Golf has waded through a couple years of petty, but it’s also produced some epic moments that will linger forever.
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Over the course of the next seven days, you’ll see, hear and read a whole lot about the majesty of Oakmont — the depth of its viciously penal rough, the siren-like call of its Church Pews and Piano Keys, the miracle playoff between Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer in 1962 and the magnificent final-round 63 of Johnny Miller in 1973.
That’s what happens when you stage golf’s toughest test at one of golf’s finest, most revered courses — history swirls and surges, resurfacing memories of past glories and honoring the gods of the sport.
No sport worships its past with fanatical devotion quite like golf. If you’ve spent any more than 10 seconds around the game, you’ve heard of Nicklaus and Palmer and Tiger Woods and all the other goliaths who strode the fairways of Oakmont and its fellow legendary tracks. The implication in all this reverence is obvious: Golf’s greatest days are in the past. Today’s players might play the same holes, but they’re nowhere close to the icons on the sport’s Grand Leaderboard.
