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Oakland Hills Country Club, where The 35th Ryder Cup Matches will
unfold on September 17-19, 2004, is located 15 miles northwest of
Detroit at 3951 West Maple Road, Bloomfield, Michigan, in the United
States. Christened ‘The Monster’ when Ben Hogan won his third US
Open Championship in 1951, Oakland Hills has hosted no fewer than
six US Open Championships, two US PGA Championships, two US Senior
Open Championships, one US Women’s Amateur and one ‘Ryder Cup’,
although you will not find that in the record books.
In 1940, Samuel Ryder’s elegant golden chalice was proudly displayed
at Oakland Hills. The United States held the trophy, courtesy of an
8-4 winning margin at Southport & Ainsdale in 1937, and with World
War II nearly ten months old, and with the British Ryder Cup Team
otherwise occupied, it seemed like a good idea for the United States
team to exhibit their world class skills and to raise money for
charity.
The seventh edition of The Ryder Cup Matches had been scheduled to
unfold at the Ponte Vedra Club in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1939
and, as had happened two years earlier when Henry Cotton won the
Open Golf Championship in the week following the match with all the
Americans in the field, there was a genuine hope that the Cup would
be brought home. Indeed the first eight places in the British team
had been announced with Cotton at the helm as Captain alongside
Jimmy Andrews, Dick Burton, Sam King, Alf Padgham, Dai Rees, Charles
Whitcombe and Reg Whitcombe. The remaining places were never filled
because on September 3, 1939, war broke out, although ‘caps’ were
still awarded.
Walter Hagen had also been installed as the United States Captain
and his team comprised of Vic Ghezzi, Ralph Guldahl, Jimmy Hines,
Harold McSpaden, Dick Metz, Byron Nelson, Henry Picard, Paul Runyan,
Horton Smith and Sam Snead. It was decided they should face a
‘top-flight’ squad of American professionals who had been overlooked
in The Ryder Cup selection process! So Gene Sarazen was made Captain
with Tommy Armour, Billy Burke, Harry Cooper, Jimmy Demaret, Ben
Hogan, Lawson Little, Ed Oliver, Jimmy Thompson, Al Watrous and
Craig Wood in his squad. The match was billed as ‘Hagen’s Ryder
Cuppers’ against ‘Sarazen’s Challengers.’
The bill of fare on July 16-17, 1940, was made up of a first day of
four foursomes played over 36 holes and a second day of eight
singles also over 36 holes. Demaret and Hogan birdied their first
hole and eventually won by one hole after a classic match against
Guldahl and Snead, but Hagen’s men won the other three matches to
lead 3-1. The spoils were shared in the singles so ‘Hagen’s Ryder
Cuppers’ had won 7-5.
Just for the record The Matches produced more than $10,000 for The
Red Cross. The newspapers gave the event strong support and it
became a community enterprise. The players received railroad fares,
a small gift and little else. Their expenses totalled $1,146.25!
For Oakland Hills, The 35th Ryder Cup Matches will mark another
milestone in its wonderful history as, of course, will the playing
of the 90th US Open Championship on the course in 2008.
It was in 1916 – coincidently the same year that the PGA of America
was founded – that Donald Ross looked out across the rolling,
tree-clad parcel of land and declared: “The Lord intended this for a
golf links.” Ross had already designed the acclaimed No.2 course at
Pinehurst, North Carolina, and Norval Hawkins and Joseph Mack, the
two men behind the birth of Oakland Hills, had already hired Ross
ahead of calling on October 17, 1916, what, in effect, was the
club’s first board meeting. Hawkins, the first sales Manager for the
Ford Motor Company, and Mack, who ran his own printing and
advertising business, invited 46 friends and acquaintances to that
meeting at the Detroit Athletic Club and determined that there would
be 140 chartered members each paying $250 to join.
The press knew soon enough about the venture! On Saturday, October
21, 1916, the front page of the Pontiac Press Gazette ran an article
announcing that: “Another golf course is soon to be laid out in
Bloomfield Township, two and a half miles west of Birmingham.” The
group had purchased the Spicer and Miller farms of 250 acres, and
taken options on 160 acres comprising the German and Leach farms off
dusty Maple Road in south-eastern Oakland County.
