Oakmont, PA. – The way Jack Nickoss described the challenges of the Omont Country Club in 1962, it can easily apply to Omont in 2025. The character of this championship golf course has not changed.
“I knew you had to drive the ball directly,” Nicholas told reporters on Saturday. “I knew that there was going to be a premium on this golf course.”
The story of Nicolas is different here: to secure its first major championship – and, in fact, any kind of professional victory of any kind – he also had to go to toe with the world’s best and most popular golfer Arnold Palmer.
And for Palmer, near Latrobe, Pa, it was a home game.
Nicholas said, “I stood fourth in 60 (in the US Open) and in 61 and I felt as if it was open to me.” “I didn’t realize that, one could not be at the age of 22, that I was in the backyard of Arnold Palmer.”
Palmer, a senior 11 -year -old Nicholas, was already established with five big companies named after him, including the first masters of that year. And the galleries of Palmer were the goods of legends. In Western Pennsylvania, throngs were even deeper.
When Palmer and Up-and-Ane Nickel equal 72 holes in 1, they were sent to the 18-Hole playoffs the next day. Niclaus surprised fans by taking a four-stroke lead through six holes, and he accused Palmer of a mid-round for winning three playoffs.
“It was really a kind of funny because I never listened to the gallery,” Nicholas said. “I was a 22 -year -old child in which it was blind and not enough to find out that people were vested for people. I just went out and played golf.
“I really considered Arnold as anything different. Arnold took me under his wing when I changed the Prof, and he never considered me anything other than a similar, and became one of the closest friends ever in the game.”
Apart from this, Johnny Miller was on Saturday to talk with reporters, who wrote his own chapter of history when the US Open was held in Omont in 1973. Miller shot 76 in the third round and was out of the top 10, to move beyond six strokes.
He proceeded to the author of a US Open-Tried 63 on Sunday, passed both Nicholas and Palmer to win in amazing fashion on the leaderboard.
“I played the first two rounds with Arnold Palmer, which was back in those days, his gallery had a crazy experience,” Miller said. “His gallery was – he was crazy. Crazy good.
“But the first two rounds were great to receive through the gunlet to play with Arnold. We both shot 140, and handle the pressure of that week – this was the second part.”
Since Palmer’s death in September 2016, this year the US Open Open first mentioned in Omont. Three months ago, Dustin Johnson picked up the trophy at Omkont, but was not healthy enough to participate in Palmer.
Niclaus called Palmer’s influence “very big” on the game, while Miller opted for John Wayne as a “man’s man”.
“He originally came together when television came together, and perhaps the television was great for Arnold, but Arnold was great for television and was great for the game,” Nicolas said. “There was a nature about him that no one else had, and people loved him.
The world of golf has changed in decades. Nicloss got $ 17,500 to win the 1962 US Open; The champion will take a $ 4.3 million house on Sunday. But in Omkont, affection for Palmer and his career has not died, nor is the honor of modern players for their elders.
“I was talking to some people in the locker room a few minutes ago, and they are saying – he said,” What do you think (of the course)? ” “I said,” Okay, obviously there is the key. ” I said, ‘I put the 55th Green three.
Miller added a jab to his broadcast career’s True-It-Like-It-Way in 2024 champions, which missed the cut.
“This is still about hitting the ball in the fair,” Miller said. “You look at those who do not do – like Bryson Decombo, he was living in someone in these last few days. Of course he gets to watch it on TV today.”
-Adam Zillonka, Field Level Media
