GOLF / THOMAS BONK : For an Open at Oakmont, They Still Need Palmer When He’s 64

Golf gets what might be one of its last looks at one of its most important figures in a major tournament at this week’s U.S. Open, which Arnold Palmer is entering for the 32nd and final time.

Palmer, 64, is playing at Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh, which ought to help him if home-course advantage means anything. Palmer, from nearby Latrobe, Pa., has been a member at Oakmont for more than 30 years and has played at Oakmont since his teens.

He counts only one U.S. Open title among his triumphs, but he could have won twice more at Oakmont--in 1962 when he lost in a playoff to Jack Nicklaus and in 1973 when he fell victim to Johnny Miller’s closing-round 63.

Palmer clearly remembers both times he missed out.

“Actually, the thing that lost the (1962) Open for me there was putting,” Palmer said. “I three-putted 13 times and Nicklaus three-putted none.

“You would have thought that would have worked a little better for me at Oakmont, where I was raised, really. So you know, it was just one of those things.

“In 1973, I didn’t even know Johnny Miller was playing until about the 11th green and I saw a scoreboard and he was in the process of shooting a 63. I remember I hit a drive on the 12th hole immediately after I saw Miller’s score.

“It was a hole I knew very well and knew how to play it. I hit it right down the left side where I intended to play it and the ball hit in the fairway. In all the years that I had played there, it always kicks right, but it kicked left into the rough. That was the kind of thing that happened a lot in the Open, whether it was me or a bad bounce or a bad putt.”

How well his local knowledge of Oakmont will serve Palmer is unclear. In the 1983 Open at Oakmont, Palmer tied for 59th. It was the last Open in which Palmer has played until now. His first was also at Oakmont, in 1953 when he was an amateur.

Palmer said he intends to be optimistic until proven otherwise.

“I’m certainly going in with the thought that if things work out, I can play well and do well,” he said. “But on the other side of it, it’s a place where I sort of started a career, so to speak, and I guess it’s where everybody, including me, knows that it’s the last time that I’ll play in the Open.”

*

Add Oakmont: The course was designed before they found a place to put it. Henry C. Fownes, who sold his steel company to industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896, drew the layout on paper with Fownes’ son, then set out to find the land on which to build.

Fownes located the acreage he was looking for in the borough of Oakmont, about 15 miles from Pittsburgh. But he also found a big problem, according to Jim Finegan in the June issue of Golf magazine: too many trees.

The idea was to create a big, open layout like a British links course, so Townes had the trees cut down and in 1903 got what he wanted--a bleak, barren and very long golf course: a par-80 that included eight par-five holes and one par-six.

There also were more than 200 bunkers. At one time, the bunkers numbered 350.

Tommy Armour, who won the first of Oakmont’s six U.S. Opens, in 1927, called it a “cruel and treacherous playground.”

As a youngster, Palmer played Oakmont when the trees were still short. But he said the pitch and speed of the greens haven’t changed that much.

“You really have to watch it. The greens were always very fast and you had to play the undulations. That was the name of the game.

“If you got where you thought you could take advantage of a golf course that might not be jumping up and biting everybody, that’s just about the time it did.

“Oakmont’s rough is pretty bad. If you’re in the rough and going for the greens and the golf course is the way it’s supposed to be, there’s not much chance you’re going to keep it on the green. That’ll be this year or any other year.”

*

FYI: Who has won the most U.S. Open titles? Answer: Willie Anderson, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan and Nicklaus have each won four.

*

FYI II: Lee Janzen’s fourth-place finish in the Kemper Open this month was his first in the top 10 since he won the 1993 U.S. Open.

*

Vision Quest: Asked what it meant to him to win $114,400 when he tied for second place in the Kemper Open, Bobby Wadkins said:

“Right now, it doesn’t mean anything except that my wife can buy more Power Rangers stuff for our son.”

*

Vision Quest II: According to Larry Guest in the Orlando Sentinel, Scott Hoch thought he was having eye problems until an optometrist checked his contacts.

Wrote Guest: “After discovering the lenses had been mistakenly buffed instead of just cleaned a few months ago, cloudy lenses were replaced with clear ones.”

Hoch finished 13th in the Memorial and second in the non-PGA Tour Family Home Invitational to total $83,000 in his first two weeks with the new ones.

Golf Notes

The seventh Dave Taylor golf tournament will be played June 27 at North Ranch Country Club. The event benefits cystic fibrosis. Details: 310-479-8585 or 818-988-8002. . . . Craig Steinberg came from 10 shots back after the first round to win the Pasadena City amateur championship for the first time. Steinberg, of Braemar Country Club and the Southern California Golf Assn. amateur champion in 1991 and ‘92, finished with a three-shot victory over Bob Knee.