Hawkins and Mack wanted only the best. By engaging the services of
Ross, who would eventually design more than 100 golf courses in the
United States, they knew from the start that they had the right man
to make the South Course a true examination and by April 1917, there
were 30 men working on the site.
Ross remains one of golf’s most revered architects, and the reason
is easy to understand at Oakland Hills. His superb routing of the
South Course is a legacy of his genius. Two nine-hole loops, each
starting and finishing at the clubhouse, provides for a complete
test of the game. The first loop runs clockwise while the second
follows almost a figure-of-eight, although some prefer to call it
kidney-shaped because the holes do not cross, with the main
topographical features being two dramatic ridges that run across the
property with a lot of the holes playing off or over one or both.
Ross’s dictum was simple: “To build each hole in such a manner that
it wastes none of the ground at my disposal and takes advantage of
every possibility that I can see.”
The course opened formally in July 1918, and Walter Hagen, who had
already won the 1914 US Open Championship, was taken on not only as
the club’s first professional – his shop was an old chicken coop! –
but also as a public relations man. His task? To teach Detroiters
how to play golf, and romance them into becoming members. Hagen
would not remain long in the role, but through the boom and bust
years of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ Oakland Hills matured, playing host
to a number of tournaments, and grew its membership and reputation.
Cyril Walker won when first the US Open Championship was played at
Oakland Hills in 1924. Walter Hagen and Bobby Jones were among the
giants of the game who strode the elegant fairways that year. Hagen
had been the club’s first professional although two years earlier he
had refused to participate when the inaugural event to be played at
Oakland Hills – the 1922 Western Open – was won by Mike Brady. The
selection of the South Course, then only five years old, as a US
Open Championship course in 1924 was a tribute to Ross.
With the likes of Jim Barnes, Leo Diegel and Sarazen also in the
field, a high profile winner appeared assured, but a 118lbs, feisty
Englishman destroyed that theory. Cyril Walker told a group of
sportswriters on the eve of the Championship that a “rank outsider”
would win, and he was right! He shot 74-74-74-75 for a nine over par
total of 297 – three ahead of Jones. This Championship marked the
use of the steel-shafted putter for the first time. Ralph Guldahl’s
win in 1937 in the US Open Championship – Glenna Collett had won the
1929 Women’s Amateur – was overshadowed by some of the comments
about the course. A great deal of publicity had been given to the
South Course which measured a “back-breaking” 7,037 yards. It had,
in fact, been lengthened by 100 yards. There was a question about
the rough, too, and that was cut back on two holes. Then, under
pressure, the tee markers were moved forward. H.G. Salsinger, the
nationally-known Detroit News sports editor, did not like it and
wrote: “Oakland Hills was made an easier course by moving up the
markers on a majority of the tees and placing the cups in the most
accessible spots on the greens. It was an easier one than the course
over which the 1924 tournament was played.”
Nevertheless in depression-riddled Michigan there were
record-breaking crowds with record takings. The first day revenue
was reported at $22,000 which was only $4,000 short of the total
receipts at Baltusrol one year earlier.
The South Course had been lengthened to counter three major
advancements in golf equipment – the wound-centre ball, the steel
shaft and the sand wedge – by moving the tees back. Technology was
the winner though with Guldahl’s 71-69-72-69 for a seven under 281
winning him the first of successive US Open Championship titles.
Incidentally it was said that Guldahl was so obsessed with his swing
that he practised in a room where the walls were covered entirely by
full-length mirrors. After 1940, he did not win again.
For the record, Texan Guldahl, who had almost given up the game one
year earlier, received $1,000, but Sam Snead, then a 25 year-old
rookie (who was never to win the US Open Championship), earned more,
taking home $800 for runner-up spot plus $500 for being voted “the
best dressed golfer.”
