Oakland Hills Country Club: South Course

Known worldwide as 'The Monster,' Oakland Hills Country Club's South Course is a storied championship venue in golf. Designed by Donald Ross in 1918 and dramatically restored by Gil Hanse in 2021, the course has hosted six U.S. Opens, three PGA Championships, and the 2004 Ryder Cup.

Oakland Hills Country Club was founded on October 17, 1916, when Joseph Mack and Norval Hawkins -- both executives at the Ford Motor Company, with Mack serving as advertising head and Hawkins as chief accountant and first sales manager -- gathered forty-seven friends and associates at the Detroit Athletic Club to form a new golf club. The initial purchase comprised 250 acres in Bloomfield Township, a rolling, wooded suburb northwest of Detroit, and 140 charter memberships were offered at $250 apiece. In December 1916, the club engaged Donald Ross, then the foremost golf course architect in America, to design its inaugural course. The South Course opened as a nine-hole layout on July 13, 1918, and was expanded to a full eighteen holes by the early 1920s. From the outset, Oakland Hills secured its place in golf history by hiring as its first head professional Walter Hagen, who had already won the 1914 U.S. Open. Mack recruited Hagen for $300 per month plus any profits from the sale of golf equipment. Ross crafted a layout that used the natural rolls and ridges of the southeastern Michigan terrain, with holes that flowed across gentle hills, through mature hardwood groves, and around a creek that bisects the property. The course was built to challenge the best players of its era, and it quickly proved its worth. Oakland Hills hosted its first U.S. Open in 1924, won by Cyril Walker, and a second in 1937, won by Ralph Guldahl. By the late 1940s, however, advances in equipment -- steel-shafted clubs and more tightly wound golf balls -- had begun to diminish the course's defenses, and the USGA looked for ways to restore the championship test. The pivotal moment in the South Course's history came before the 1951 U.S. Open, when Robert Trent Jones Sr. was commissioned to redesign the layout. Ross himself had recognized the need for changes and was prepared to undertake them, but he died in 1948 before the work could begin.

Jones's modifications were sweeping: he narrowed fairways, repositioned bunkers to challenge the modern tee shot, and rebuilt green complexes to demand more precise approaches. The 1951 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills represented the first time the USGA had deliberately altered a championship course for a specific event. The results were devastating. No player broke par in the first two rounds. Jimmy Demaret's 70 in the third round was the only score to equal par through fifty-four holes. In the final round, Ben Hogan produced one of the great closing rounds in championship history, firing a 67 to win the title. Afterward, Hogan uttered the words that would define the course forever: "I'm glad that I brought this course, this Monster, to its knees." The nickname stuck, and Oakland Hills has been known as "The Monster" ever since. The Jones redesign gave Oakland Hills a championship identity that attracted a remarkable procession of major events over the following decades. The South Course hosted U.S. Opens in 1961 (won by Gene Littler, with a young Jack Nicklaus earning low-amateur honors), 1985 (Andy North), and 1996 (Steve Jones). It hosted PGA Championships in 1972 (Gary Player), 1979 (David Graham), and 2008 (Padraig Harrington). The 2004 Ryder Cup was held at Oakland Hills, a dominant European victory. The club also staged U.S. Amateurs in 2002 and 2016, along with U.S. Senior Opens, a U.S. Women's Amateur, and a Western Open, bringing the total number of major championships and significant competitions into the dozens. No course in Michigan, and few in the entire country, can match this championship resume. Yet for all the acclaim the Jones-era course received, a growing sentiment emerged among architects and historians that the modifications had obscured Ross's original design intent. The fairways had been narrowed excessively, tree plantings over the decades had closed off sight lines, and the relationship between Ross's green complexes and the surrounding terrain had been altered. In 2019, the club engaged Gil Hanse, along with partner Jim Wagner and on-site coordinator Kye Goalby, to undertake a comprehensive restoration. Hanse and his team reviewed original Ross plans, historic photographs, and a printed program from the 1929 U.S. Women's Amateur to guide their work. The South Course closed in October 2019 for what would become a twenty-two-month project with a budget of approximately $12 million. The Hanse restoration was transformative. Fairways were widened to restore the strategic options Ross had intended. Hundreds of trees were removed, reopening views of the white clubhouse from nearly every point on the course and restoring the open, parkland character of the original design. The number of bunkers was reduced to roughly one-third of the Jones-era count, but the remaining bunkers were expanded significantly, resulting in twice the total square footage of sand. Several Ross-era features that had been buried or abandoned were rediscovered and brought back to life, including the original location of the seventh green and the natural creek that Jones had narrowed. The goal, as Hanse described it, was to get beneath the Robert Trent Jones years and reclaim the course's Donald Ross soul while selectively retaining features from the modern era that enhanced the design.

The South Course reopened in July 2021 to widespread acclaim. Tragedy struck on February 17, 2022, when a fire destroyed the club's iconic white clubhouse, which had stood since 1922. The loss was devastating -- the clubhouse had been a landmark for over a century, housing irreplaceable memorabilia from the club's championship history. The membership voted to rebuild, with costs ultimately projected to exceed $100 million. The rebuilt clubhouse is on pace for a grand opening in 2026, and the club's commitment to its future was affirmed when the USGA awarded Oakland Hills U.S. Opens in 2034 and 2051, along with U.S. Women's Opens in 2031 and 2042, a U.S. Amateur in 2047, a U.S. Women's Amateur in 2029, and a U.S. Girls' Junior in 2038 -- eight championships in all, ensuring that "The Monster" will continue to test the game's best players for decades to come. The South Course at Oakland Hills now stands as a rare achievement: a century-old Donald Ross design that has been restored to honor its creator's original vision while remaining fully capable of hosting the game's most important championships. From Walter Hagen's tenure as club professional to Ben Hogan's conquest of "The Monster" to the Hanse restoration that brought Ross's artistry back into the light, the South Course carries forward a legacy that few courses in American golf can equal.