[ad_1]
Oak Hill Country Club will host its seventh major championship this week as the PGA Championship returns for the first time since Jason Dufner beat Jim Furyk back in 2013. In addition to three other PGAs and three U.S. Opens, the East Course at Oak Hill also played host to the 1995 Ryder Cup, which Europe won over the United States 14.5 to 13.5.
It will be a new look Oak Hill from those previous events, though. The club underwent a restoration back in 2019-20 when course architect Andrew Green worked to reimplement some of the concepts Donald Ross intended when he first designed the golf course back in the 1920s. It’s a different (and probably better) golf course than it has been over the past several decades.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though, because Oak Hill’s history is as storied as it is lengthy. Let’s go all the way back to the beginning of the story of this golf course, how it came to be and how it has evolved into the form it will take this week. Let’s take a look at six things to know about Oak Hill Country Club ahead of the 105th PGA Championship.
1. The land was cheap (and back in the day, it was free): The entire Oak Hill creation story is wild. The club initially purchased 85 acres next to the Genesee River for $34,000 in 1905. This is the equivalent of nearly $1.2 million in 2023. Then, in the early 1920s, the University of Rochester traded the club 355 acres of land for the 85 acres it was currently on. Oh, and they threw in $360,000 — the equivalent of $6.1 million today. So, the club ultimately gained 270 acres and $5 million in 2023 dollars beyond what it already had acquired. They went on to have Ross architect both the East Course and the West Course, though only the former has been used for big-time events.
2. Winners are a mixed bag: On one hand, you have Lee Trevino shooting all four rounds in the 60s and beating Jack Nicklaus in the 1968 U.S. Open. On…
[ad_2]
Source : cbssports