Oakland Hills was remodelled for the 1951 US Open Championship with
the deliberate intent of making it the most difficult challenge
anywhere. Some said fairness was a secondary consideration. Robert
Trent Jones, then just coming into his own as a premier golf
architect, was retained by the club for the specific purpose of
toughening an already acknowledged quality course. Nevertheless with
continued advances in clubs and balls it had become clear that the
grand old layout that had tested Bobby Jones and company would not
test Ben Hogan and the class of the 1950s. The USGA decided that if
it was going to return to its favourite courses then they would have
to be updated. The era of the narrow fairway had arrived and when
the players arrived at Oakland Hills the course had a new name.
William Mullin of the New York World Telegram, had christened it
‘The Monster.’
It was Jones’s first US Open Championship course. His remodelling of
the Ross masterpiece stood the test of time. He designed, enlarged
and re-contoured the greens. Jones actually shortened the course by
110 yards to 6,927 yards but he converted the par five eighth and
18th holes to 458 yard and 459 yard par fours respectively. The par
was reduced from 72 to 70. Jones also set out to “pinch” the landing
areas for the professional drives – which he calculated at the time
to be 230 to 260 yards of carry – by moving the bunkers and
strategically locating them in the driving target area. The average
score in the first round was 78.4! Walter Hagen, a spectator,
observed: “The players aren’t playing the course; the golf course is
playing them.” There had been cries of anguish from the contestants
as they played their practice rounds; and those cries were audible
throughout. Golf World wrote: “Golf’s greatest tournament reached a
new peak in public interest.” Indeed officials and writers called
those that were on Hogan’s heels every step of his final round “the
biggest mob in history to ever follow a golfer.” It also marked the
250th Anniversary celebration of Detroit, and Jones had guaranteed
the future. Now drives were directed not to fairways but to landing
areas; approaches were played not to greens but to targets. And for
the first time a golf course was receiving more attention than the
players.
Hogan, the eventual champion, lunched on a roast beef sandwich
between rounds on the final day – 36 holes were played on the
Saturday at that time – and spoke of the course as a personality, as
a formidable and dangerous opponent, as an intricate problem which
had to be solved. The ‘Iceman’ did so with a closing 67 on a course
where no one had broken 70. He called the win “most satisfying!”
For Oakland Hills it represented a place on the map. Hogan, who had
opened with scores of 76-73-71, finished two in front of Clayton
Heafner, whose closing 69 represented the only other sub-par round
by the field of 162 throughout the Championship. Hogan said: “I’m
glad I brought this course, this monster, to its knees.” Whether or
not Hogan joined in the ovation Jones received at the closing
ceremony is not known. He did, however, turn to Jones’s wife, Ione,
and say: “If your husband had to make a living on the courses he
builds, your family would be on the breadline.”
In 1961, the South Course was not deemed to be the same challenge.
The element of surprise was gone, some bunkering which was more
frightening than strategic had been removed, and a late spring had
inhibited the growth of what normally would have been thick, lush
rough. In truth the course had been softened immediately after the
1951 US Open Championship so that at least a few club members could
break 90! By now Arnold Palmer, the defending Champion, and Jack
Nicklaus were on the scene although Hogan, now aged 48, was back. He
said: “The course is magnificent. They’ve widened the fairways and
the rough isn’t brutal.” Jack Fleck claimed: “The spray gun artists
aren’t going to be penalised sufficiently here.” The more favourable
west wind switched to the north east for the opening day, and when
it was all over there was only one sub-par round!
Gene Littler had arrived with winnings of only $116 from his first
five tournaments of the year. He returned home to California as the
US Open Champion after scores of 73-68-72-68 for a one over par 281
– one ahead of Bob Goalby and Doug Sanders.
The US PGA Championship was first played at Oakland Hills in 1972.
Nicklaus was the defending Champion. He had won the Masters
Tournament and the US Open Championship that year, and finished one
shot behind Lee Trevino in the Open Golf Championship at Muirfield.
Heavy rain softened the greens, and there were seven sub-par rounds
on the first day, but as the Championship unfolded with intermittent
rain and muggy heat, so at one time on the front nine on the final
day no fewer than seven players were tied for the lead at one over
par. Gary Player won and declared: “This is the best and toughest
American course I’ve ever played. It is certainly quite humbling.”
There was a lovely finale, too, as Sam Snead who had returned at the
age of 60, closed with a 69 and finished tied third just three shots
behind Player, who scored 71-71-67-72 for 281.
