OAKMONT, Pa. (AP) — There’s no water at Oakmont, even when it pours.
While the venerable and now nearly tree-less course carved out of the western Pennsylvania hills held up fine despite steady overnight rain ahead of Saturday’s third round, things were a little squishier, a little soggier, a little dicier outside the ropes.
Standing alongside the 11th tee box — one of the lowest points on the property — Katie Fulcher looked down at her black-and-white Nike dunks and shrugged. The 28-year-old had slipped them on before leaving the Airbnb she was sharing with some friends.
Now, with her shoes not quite as white as they were when she walked through the gates on Saturday morning, she shrugged.
“Fashion over function, I guess,” she said with a laugh, noting she had a newer and cleaner pair of the same shoes back home in Columbus, Ohio. “To be honest, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.”
For most of the day, she was right. The sun even poked out for a while in the mid-afternoon, though a brief shower passed overhead not long after the final pairing of second-round leader Sam Burns and J.J. Spaun teed off.
If you just looked inside the ropes, it was almost impossible to tell that a line of storms rolled through Friday evening, forcing play in the second round to be suspended for the handful of groups left out on the course.
There was no standing water to be found when the third round began under a cloudy sky at 9 a.m. on Saturday. All the rain seemed to do was slow down Oakmont’s quicksilver greens a touch, a welcome development for the 67 players who survived the cut.
Still, with the forecast calling for the potential of more storms on Saturday, the USGA offered full refunds to anyone who’d bought a ticket but was concerned about the weather. There were also a few problem areas that were roped off. The right side of the fairway on the short uphill par-4 17th was closed. So was a crosswalk at the 16th hole.
Over on the front nine, most of which sits on the other side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, crosswalks were closed on both the fourth and fifth holes, forcing a longer walk around, though hardly a dealbreaker for the thousands who made their way across the footbridge that connects the course.
“If they were playing, we were going to be here,” said Jackson Moore as he stood near the 12th green. Moore’s waterproof black boots had a few flecks of mud on them, though Moore joked he wasn’t sure how much of that mud was actually new.
It helped that the weather came six days into tournament week, when most of the spectator areas had already been trampled down pretty firmly. Things were wet, but that didn’t stop one woman from wearing wedge shoes as she stood behind the 13th tee.
Jim Bender and his wife, Susan, both rocked sandals while their 3-year-old son Jimmy had a pair of velcro sneakers on as they stood on mulch a few feet off the 10th green.
“We knew we had wipes in the car, so we were like, ‘So what if our feet get dirty?’” Jim Bender said.
Caitlin Jennings had black riding boots pulled over her white pants as she watched the pairing of amateur Justin Hastings and Jordan Smith putt out on the par-5 12th. Her boyfriend, Mike Clark, had on golf spikes.
Most, however, just wore sneakers of some kind. And whatever issues they had didn’t seem to have anything to do with their footing or their footwear.
Nancy Ring, 51, stood looking at signage adjacent to the 10th green wondering how to get to the fan village. Not too far away, John Thomas and his brother Jeremy were trying to negotiate their way down the hill from the clubhouse to the first green.
“Here we go with the moguls again,” John, 56, said as he gingerly picked his way over the small mounds that line the space between the first and ninth fairways.
Thomas, at least, had the good sense to put on what he called “the oldest pair of shoes I have.”
“I mean, it rained and we’re going to a place where there’s dirt,” he said with a laugh. “The math wasn’t hard.”
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