Golf betting at the Major Championships is a complex subject. Mistakes can be costly, however select the right player or player portfolio and the rewards can be excellent. Golf Betting System’s goal is to provide you with informed US Open tips, free tournament research guides, plus insight and information that will help you make educated decisions about what players to back at the 2025 US Open Championship.
Course Information:
Oakmont Country Club, Oakmont, Pennsylvania: Designer: Henry Fownes 1903 with Tom Fazio re-design 2006; Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner Renovation 2023; Course Type: Classical, Technical, Long; Par: 70; Length: 7,372 yards; Holes with Water Hazards: 0; Number of Sand Bunkers: 168; Acres of Fairway: 27; Fairways: Bentgrass with Poa Annua; Rough: Kentucky Bluegrass with Perennial Ryegrass and Poa Annua 5+”; Greens: 8,500 sq.ft average featuring Poa Annua; Tournament Stimp: 13ft.
Course Scoring Average:
- 2016: 73.52 (+3.52), PGA Tour Difficulty Rank 1 of 50 courses.
Oakmont Country Club will undoubtedly be a stern test in 2025 in its lengthened guise. No other course has held more United States Open Championships with this being the tenth time that the USGA have chosen to visit this part of Pennsylvania. At 7,372 yards – up circa 150 yards from 2016 – it’s obvious that in today’s modern game the course’s defence is not overall length. Instead Oakmont is defended by clever course design which includes the fastest Poa Annua putting surfaces on the circuit, severely canted green complexes, 170 bunkers of the deep variety, sloping fairways, a number of blind or semi-blind tee-shots, and traditional US Open-style Kentucky Bluegrass with Perennial Ryegrass and Poa Annua rough.
The fast greens grab a lot of the media attention pre-tournament and rightly so. 2007 winner Angel Cabrera mastered the greens and his close association with Augusta is worthy of note. 2016 winner Dustin Johnson also has a Green Jacket in his closet. Another aspect of the course which deserves note is its tactical usage of length. Oakmont contains the longest par-3 in US Open history with the 8th playing 289 yards. At its maximum this hole is on the edge of the shorter players’ driving distance ranges. It also includes two +600 yard, par-5s. It will be interesting to see if Rory or Bryson or Min Woo can even attempt to reach in two. 170-odd bunkers add bite and it’s interesting that one of the few changes from 2016 is the fact that rough has been reduced around those bunkers to maximise the number of captures. Rough has been described as treacherous and expect tough, non-graduated rough along the fairways.
Key areas of change from the Gil Hanse renovation include the addition of more than 24,000 square feet of green surface. Encouraged by a vocal club membership who are well known to want their course to play as difficult as possible, Hanse’s work has made the notoriously fast greens even harder. Expect far more pin locations and as Grounds Superintendent Mike McCormick says, “The greens are the No. 1 defence on the course. Oakmont, in today’s world, it’s not a crazy-long golf course. There are several holes out here where the players will be hitting wedges into and it puts even more of an emphasis on the greens.”
The more notable changes besides the greens are a new-look fairway on the 7th hole which is a 485 yard, par-4. The new fairway now allows for 2 choices: 1) Play it safe and short to the right but settle for a blind approach, or 2) Aim left and carry a drive 320 yards over a fairway bunker that if executed correctly lets you see the pin on your approach with a short iron. I know what Bryson and Rory will be doing if the elements allow.
Other changes to note that will ratchet up the difficulty include the rough. We always discuss the length of the rough at each and every U.S. Open and in recent years we have seen graduated rough in play to alleviate the concerns of the players. That won’t be the case at Oakmont in 2025. The wet Pennsylvania spring has made it particularly thick, with the USGA topping it off at five inches – it will be higher as the championship progresses.
Gil Hanse has made the bunkering even more difficult – Oakmont is famous for its Church Pews bunker – with fairway bunkers now getting on for an automatic 1 shot penalty. Oakmont is also known for ditches which criss-cross the property. In 2016 the USGA carved out those ditches to where players could get in there and play. In 2025 that won’t be the case with 12 to 18 inch high native grasses making recovery shots a nightmare.
My summary is that the USGA and the Oakmont membership are in no mood to see scores under par for this year’s championship – 4 players went under par in 2016. So if the course stays dry, expect harder scoring than we have seen over recent years.
Oakmont Country Club is a Gil Hanse renovation. Gil Hanse PGA Tour designs are listed below:
- Aronimink Golf Club – 2019 BMW Championship
- Colonial Country Club – 2024- 2025 Charles Schwab Challenge
- Los Angeles Country Club – 2023 U.S. Open
- Merion – 2013 U.S. Open
- Plainfield CC – The Barclays – 2011 & 2015
- Ridgewood CC – The Barclays / Northern Trust 2010, 2014 & 2018
- Southern Hills CC – 2022 PGA Championship
- The Country Club, Brookline – 2022 U.S. Open
- Trump National Doral – 2014 through 2016 WGC Cadillac Championship
- TPC Boston – Deutsche Bank / Dell Technologies Championship through 2018 plus 2020 Northern Trust
- Winged Foot – 2020 U.S. Open
Below you can read some revealing player comments about Oakmont Country Club from both the 2007 and 2016 U.S. Open Championships held here:
Dustin Johnson (2016): “It’s always good to be playing well coming into a U.S. Open because you know it’s going to be tough. This is one place you really need to control your golf ball. You’ve got to control your spin and where you want the ball to land, so obviously, it’s a premium to hit the fairways because the rough’s thick and deep. You can get a decent lie every once in a while, but the majority of them, they sit down, and it’s tough to control it. And then the fairway bunkers are almost a penalty stroke too because they’re so deep, and the ball, you never really get that good of a lie. So I really think it’s important to hit the fairways here.
