When Fashions Shift, It's Hard to Not Go Too Far

You may want to know my opinion on Israel's attack on Iran.

But I really don’t want to think about the Israel-Iran war at the moment. I’ve been thinking about Israel since 1973 and Iran since 1978. I’m tired. What I want to think about instead is finishing my post on the rise and fall of trees on the U.S. Open golf course, Oakmont.

I like writing about trends in golf course aesthetics because the common politicized explanations obviously don’t apply. For example, you can’t blame Trump or Wokeness or Gay Race Communism or whatever (although maybe you can blame Trump, as a golf course builder, a little bit) for the chainsawing of every tree but one within the perimeter of the Oakmont County Club, a robber baron era golf course outside Pittsburgh that is currently hosting its record-setting tenth U.S. Open golf championship.

Gay Race Communism is not welcome at Oakmont. Yet, Oakmont has still undergone extreme shifts in golf fashion over the last 80 years, as can be seen in these views from the 17th tee in 1994 (top) and 2025 (bottom) from Jamie Kennedy:

The Oakmont property, a rare stretch of western Pennsylvania that’s not too severely hilly for optimal golf, presumably was heavily forested in American Indian times. Then settlers chopped the trees down for farming. The steel-making Fownes family bought the treeless land and opened the Oakmont golf course on it in 1903.

At that point, golf was only about 15 years old in the United States and its tastes were dominated by those of Scotland, the home of golf. Scotland was producing many of the most successful businessmen in the world at the time (e.g., steelman and golfer Andrew Carnegie), so ambitious American businessmen flocked to the game in the hopes that whatever it was the Scots were getting out of playing golf would rub off on them and their net worths.

Golf courses originated in Scotland on the grass covered “linksland” sand dunes along the coast (the “links” link the land and the sea). The thrifty Scots wouldn’t devote good cropland to a mere game, so they played their national sport on marginal soil that couldn’t grow wheat or lumber, just grass for sheep. The golfers and sheep could share the golf course.

For instance, here’s Trump International Scotland in Aberdeen:

Giant dunes, no trees

So, when the Fownes family ruled Oakmont in the early decades of the 20th Century, there were no trees, as on a proper Scottish course.

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