Then came the 1979 US PGA Championship. They called it ‘The Monster
Massacre.’ The Championship left Oakland Hills golfing enthusiasts
in a state of shock and set a once near-invincible course awash in
the proverbial red numbers. When it was all over there had been no
fewer than 140 sub-par or even-par rounds and 15 players had beaten
or tied Player’s 1972 winning total of 281. Unseasonably heavy
rainfall played a major role. Billy Casper, then the new Ryder Cup
Captain, said: “I don’t think the greens will dry out. There’s too
much moisture in the ground.” Jack Berry of the Detroit News wrote:
“Downhill putts aren’t reaching the cup. More rain and Oakland Hills
will be a soft touch.” Tom Watson was the favourite; Jack Nicklaus,
without a win all year, had to succeed or miss the US Ryder Cup Team
for the first time in 11 years. Nicklaus opened with a 73 and said:
“This is as much of a piece of cake as you’ll ever get at Oakland
Hills, and I didn’t get to the icing.”
The eventual winner was Australian David Graham. He captured his
first Major Championship by beating Ben Crenshaw in a play-off. They
had tied on a record low Oakland Hills score of 272 – Graham
storming through at the end by following rounds of 67-68-70 with a
65. Bud Erickson, the Oakland Hills Tournament Director, offered a
philosophical palliative. “No one thinks any less of Augusta
National because Jack Nicklaus and Ray Floyd have scored 17 under
par victories there.” No fewer than 145,102 spectators paid to see
the Championship unfold and after Oakland Hills had, in 1981, hosted
the first US Senior Open to be played at the 50-and-over level and
Arnold Palmer wrote his name indelibly into the Club’s history by
winning an 18-hole play-off, so the US Open Championship returned in
1985. The USGA had invited Oakland Hills to host the Championship
again and set a total yardage of 6,996 – 90 yards longer than it was
in 1961 and 69 yards longer than in 1951. Some type of change was
made to all holes, with the exception of two of the par threes, with
Trent Jones once again making the revisions. Andy North won with
70-65-70-74 for a one under par 279 – becoming the only man to break
280 in a US Open Championship at Oakland Hills.
Since Arnold Palmer had won the first US Senior Open at Oakland
Hills, it seemed only logical that when the Championship returned
there ten years later that Jack Nicklaus should triumph. Many
observers recognise the Oakland Hills greens as the most fearsome
that Ross ever designed, and Nicklaus, before winning, said: “They
represent the most difficult combination of speed and contour of any
course we play.” The greens, of course, have changed since Ross
first laid them out. Jones added ‘wings’ to many of them prior to
the 1951 US Open Championship, and following the 1991 US Senior Open
the designer Arthur Hills added additional wings to the first and
14th hole to accommodate more hole locations and he also enlarged
areas on the fourth, fifth, ninth and 11th holes in readiness for
the 1996 US Open when the course played longer because of another
very wet spring. In addition to that a monsoon-like storm hit
Oakland Hills at noon on the day prior to the start of the
Championship. When the storm abated, officials looked out over a
course which, in places, lay under two or three feet of water and
shook their heads in dismay. Then the green staff got down to work
and, miracle of miracles, play began on schedule at 7am on Thursday!
American Steve Jones scored 74-66-69-69 for a two under par 278 –
one ahead of Tom Lehman and Davis Love III. Significantly Tiger
Woods was in the field. Two months later he had turned professional
and by the end of the year he had won twice on the US PGA Tour.
Now “The Monster” awaits the greatest golf show on earth. This time,
of course, it will be the genuine article but as anyone will know
who witnessed the exhibition in 1940, or for that matter any of the
great Championships to have been played at Oakland Hills, the South
Course that fulfilled a dream off dusty Maple Road will provide a
wonderful examination for all at The 35th Ryder Cup Matches.
Reproduced by kind permission of The European Tour Yearbook, 16th
Edition. Available now for £25 including postage and packaging from:
Communications Department, Yearbook Offer, The European Tour,
Virginia Water, Surry GU25 4LX. Cheques made payable to: The
European Tour.
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