ESPN PGA Championship 2008

Originally Published: August 6, 2008

Monster moniker still fits for Oakland Hills

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By Bob Harig
ESPN.com
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BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- The wind picked up and the flags of 20 nations flapped in the breeze. Those are the countries represented in the 90th PGA Championship, which begins Thursday at Oakland Hills Country Club.

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AP Photo/Carlos OsorioThe ninth hole at Oakland Hills could measure nearly 260 yards but will still be played as a par-3.

While players competing for the fourth and final major championship of the year hail from such places as Australia, Japan, Thailand and India, they all speak a common language when it comes to a golf course that is, in all likelihood, about to pummel them.

But Sunday, those flags might as well be white, with the players waving them.

The wind was nothing like what the best players in the world endured three weeks ago at the British Open, where keeping your balance became a chore for four days.

But if it blows here, one more bit of treachery is added to a place that does not need it.

"It's just a perfect, straightforward, immaculate test of golf," said Phil Mickelson, the 2005 PGA champion. "The golf course is so tough to begin with."

The South course at Oakland Hills has a longstanding reputation for being one of the most difficult major championship venues of all time. But it did yield under-par winning scores in each of the previous PGA Championships played here in 1972 and 1979. And the last U.S. Open played here, in 1996, had three players finish under par.

But with nearly 300 yards of rough added since the Ryder Cup was played at Oakland Hills in 2004, and some additional bunkering that pinches off fairways in some strategic spots, well, let's just say plenty of players have walked off the course following practice rounds saying it is all you want -- and then some.

"They've been calling it The Monster for quite a while," said 2001 PGA champion David Toms. "It still is."

But Hogan had good reason for his remarks. He shot a final-round 67 that year, one of only two players to shoot in the 60s all week. It gave him a final score of 7-over-par 287. Think about that. Hogan was 10 strokes over par going into the final round of that Open.

The course, which was originally designed by the legendary Donald Ross in 1916 and had 11-time major champion and five-time PGA winner Walter Hagen as its first pro, got an overhaul by Robert Trent Jones Sr. before the 1951 Open. And reworking famous courses became a cottage industry.

Jones' son, Rees, has done renovation work on several courses, including Torrey Pines, site of this summer's U.S. Open and Oakland Hills in anticipation of the PGA.

"Oakland Hills is a beast," Rocco Mediate said. "It's just hard. Around par is going to be good golf. I love that. I love the whole thing."

Mediate and Tiger Woods were the only players to finish under par at Torrey Pines with a total of 283, 1 under par. Woods defeated Mediate in a playoff.

Here in suburban Detroit, par is 70 and the course now measures 7,395 yards. It has four par-4 holes that measure near or more than 500 yards -- Nos. 5, 8, 14 and 18. (The eighth and 18th play as par-5s for the members.) It also has a couple of brutal par-3s, including the ninth, which had plenty of players scratching their heads and wondering if a 3-wood would be enough on a hole that could measure 260 yards.

"I think this golf course is set up more like what a U.S. Open was set up three or four years ago," British Open champion Padraig Harrington said. "Missing the fairway by a couple of yards is the same as missing it by 10 yards. There is no difference when you go off, there's no first cut, second cut, third cut. So this is a tougher test in those terms, and it's a more demanding test and more punishing in that sense. A slight miss is just as bad as a big miss. Maybe even a big miss, you could get away with it more."

One disclaimer: We often hear how brutal a golf course is on the eve of a major championship, then see weather conditions change or the expected difficulty turn out not to be as much as first touted. And there has not been a winning score over par at the PGA Championship since 1976, when Dave Stockton won at Congressional Country Club.

But during a stretch in which major championships have been more tough than not -- four majors in the past two years have been won with over-par winning totals -- there have been an array of comments about Oakland Hills, none suggesting this is going to be an easy week.

"I played Augusta this year for the first time and Torrey Pines, and those don't even come close to how hard Oakland Hills will play," said Daniel Chopra, who played Oakland Hills last year in a British Open qualifier.

And we haven't even discussed the greens, which are large, undulating and very much the same as Ross designed them almost 100 years ago -- when greens speeds were nowhere near as fast as today. "The green complexes are amazing," said the PGA of America's Kerry Haigh, who sets up the course.

"It depends how they set it up," said Woody Austin, who was runner-up at the PGA held at Southern Hills last year. "But it has potential to be the toughest course we play this year."