Oakmont's massive greens will be even bigger when the US Open returns next summer for a 10th time

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Oakmont's already massive greens will be even more daunting when the men's U.S. Open returns next summer for a record 10th time.

The club situated in the northern Pittsburgh suburbs has restored more than 24,000 square feet of green surface over the last two years as part of a renovation guided by golf course architect Gil Hanse.

Hanse initially was brought in to focus on the bunkers. During his trips to the course, he came across photographs from the 1920s and 1930s and noticed the greens used to be much larger before several factors — time and natural erosion most of all — began chipping away at them.

He talked to the club, whose membership enthusiastically agreed the renovations were a chance to make the notoriously fast greens even harder than they were when Dustin Johnson won his first major at Oakmont in 2016.

While the changes this time around won't be quite as visible as they have in the past — Oakmont has spent most of the last 30 years removing thousands of trees in hopes of returning to its wind-swept, links-style roots — the 155 players who will join defending champion Bryson DeChambeau could find pins tucked in places they've never been before during previous Open stops at the venerable course that opened in 1904.

“The greens are the No. 1 defense on the course,” grounds superintendent Mike McCormick said Monday. “Oakmont, in today’s world, it’s not a crazy long golf course. There are several holes out here the players will be hitting wedges into and it puts even more of an emphasis on (the greens).”

The course will play at 7,372 yards as a par 70 in 2025, a tick up from the 7,219 yards it played at in 2016.

One of the new pin options the expanded greens give the USGA is on the 182-yard, par-3 13th hole. Pin placement previously was limited to the left side of the green, with little wiggle room in terms of yardage. Now there are a variety of options, including a back-right pin that sits in the middle of a bowl, rewarding a good shot but almost inaccessible from other portions of the green, particularly the front right.

U.S. Open scores have trended lower of late. Only one of the last eight winners has posted a higher four-round total in relation to par than Johnson's 4-under 276, with the last six champions all finishing at 6-under or better.

Scott Langley, the USGA's senior director of player relations, thinks Oakmont remains one of the stiffest tests because it lacks the kind of shot options places like Pinehurst No. 2 (2024) or Los Angeles Country Club (2023) provide.

“You have strategic width (in those places), you can play the angles more,” Langley said. “There are spots here where you do that. But by and large, Oakmont is you hit a good shot or you don’t. And if you don’t, the penalty is pretty uniform.”

The more notable changes besides the greens are a new-look fairway on the 485-yard, par-4 seventh hole that offers players two choices: play it safe and short to the right but settle for a blind approach or aim left and try to carry a drive 320+ yards over a fairway bunker that if executed correctly lets you see the pin on your approach with a short iron.

Oakmont also rebuilt every hazard and revamped the course’s nearly 200 bunkers while updating the drainage system. The club was hit by nearly 3 inches of rain during the early rounds of the U.S. Open’s last visit, forcing the grounds crew and volunteers to get creative while bailing out the sand traps.

“The bunkers had deteriorated significantly from 2016 to 2022,” McCormick said. “There’s a lot of newer technology and ways to drain bunkers and hold sand and limit contamination. So the club had an opportunity to make sure that the performance of the playing surfaces (remained consistent).”

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This is an overall photo of Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

This is the Church Pew trap between the third fairway, top, and fourth fairway, bottom, at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

This is the tenth green at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa.,on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

This is the Church Pew trap between the third fairway, right, and fourth fairway, left, at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

This is the ninth green in front of the clubhouse at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

This is the eleventh green at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

This is the twelfth green at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

The thirteenth green gets mowed at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

This is the first green at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

This is the ninth green in front of the clubhouse at Oakmont Country Club, in Oakmont, Pa., on Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

LONDON (AP) — A car-ramming at a Christmas market in Germany, which police are treating as an attack, is the latest in a grim series of events in which vehicles have been used as deadly weapons.

There have been a spate of such attacks over the past decade, some committed by groups but most by individuals. The motives – where they could be established – have varied widely. Some were inspired by Islamic militant groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS, which encouraged followers to carry out low-cost, low-tech attacks with cars and trucks. Others have been linked to mental illness, far-right extremism and online misogyny.

What law-enforcement authorities term “vehicle as a weapon attacks” have reshaped cities around the world, as planners erect concrete barriers around public spaces and build anti-vehicle obstacles into new developments.

