeant. And we all know that by the time the drill sergeant is done with you, you've either been beaten down or you've become a man.

H.C. Fownes, a Pittsburgh Steel tycoon, designed one golf course in his life: Oakmont.

He had played in five Amateurs Championships and knew a little about golf. When he unveiled his masterpiece in 1903, it was heralded as a work of art. And when she debuted over a century ago, there was nary a tree on the course.

Tommy Armour, Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen were just some of the men who tamed the beast in her early years.

By the 1960's, Oakmont had established its legendary status as a man-eater, and it was then that many saplings were planted on the course. By the 1994 U.S. Open, trees filled the course and provided much needed shade that year from the 100 degree heat.

But suddenly-literally overnight-many of the trees were being removed from the course. Members asked why, but officials said nothing and continued to work in the dark of the night to execute their plan.

Today, on the eve of the 2007 U.S. Open, the eighth to be played at Oakmont, some 5,200 trees have been laid to waste. They are, quite simply, gone.

What remains is an epic portrait that perhaps da Vinci or Michelangelo would have put color to. Oakmont has been restored to her former self. Wide open and expansive vistas provide clear views of the beauty of the course: her rugged and dangerous design, her five inch high roughs, her slanted and sloped greens, her Church Pew bunkers. Truly a work of art.

A new breed of legend came to town to try and tame the beast this spring, one Tiger Woods. "It's the toughest course I have ever played," rumbled the Tiger.

Somewhere, H.C. Fownes laughed a hearty laugh. Not a tree in site.