Oakland Hills, South Course

On 17 February 2022 a blowtorch being used to repair flashing caught the outside wall of the clubhouse, and the building burned down. The course had been there since 1918, when Donald Ross laid out the South. Six U.S. Opens have been played on it, from Cyril Walker in 1924 to Steve Jones in 1996. Three PGA Championships went with them, won by Gary Player, David Graham and Pádraig Harrington, and Europe took the 2004 Ryder Cup here. Robert Trent Jones redesigned the Ross layout before the 1951 U.S. Open, and the USGA narrowed the fairways and grew the rough, the first Open prepared that way.

Gil Hanse worked on the South Course from 2019 to 2021 for $12.1 million, taking out trees, enlarging the greens, putting PrecisionAire subsurface systems beneath them, and removing bunkers while making the survivors bigger. The course a member plays now is the Ross ground opened out again, with fewer bunkers and bigger ones. The rating says what that ground still costs: 77.0 with a slope of 145, over 7,509 yards that a championship setup plays at par 70 rather than the members' 72. The 1951 championship is still the measure of the place: two sub-par rounds were shot in the whole week. Ben Hogan hit one of them, a closing 67 for 287, and said afterwards that he was glad to have brought this monster to its knees.