The Wonderful Oakmont Country Club

The Oakmont’s Country Club is located on the eastern side of the United States, and the majority of the club is in Plum while a small part of it is in Oakmont. The country club was established over 100 years ago, back in 1903. 

Moreover, the golf course in Oakmont Country Club known as the oldest top-ranked golf course in America was labelled as a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Tune if for more details of the rich history of Oakmont Country Club.

Building the Course

The Oakmont Country Club golf course was designed with the help of Henry Fownes. This job required over 150 workers with just under 25 mule teams. In the end, it took him around 1 year of building the golf course on the old farmland. The farmland was a perfect place and was ideal for building a great links-style golf course.

The Architect

Henry Fownes, the architect of the golf course at Oakmont Country Club was born in 1856 and died in 1933. His one and only job as a golf course architect was at Oakmont’s golf course. But the legendary golf course is the leading course in the United States for the number of hosted both the USGA and the PGA championship. 

Besides, the course hosted a total of 2 United States Women’s Opens, 3 PGA Championships, 5 United States Amateurs, and 8 U.S. Opens. In addition, Henry Fownes was the president of Oakmont Country Club until his death.

Oakmont’s Golf Course

This golf course is considered to be one of the most complex golf courses in the United States mainly because it has over 200 bunkers. But not only that; there are more features that make the course so difficult. Some of them include hard and slick greens, and narrow fairways as well.

The course was named as one of the top 5 best in the United States, by Golf Digest top 100 lists. Back in 2007, the Oakmont Golf Course was #5 in the magazine, as well as #5 in the top 50 hardest golf courses in the US. Not only that, but it is one of a few courses repeatedly ranked in the top 10 of the Golf Digest’s list.

Thomas Fazio and Renovations

The renovations of the Oakmont golf course were scheduled and completed in 2015. Thomas Fazio, a golf course architect born on the 10th of February 1945 was the lead designer for the renovations. His uncle, George Fazio, considered Tom responsible for jump-starting his own career.

He graduated from Lansdale Catholic in 1962, and he was initiated in the Lansdale Catholic hall of fame in 2007. Fazio started his career as a golf course architect via his family’s company from Philadelphia. Eventually, he decided to leave the company in the 1960s which led him to start his own company in 1972 based in Jupiter, Florida.

Thomas Fazio designed over 200 golf courses in his career. Additionally, 46 of the courses he designed had a place in the Golf Digest’s top 200 Greatest Golf Courses in America. Fazio has a lot of individual awards, and some of the most notable are the Best Modern Day Golf Course Architect which Fazio won 3 times in his career. Another notable award he won was The Old Tom Morris Award considered to be the highest level of recognition for a golf course architect. He won the award in 1995 and was the second person ever to get it.