TomH and Chris:
I can certainly understand why you guys are struggling to understand why Oakmont is such a great golf course when it is so often described as "penal", a course with constant bunkering or hazards on either side of not particularly wide fairway corridors etc throughout.
Well, in my opinion, and to be very honest, part of the reason you may not be able to understand it is that most everyone who participates on here has become completely conditioned at this point to assume a golf course that is designed this way and described this way can NOT possibly be a world class course and world class architecture.
In a word that is just not so. A course that penal in that way can be great and Oakmont proves it. People on here really do need to rethink some of the almost Pavlovian responses they have to certain words and certain architectural ideas, and if any thing is proof of that fact, it's Oakmont.
There's no reason to make excuses about it or rationalize it---it can be really penal on either side, not everywhere but in surely enough places to get your serious attention.
I've said many times on here that Oakmont may be the most "center directed" course strategically I've ever seen, although in many ways some of the holes of both Royal Port Rush and County Down remind me that way of Oakmont.
in my opinion, the basic strategy for really good players is to simply pick as much club on the tees as you can stand and you think you can keep on those fairways some of which actually filter the ball right into bunkers positioned topographically to receive them.
That's the theme of Oakmont, that's the essence of its over-all strategy---eg what is the longest club you feel you can hit accurately? The course is the ultimate in "distance options" not "directional options"!
So forget about the standard refrain on here that a "penal" or strategically "center directed" golf course can never be great. Oakmont proves it's possible and has always proved that.
Sure great players have complained about its excessive difficulty such as Jones and many others and Chris mentioned Maxwell too.
Fownes was a total "difficulty" freak, but so was Leeds at Myopia and Crump at Pine Valley and probably even Macdonald at NGLA, and they didn't do too bad with those courses.
The point I'm trying to make is that it is certainly possible to have a great course, great golf architecture that is excessively penal and almost frightfully difficult "center directed" strategically with choices that are basically only "distance options" and Oakmont is one of those. Maybe a course like Carnoustie is too, that seems to be its reputation.
I have no doubt at all that if either of you could actually see it and play it you'd understand.
This was always meant to be one of those super "shot-testing" golf courses and designs. There never were 2-3 different optional routes on that course to get to the same place, you pretty much always had to suck it up and hit as much as you dared as straight down the middle as you possibly could or pay a potentially high price.
Oakmont is a perfect example of the "Big World" theory---eg there needs to be different things out there for different purposes.
As to this extreme "center directedness" and basically only "distance options" off the tee, hole #10 just may be the most interesting of them all. If you could see the variations in the fairway topography as you proceed along it you'd understand why.
Again, as long as this golf course will be in the US Open in June, if the course is really firm and fast and running I think you will see a repeat of Wood's Hoylake "whole tournament" tee shot strategy. I think if he played a long iron off the par 4s and par 5s for 72 holes as accurately as he did at Hoylake he'll win here too.