The U.S. Open gives the USGA plenty of ways to toy with the world’s best golfers

Pittsburgh — Oakmont, the site of the 116th U.S. Open, is a hard enough golf course on any day. The greens are basically a racetrack, the rough basically a forest and the course basically a puzzle that stretches the imagination of even the best players.

But the USGA is on standby and could make the course even harder as the weekend progresses. Three of the course’s 18 holes have multiple tee box choices if the USGA wants to mix things up, and the landscape’s maze of deep bunkers gives the governing body the option to completely toy with players as the tournament rumbles forward.

Some of the changes the USGA could make while the event's in progress are relatively minor. The three variable tee locations don’t even change the distance of the course by a combined 100 yards out of it's 7,219 in total.

But there’s more variance than might appear, for instance, between a 667-yard par-5 12th hole and a 632-yard par-5 12th hole. Either is brutal, but Oakmont’s so big and has so much sand that even slight tee changes can alter the course’s dynamic. The 12th is a prime example.

"I mean, it's two very different tee shots from those [on No. 12] just because the forward one, you can carry the first cross bunker without any problem," USGA executive director Mike Davis said Wednesday. "But it brings a very, very sloppy drive zone into play."

Another one of Oakmont's most interesting holes is the par-3, 288-yard 8th, which runs parallel to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and presents one of the course's hardest decision points – apparently for both players and the USGA.

A 288-yard par 3 is outrageous on the surface, but it’s doable for the 156-player field here. In large part, that’s because the distance is so great that players can use 3-woods and fly the ball all the way there, getting over a massive bunker that guards the approach area at the front of the green.

"That hole, by the way, when you read about it, that was designed for drivers, 3-woods. That's what the Fownes (Oakmont's designers a century ago) wanted. It's a big green. It's a relatively flat green. It's probably the flattest green at Oakmont," Davis said. "It's not flat."

Golfers hunting for a green 290 yards away with woods sounds fun, and it is. But there's a twist: The USGA could move the tee up to a 252-yard distance, which would take 3-wood shots out of play for the longer hitters in the field.

That makes it an iron hole, and it’s tough (though certainly doable) for the players here to make irons fly and sit on the green from 252 yards away. The hole threatens to become a real tweener, unless you’ve got serious iron distance.

"I don't think the distance should fool too many people there this week," Adam Scott said Wednesday. "It's actually quite fair, that hole. There's a very large approach area to the green and a lot of room to err on the short side and be very, very playable."

There’s sand on three sides of the eighth green, which further complicates the matter of trying to reach it with a club that runs out. The USGA can decide based on its tee location how much that comes into play, although rain should make the hole play more easily.

The USGA will also have all kinds of fun with pin locations.

By Oakmont’s own count, the course has 210 deep bunkers scattered about the premises, and a bunch of them guard the greens. (A caddy already fell in one and broke his ankle on Tuesday, for an idea of quick the drop off.)

A bunch of Oakmont’s greens slope hard, too, so there's a cocktail for some miserable times to be had near the flagsticks.

Not that the players aren’t preparing. On Wednesday, most of them played around with potential hole locations at various levels of some of the landscape’s tiered and crowned greens, often chipping to pretend holes in the most miserable possible spots.

"Hole locations, it's hard to know where they're going to put them," Scott said. You're out there, and you're not sure if that's really a hole location or not. So we're all kind of going into it a little bit blind, obviously."