In June the U.S. Open returns to Oakmont, in the Pittsburgh suburbs—a classic U.S. Open venue beloved by organizers of the USGA and dreaded by the players in equal part.
True Pittsburghers, like tour golfer Rocco Mediate, bleed black and gold, and it’s about more than simply loving their sports teams. “Pittsburgh was a steel town, very blue-collar and old-school and tough, and I grew up the same way,” states Mediate, who was born in 1962 in Greensburg, 30 miles east of Downtown Pittsburgh. His father, Anthony, had a spell as a minor league pitcher with the Pirates and shagged balls for major leaguer Roberto Clemente in the 1960s.
The Steelers won an NFL playoff game for the first time, defeating the Oakland Raiders at the old Three Rivers Stadium on December 23, 1972—with a series of dramatic plays involving subsequent football legends. Quarterback Terry Bradshaw desperately scrambled before launching a last-ditch pass that ricocheted off two colliding players. Just before the ball could land on the turf—and end another disappointing Steelers season—rookie running back Franco Harris plucked it off his laces and galloped 43 yards into the end zone to win the game. The Immaculate Reception.
The Steelers won their first Super Bowl two years later, defeating the Minnesota Vikings 16 to 6. Harris ran for 158 yards that day—a Super Bowl record at the time—scored a touchdown, and was named Super Bowl MVP. Under head coach Chuck Noll, and with Harris as running back throughout, Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl four times in six years. The Pirates chimed in with a World Series win in 1979 (led by Willie Stargell, to the tune of “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge), and Pittsburgh was the City of Champions.
“The Steelers gave people a sense of pride that wasn’t there before,” comments Mediate, a five-time winner on the PGA Tour Champions, who took Tiger Woods to a playoff for the 2008 U.S. Open.
In today’s Pittsburgh, the smog of the steel mills has lifted to reveal a distinct city shaped by three rivers—the Allegheny meets the Monongahela, and they form the Ohio. The various districts are connected by more bridges than there are in Venice, many of which are painted yellow, in case you forget those team colors.
“With the hills, the rivers, and our bridges, there is a unique sense of landscape in Pittsburgh,” states Anne Madarasz, chief historian and director of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum, which is part of the award-winning Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh.
“Everybody around the world knows Pittsburgh for steel, but now it is a major center of medical and industrial innovation,” Madarasz adds. Pittsburgh also has become a city of advanced education, with more than 20 universities within the city limits. Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh are both at the forefront of advancing AI applications across medicine, robotics, and business, and tech leaders Duolingo and Aurora Innovation are based in the city.
While investigating these Pittsburgh-area sports milestones and current achievements, it also seemed appropriate to check out the city’s most famous neighborhood—in an obvious segue leading from Oakmont’s spectacular bakery through to a paradise of ethnic and other foods that blends the old with the new and draws visitors from all over the nation.
Pittsburgh’s Strip covers a long stretch of flat land between the Allegheny River (an easy trip from Oakmont via Allegheny River Boulevard) and the Hill District, and it’s a pleasant walk from Downtown. It is apparent that most of the action takes place on two parallel streets, Penn Avenue and Smallman Street, where a colorful and diverse assortment of mainly independent shops, delis, bars, and restaurants reveals the authentic Pittsburgh and its people.
The Strip is also home to such food meccas as Sunseri’s, whose pepperoni rolls are a Pittsburgh must, and Penn Mac (the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company), which has occupied its store since 1902. The latter has gradually evolved and grown into an Italian import specialist, famously visited by opera singer Luciano Pavarotti in the 1980s.
Oakmont Country Club, the U.S. Open host venue, is in Oakmont Borough, just a couple turns of the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh’s northeast. Toward Oakmont from Pittsburgh, just across the Hulton Bridge, the Oakmont Bakery is almost the first stop immediately after the bridge—and is not to be missed. On Oakmont’s Allegheny Avenue, a hot spot for lunch is the Lot at Edgewater, which has a spacious cigar room upstairs. Also keep an eye out for the new Local Remedy Brewing taproom, which opened in January and where the tables and bar tops are made from locally sourced wood.
Oakmont staged a U.S. Open that signalled the start of a new era in 1962. Arnold Palmer could have, should have won the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont. Virtually every single person who bore witness—on a golf course not 40 miles from where Palmer grew up in Latrobe—was rooting for the local hero, the best golfer in the world at the time. But Palmer let his final-round lead slip, a young rookie called Jack Nicklaus marched on undeterred, and Palmer was left with one of the greatest regrets of his playing career.
Palmer opened up about the 1962 Open in one of his final interviews with Kingdom magazine, in the spring of 2016, ahead of that summer’s previous U.S. Open at Oakmont.
“My recollections are so vivid,” started Palmer, aged 86 at the time, and who passed away later that year. “I can feel the heat, the sweat on my brow, I can hear the calls of ‘Go get ’em, Arnie!’ during that playoff at Oakmont—when a rookie Jack Nicklaus ultimately out-played me. I can still hear the eerie quiet as the Western Pennsylvania crowds shared in that suffering loss. I have to admit, it is one great regret of my playing career that I didn’t win a U.S. Open at Oakmont. I first played the course as a boy with my father and have always had the greatest respect, admiration, and affection for that golf course and the whole club.”
Not only did Nicklaus have to block out the noise of the vociferous Pittsburgh crowd and beat the local hero, but he won his first professional title on one of the world’s toughest golf courses. They say that winning at Oakmont is more about survival than it is about shots.
When a club golfer once asked Palmer for advice on how to tackle Oakmont, he replied: “Well, I suggest you start by playing someplace else.”