Here are some major vehicle attacks:

MAGDEBURG, Germany, Dec. 20. 2024 — At least five people are killed and more than 200 injured when a car slams into a Christmas market in eastern Germany. The suspect, who was arrested, is a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia who had expressed anti-Muslim views and support for the far-right AFD party.

ZHUHAI, China, Nov. 11, 2024 — A 62-year-old driver rams his car into people exercising at a sports complex in southern China, killing 35 people in the country’s deadliest mass slaying in years. Authorities said the perpetrator was upset about his divorce but offered few other details.

LONDON, Ontario, June 6, 2021 — Four members of a Muslim family die when an attacker hits them with a pickup truck while they are out for a walk, in what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls “a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred.” White nationalist attacker Nathaniel Veltman was sentenced to life in prison.

TORONTO, April 23, 2018 — A 25-year-old Canadian man, Alek Minassian, drives a rented van into mostly female pedestrians on Yonge St., the main thoroughfare in Toronto, killing 10 people and injuring 16. Minassian told police he belonged to the online “incel” community of sexually frustrated men.

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2017 — Sayfullo Saipov, an Islamic extremist from Uzbekistan, drives a pickup truck onto a popular New York City bike path, killing eight.

BARCELONA, Aug. 17, 2017 — A man driving a van slams into people on the Spanish city’s crowded Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 14 and injuring many others. Several members of the same cell carry out a similar vehicle attack in the nearby resort town of Cambrils before they are shot dead by police. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, Aug. 12, 2017 — During a “Unite the Right” rally, white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. intentionally drives his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring dozens of people.

LONDON: March 22, 2017 — British man Khalid Masood rams an SUV into people on Westminster Bridge, killing four, before stabbing to death a policeman guarding the Houses of Parliament nearby. He is shot dead. June 3, 2017 — three attackers drive a van at pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people in nearby Borough Market. Eight people are killed and the attackers shot dead by police. June 19, 2017 — Darren Osborne, a man radicalized by far-right ideas, drives a van at worshippers outside a mosque in London’s Finsbury Park area, killing one man and injuring 15 people.

MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan 20, 2017 – Six people are killed and more than 30 injured when a car hits lunchtime crowds at a pedestrian mall in Australia’s second-largest city. Perpetrator James Gargasoulas is found to have been in a state of drug-induced psychosis.

BERLIN, December 19, 2016 — Anis Amri, a rejected asylum-seeker from Tunisia, plows a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in the German capital, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. The attacker is killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

NICE, France, July 14, 2016 — Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drives a rented truck for more than a mile (almost 2 kilometers) along a packed seaside promenade in the French Riviera resort on the Bastille Day holiday, killing 86 people in the deadliest attack of its kind.

APELDOORN, Netherlands, April 28, 2009 – Former security guard Karst Tates drives a car into parade spectators in an attempt to hit an open-topped bus carrying members of the Dutch royal family. Six people are killed and Tates dies of injuries the next day, leaving his full motive a mystery.

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina, March 3, 2006 — University of North Carolina graduate Mohammed Taheri-Azar drives an SUV into a crowd at the university, lightly injuring nine people, in a self-professed bid to avenge Muslim deaths overseas.

FILE - Injured people are treated in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017 after a white van jumped the sidewalk in the historic Las Ramblas district, crashing into a summer crowd of residents and tourists. (AP Photo/Oriol Duran, File)

FILE - In this April 23, 2018, file photo, police stand near a damaged van after a van mounted a sidewalk crashing into pedestrians in Toronto. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - Forensic officers move the van at Finsbury Park in north London, where a vehicle struck pedestrians in north London Monday, June 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2016 file photo the trailer of a truck stands beside destroyed Christmas market huts in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, file)

FILE - In this July 14, 2016 file photo, authorities investigate a truck after it plowed through Bastille Day revelers in the French resort city of Nice, France, killing 86 people. (Sasha Goldsmith via AP, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 22, 2017 file photo, police secure the area on the south side of Westminster Bridge close to the Houses of Parliament in London. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

FILE - People fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. (Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress via AP, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2016 file photo Christmas decoration sticks in the smashed window of the cabin of a truck which ran into a crowded Christmas market Monday evening killing several people in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, file)