Winged Foot: The toughest US Open course

Plus 4 or better

Both historically and today, the US Open is such a difficult test that relatively few players actually beat par. A better test might be to look at a more reasonable standard…let’s say four over par. That’s assigning four strokes to the reality that, hey, we’re playing for a national title here.

What percentage of the full field has come within four strokes of par on each course?

The table below shows how many players have completed four US Open rounds at each site, how many came in within four strokes of par, and what percentage of the whole that figure represents. Obviously, the fewer the percentage who do it, the tougher the layout.

        Competitors    Plus 4 or better                 Percentage

Winged Foot                      311                         10                                        3.2

Olympic                                331                         27                                       8.2

Merion                                 318                         33                                      10.4

Shinnecock                         276                         29                                      10.5

Oakland Hills                      407                         46                                      11.3

Oakmont                             558                          69                                      12.4

Pebble Beach                    426                           86                                      20.2

Baltusrol                              341                          88                                      25.8

Winged Foot not only doesn’t give up many sub-par scores, it doesn’t let players approach that number either. Of the 10 who did finish at plus-4 or better, six did so in the same year, 1984. That was the first time the USGA returned to Winged Foot following the 1974 “massacre”, and there was a strong suspicion that course preparation was eased up at least a bit to avoid a repetition of the field carnage that had ensued in 1974.

The striking thing about this table is that no other course is especially close to Winged Foot in denying low (by Open standards) scores. Olympic has hosted only a couple dozen more Open competitors, yet it has allowed nearly three times as many plus-four or better rounds.

On a percentage basis,  Oakmont – the course often viewed as Winged Foot’s closest competitor for “toughest” honors – has allowed nearly four times as high a percentage of “low” rounds in its Open history.