My bag doesn’t really change no matter what course I’m playing. I put a 2 iron in every once in a while, and I’ll take a wedge out. But this week, I’m going to play a 2 iron and just three wedges. Sometimes I go just driver, 3 wood, 3 iron, and then four wedges, just depending on the course. But this week, I do have a 2 iron in.
The greens. They’re so hard to putt. No matter how close you are to the hole, it’s just, they’re tough to putt. I mean, I hit so many good putts today that I thought were going in, and burned the edge or lip out. But that’s just how it goes. I mean, these greens are tough.
You’ve just got to hit the fairway on 15 and 18. Then 16 is a really tough par 3. And then 17, you know, it’s a short par 4, but it’s difficult. You’ve just got to kind of wherever the flag is, you’ve got to kind of have a game plan and stick to it. Today, with the back flag, I went for it and hit it in the right bunker, hit a great, you know, hit a good bunker shot. Got to eight feet, just short of it, which was fine, and lifted out from there. This morning, the pin was on the front just over the bunker and I laid up. So it just depends on how I’m feeling, which way the wind’s blowing. Just all depends.”
Phil Mickelson (2016): “The reason why I’m optimistic about Oakmont is that it doesn’t require me to hit a lot of drivers. It requires me to get the ball in play off the tee, but when I’m not hitting drivers, if I’m hitting 3-woods, hybrids, I feel confident I’m able to do that a fairly high percentage of the time. I really think it is the hardest golf course we’ve ever played. A lot of golf courses, when it challenges you tee to green the way Oakmont does, it usually has a little bit of a reprieve on the greens, and you really don’t at Oakmont. They’re some of the most undulating, fast, difficult greens to putt. It really is the hardest golf course I think we’ve played.”
Jordan Spieth (2016): “It’s going to take an extreme amount of patience and discipline off the tee. A lot of people talk about Oakmont’s greens but the most important thing I think for this year’s U.S. Open will be driving the golf ball. You don’t have to hit it very far. It will be helpful to hit it far and straight as it is anywhere, but you are going to have discipline to take iron off the tee, knowing you can hit 3-wood and still be ok. You just have to give yourself shots out of the fairway into a lot of these greens, given they slope front to back with false fronts. So you have to be coming out of the fairway with the right amount of spin. Your depth is thrown out on a lot of these holes because it’s well bunkered. Whether it’s an approach shot or a tee shot, there are some bunkers that you think are green-side, or you think you can fly them and actually it’s completely the opposite.”
Ernie Els (2007): “The most difficult US Open venue? I would say, you know, length-wise and toughness-wise, I still think Bethpage and Winged Foot, because those two golf courses are so long. You know, with this U.S. Open rough, it was really playing tough. This week, the golf course plays a bit shorter. There’s quite a little slope. So as I say, you can play different clubs off the tees. But the greens make up for it. These are the toughest greens we’ll ever play in U.S. Open history, or even any other golf tournament we play. With the rough and these greens, this is going to be a very, very tough test.”
Zach Johnson (2007): “Speed-wise, very, very similar to Augusta. They are very, very fast. The difficult part for me is the fact that you get on a Bentgrass or a Bermudagrass, where it is at Augusta, you see the breaks more, and you can see the speed based on the burnouts.
Here, this poa annua, it still looks lush and green and soft when you walk on it. So it makes it very difficult to judge speed, in my opinion. Given that, you know, the greens for the most part go one direction, and they are fast. So you know, I think all in all, it’s going to be a speed test and ones where you’re going to have to make a lot of 3- and 4- and 5-footers for comebacks. It’s going to be a remarkable test.”
Geoff Ogilvy (2007): “It’s a great property. It looks fantastic without any trees on it. Collection of the best greens I’ve seen anywhere. The bunkers are tough and the rough is really tough. It’s a great golf course. Difficulty? It all depends on how you set it up and where you put pin positions. Could you set this golf course up easy if you want to — I know the members don’t like to hear that, but if you put the pins on the low parts of the greens and had the rough playable, there would be quite a lot of birdies out there. But if you put the pins on the high parts of the greens where you can’t get anywhere near, and with the rough like it is, it could be the hardest course in the world with no wind. You know, with no wind involved, it’s incredible how hard this golf course can play.
“The greens here are the obvious challenge to me. Everything else out there is similar U.S. Open. It’s narrowish fairways, pretty good rough, bunkers, and the greens here are something different. They are amazing greens. I mean, they are probably some of my favourite greens I’ve ever seen. They run a bit faster than maybe they should in spots. The key here is to keep it inside the rough and to keep it under the hole on the green. You’re probably better off even off the green under the hole than you are on the green above the hole.”
Oakmont: A test where long-range aggression is rewarded.
