Extreme make-over

Today marks the start of the 107th United States Open at venerable Oakmont Country Club, otherwise known this week as “and you thought Winged Foot was tough.”

This is typically the week the world’s best golfers have the hardest time checking their birdies through security.

Australia’s Geoff Ogilvy won last year’s U.S. Open at an almost ghastly five over par, but he’d take that score right now and run to the clubhouse.

Ogilvy dismissed a pernicious story circulating that he shot 15-over 85 and lost half a dozen balls during a recent practice round at Oakmont.

“That’s an exaggeration,” Ogilvy said. “I think I shot 83 and lost two.”

This week -- no matter how they slice it -- is going to be very par prickly.

“It does,” Padraig Harrington offered of Oakmont, “make Winged Foot seem very pleasant, let’s say.”

This is the eighth U.S. Open at Oakmont, the last in 1994, but you would hardly recognize the place.

Ernie Els, who won his first of three majors 13 years ago, says he has gained about 25 pounds since then while Oakmont has lost most of the junk in its trunks.

The course has been uprooted of at least 5,000 trees in a removal process that bordered on a spy operation in the years since Els’ victory.

The big twig wigs at Oakmont wanted to restore the layout to the links-style vision H.C. Fownes had originally intended for the course, which he designed and opened in 1903, but also wanted to keep the tree removal secret from members who might be opposed.

A plan was hatched to remove the trees a few at a time, in the cover of early-morning darkness, the logs sliced and disposed of before members arrived.

Over time, Oakmont was picked clean, leaving a barren, waterless patch of golf hopelessness.

Oakmont looks different now, like a mugger after a shave, but remains one of the most ominous tests in the sport.

The members like it this way and were generally appalled by Johnny Miller’s closing round of 63 to win the 1973 Open.

Oakmont isn’t handing out 63s anymore. It is 309 yards longer than it was in 1973.

The course is a par 70 now playing to 7,230 yards, but some say that’s a misnomer.

Sergio Garcia, still looking for his first major win, says Oakmont is “not too bad for a par 78.”

It is a common players’ ploy during U.S. Open week to play up the course’s viciousness, hoping that the U.S. Golf Assn. will dial it down with either a hose or a lawn mower.

Talk of 10 over par winning this year’s event might have prompted a last-minute trim of Wednesday’s rough, while a severe, hail-producing afternoon thunderstorm on tournament’s eve might have been a softening-agent gift from above.

It has always been a cat-and-mouse game on this issue.

The official, written USGA philosophy is “to make the U.S. Open the most rigorous, yet fair, examination of golf skills, testing all forms of shot making.”

A writer on Wednesday asked USGA official Jim Hyler to define the difference between rigorous and sadistic.

The line drew laughs but not a definitive answer.

Miller, who will be handling the analysis for NBC’s coverage this week, knows this is not the same course he walked away from with a 63 in ’73.

“Holes like one, 10, those holes were designed in hell,” Miller said.

Nothing like a brutal, 462-yard par four to get you started.

“No. 1 is the hardest opening hole in the world,” Miller said. “If you miss that fairway on No. 1, as they would say, ‘forget about it.’ Just hit it in the fairway, if you have a brain.”

Oakmont is known for having the fastest greens on record, with little or no flat ground to set the flags.

Tiger Woods, a two-time U.S. Open champion who is seeking his 13th major title, said they are, “by far, the most difficult greens I’ve ever played.”

Sam Snead once joked he tried to mark his ball at Oakmont and his coin slid off the green.

The Stimpmeter, a green-speed measuring device, was concocted in the 1930s by a bystander watching an event at Oakmont.

This week, golf coach Dave Pelz followed client Phil Mickelson around the course with what they call a “Pelz-Meter,” a $150,000 instrument to measure green speed.

Pelz is a former NASA scientist.

The grass at Oakmont is perennial poa annua, which is a strong weed that can be cut short enough to keep a golf ball from stopping.

All the holes are tricky at Oakmont, with the fairways of the third and fourth holes divided by the celebrated “Church Pews” bunker -- a humongous sand pit stripped with patches of grass. It’s one of 210 bunkers on the course.

Woods did not even bother to drop a practice shot into the treacherous pews.

“I don’t really think you should be practicing negativity,” he said.

Many players think the tournament will be won or lost in a four-hole gantlet from No. 7 to No. 10.

Phil Mickelson, playing despite a sore left wrist, called it the toughest stretch in golf.

“And that is the stretch that will eliminate the majority of the field in that four-hole area.” Mickelson said.

The most intriguing hole is No. 8, a 288-yard par three. Many players will need a driver to get there. Mickelson called the hole a “par three and a half.”

If you make it through the daunting 10th, a 462-yard par four, it’s clear sailing all the way to ... No. 12, a 667-yard par five, the longest in major championship history.

No one ever said winning the U.S. Open was going to be easy.

And no one has ever accused the USGA of wanting it any other way.

chris.dufresne@latimes.com