For the third major in a row, Tiger Woods will not be part of the field at the 2025 U.S. Open as he continues his rehab from a torn Achilles earlier this year. However, while the legend isn’t teeing it up at Oakmont Country Club, he knows a thing or two about competing in U.S. Opens at the venue.
Tiger finished tied for second behind Angel Cabrera in 2007, coming painfully close to what would’ve been, at the time, his third U.S. Open title. (He added it a year later in his iconic performance at Torrey Pines.)
Woods knows the kind of brutal test Oakmont presents, and he posted a video to his Instagram account this week discussing the challenge of Oakmont, explaining that what makes it such a compelling U.S. Open venue is that “there’s no faking it” around the course.
“You just have to hit the golf ball well there,” Woods said. “There’s no faking it about Oakmont. The golf course is big, yes, but it just — there’s no way around it. You just have to hit the golf ball well. And it favors longer hitters, just because of the greens, the complexes, it helps so much to be coming in with a shorter iron to be able to stop the ball on the greens. And it’s about missing the ball in the correct spots. Because if you don’t, it’s an auto-bogey.”
In a short video, Woods captures what makes Oakmont a beloved U.S. Open venue. Fans have grown accustomed to the U.S. Open being the stiffest test in golf and they want to see players “suffer,” in the words of Xander Schauffele.
No course is built to do that better than Oakmont, and as Tiger explains so succinctly, you can’t fake your way to a win there. Execution on every shot is a must, and we’ll see who can do that for four straight days.