Dan O'Neill

There’s never any shortage of stories surrounding a U.S. Open. This 107th edition of “Love, USGA style” is no different.

There is the story around Tiger Woods, the game’s No. 1 player, who missed the cut last year after saying farewell to his father. He will attempt to make amends this year just weeks from becoming a father.

There is the stain of last year’s Open still attached to Phil Mickelson. The world’s most popular lefthander let one get away on the 72^nd hole at Winged Foot and hopes to wash the Jean Van de Velde taste from his mouth by capturing this one.

There is the nostalgia surrounding Ernie Els, who won the last time the Open was played at Oakmont Country Club, in 1994. The Big Easy has been a big disappointment in majors since winning the 2002 British Open. Maybe Oakmont can take him back to the future

And there is all the hype surrounding Geoff Ogilvy … you know … he won the Open last year … the Australian guy …remember?

But where the U.S. Open is concerned, there is always one story that overshadows the others — the golf course. Players come and players go. They may win this championship once if they are fortunate, more frequently if they are better than fortunate. But even the legendary likes of Tiger Woods is 2 for 12 in the U.S. Open. 

Interactive U.S. Open layout A hole-by-hole look at Oakmont, the course for the U.S. Open (241k pdf)

The golf course has a much higher batting average. U.S. Open courses are to the field what Eliot Ness was to mobsters. They always gets their man. Before the week is over, before the last bogey has been booked, an Open course has pounded everyone into submission.

“U.S. Opens are the least fun tournaments,” said Paul Azinger. “There is nothing fun about it.”

Former USGA official Sandy Tatum had different thoughts on it. He said U.S. Opens are not striving to embarrass the best players in the world, only to identify them. They do so by having a golf course chew them up and spit them out.

107th U.S. Open At Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club Tiger falls short as Cabrera captures title Opinion: Tiger shows vulnerability, limitations Opinion:  Welcome to our world, Tiger Opinion: Tiger won't be tamed at future Opens Opinion: Ornery Oakmont the ultimate winner   Ogilvy fizzles  |  Baddeley flops  | Furyk flunks All-time champions  |      |

No venue has checked dental records more often than Oakmont. This week, 147 of the best professionals in the game will come to this tiny piece of western Pennsylvania to do what its 400 active members do on a regular basis — get their derrieres handed to them.

They will be greeted by a 288-yard par 3 at No. 8, a 667-yard par-5 at No. 12. There will be more than 200 bunkers among the 7,230 yards, including the “Church Pews,” which looks like a steroid-inflated bar code. There will be slivering, slanting greens that will be running faster than a Belmont Stakes filly.

This week, the best of golf will undergo the test of golf.

“That golf course is going to be one of the toughest tests that we’ve ever played,” Woods said during a news conference at the recent Memorial Tournament. “It’ll be everything you want.”

Oakmont was designed in 1903 by steel magnate Henry C. Fownes, who was an accomplished amateur golfer. It was the only course he built, which makes him the ultimate one-hit wonder of the golf architecture’s Billboard Top-100.