If you're going to the U.S. Amateur at Oakmont Country Club this week, you'll be struck by a couple of things as you make your way onto the course. If you're going to the U.S. Amateur at Oakmont Country Club this week, you'll be struck by a couple of things as you make your way onto the course. First, the fourth-best course in the United States as ranked by Golf Magazine earlier this year will be as lush and green as its ever been. Second, you'll suddenly be hit with the realization that something is different. And it is. For the first time in decades, you can actually see the golf course. Instead of getting glimpses of brilliant green fairways or bright white sand, there are now wide expanses of wonderful landscape open to the naked eye. "That's obviously the major change for us, the lack of trees," said Oakmont Country Club professional Bob Ford. "People stand around the clubhouse and look out, and they're really in awe and shock and unanimously approve. Everybody really likes what they see." If the openness of the famed layout doesn't shock you, perhaps the numbers will. Since the early 1990s, over 3,500 trees have been removed from the golf course. Approximately 1,500 more have been taken out to facilitate the building of new tees for the fourth and seventh holes at Oakmont. When W.C. Fownes built the course back in the early 1900s, there were very few trees on it. It gave the appearance of a links-style layout, even though that couldn't be the case because it wasn't anywhere near an ocean. Over the years, however, trees were planted and grew until fairways, tees and greens were framed by trees. And over time, the links-style course looked a whole lot more like a parkland-style layout. But it was more than an appearance issue, Ford said. "I think the guys that had the vision (for tree removal) saw the encroachment of the trees, in the ditches, in front of bunkers, too near tee complexes, affecting turf quality," he said. "They started with all that, and once that got going and building momentum, they never took a tree out that someone said, 'You shouldn't have taken that tree out.'" As a matter of fact, they took trees out in a manner that most times, people couldn't even remember that trees had been there previously. "The party line is we took down a thousand before we got caught," Ford said, laughing. "But it's true, a lot of trees, probably around a 1,000, were taken down at night. (His wife) Nancy would wake up at 4:30 or 5 in the morning and would say, 'Banks (Smith, the chairman of the grounds committee) is at it again.' You could hear the chain saws. Honestly, I live on this property and it was like, 'Was there really a tree there?' You really couldn't tell because they weren't that important." Maybe the trees weren't important, but the removal certainly was a hot topic of discussion among the Oakmont members. "Some of our members are like, 'Don't touch the golf course. Don't change the golf course,'" Ford said. "Well, the golf course has changed, and it continues to change every day. W.C. Fownes said, 'The golf course is a living thing and it continuously changes.' Thank goodness our members who are in charge continue to follow that philosophy." Ford said that despite rumors to the contrary, the decision to take out trees had nothing to do with the USGA or the U.S. Open. "Once we started doing it, then the USGA got on board with us," he said. "'They'd say, 'This is neat, we can put bleachers there now. What do you think about behind this green?' That sort of mushroomed. The USGA had absolutely nothing to do with these trees. It was totally the members' vision." It certainly wasn't a singular vision, at least at first. There were some tough battles to fight. "The guys who were being this, the fathers and visionaries of this effort, did this very slowly, built momentum and consensus and it just continued to be increasingly evident to everyone that the more we saw of the golf course, the prettier it looks," he said. "They fought through the tough times and, make no doubt, this was very contentious. Now, they deserve all the credit in the world." Ford said the pin oaks, pines, conifers and blue spruce that have been removed were not important and nothing that anyone would miss. "The more we took out, the better it looked, and now, they're going to finish it off. That was never the intent of the guys to do what's going to happen this winter. I promise you, that was never their intent," Ford said. The culmination of this process is to take place when the weather turns cold and another number of trees, "around even par," Ford said, will disappear. While the folks at Oakmont took away trees, they also added length. Considerable length. Six new tees that added 260 yards to the course, making it play 7,171, par 70. "The perception now is that it's a big-league golf course. It's not too short to hold the U.S. Open. Other than that, they're going to see the same golf course," Ford said. "Everybody remembers the heat in the 1994 U.S. Open and how the course played hard and fast and it played phenomenally short. (Tom) Watson hit wedge into 18. That really alerted us that these courses are getting too short. "That precipitated the move to buy more land. Even during that time, we kept hearing that Oakmont is all about the bunkers and greens and that's true," Ford said. "But the perception is you have to hit more than 8-iron into some of our holes. We really didn't do it as much for 2007 (when the U.S. Open will be played there) as we did for 2017 (when the Open could be expected to return). We didn't want them coming in '17 and saying, 'we can't come here.' We want them to keep coming back." The new-look Oakmont will get its first test under fire this week. And U.S. Amateur general chairman Bill Fallon couldn't be happier with it. "The key when we started was to improve the turf conditions of the golf course," Fallon said. "The theme these days is restoration and going back to your roots. You look at the pictures that were in the 1962 U.S. Open program and there are no trees here." It's not difficult to pinpoint one change as the dominant one at Oakmont. The 17th hole, an uphill par 4 of 313 yards has always been a great risk/reward type hole because players could actually think about driving the green and taking a shot at eagle. The risk involved not carrying the bunkers that line the left side of the fairway or carrying them and then having the ball land in "Bigmouth," the massive bunker in front of the green. A stand of trees was removed from behind the green (in part to make room for the new, longer tee on No. 18), the green was flattened and three bunkers were put in behind the green. "I think that 17th green is the most significant thing we've done. It's incredibly controversial here at the club. They either hate it or love it, there's no in between, I liken it to shooting hoops without a backboard," Ford said with a devilish smile. "For the 71st hole of the championship, it's going to provide the most options," he said. "The options and the penalties for failure are phenomenal. That's what makes a great hole. I think it's one of the greatest golf holes in America and follow that up by the greatest hole on the course. I think it's going to be an awesome finish."

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