Oakland Hills Country Club — South Course

Oakland Hills opened its South Course in 1918 to a Donald Ross design, on rolling ground in Bloomfield Township, north of Detroit. Ross built it for championship golf from the outset: long for its day, and with the most severely contoured greens he had drawn to that point. The club has since staged six U.S. Opens and three PGA Championships on the South alone, seventeen major and national championships across its history.

The course plays to a par of 72 for members and a par of 70 when a championship is in town, at a little over 7,500 yards from the back. Robert Trent Jones Senior toughened it for the 1951 U.S. Open, the week Ben Hogan closed in 67 and said he had brought the monster to its knees. The nickname stuck, and so did the setup philosophy that came with it.

What it asks of you

The greens are the course. Ross put more movement into them here than anywhere else, and they run away from the middle in several directions at once. That changes the whole calculation of an approach: the safe miss is rarely the short side, and a ball that finishes on the wrong tier leaves a putt that cannot be lagged close.

The Trent Jones bunkering did the rest. He pinched the landing areas at the distances good players actually drive the ball, which is why the course rewards a player who can move the ball both ways off the tee more than one who simply hits it far. From the members’ tees the same holes are perfectly playable; from the back, at 7,500 yards, they are a different sport.

The ground is genuinely rolling for the Midwest, so uphill and downhill lies are common and the yardage on the card is rarely the yardage you play. Take a club more going up, and do not trust the number going down.

What players say about it

This is a private club, so the public record comes from guest accounts, championship coverage and specialist course reviews rather than from visiting players. The points below summarise what recurs in them. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• The green complexes are described as the finest set Ross ever built, and they are the single most repeated point in every account.
• The championship record gives the place a weight that few American clubs can match, and visitors say you feel it walking the property.
• Conditioning is consistently reported as immaculate.
• The clubhouse and the sense of history around it are mentioned almost as often as the golf.
• The restoration work carried out after the 2022 clubhouse fire is well received by those who knew the course before.

What comes up against

• Access is closed: this is a private club, and play is by invitation of a member.
• From the back tees the course is unplayable for most amateurs, and reviewers who tried it say so plainly.
• The green contours punish a high handicap harder than the length does, which surprises visitors who came prepared for the yardage.
• Several accounts find the Trent Jones bunkering more penal than strategic, a common criticism of the era.

Getting there and when to go

The club is in Bloomfield Township, about half an hour north of downtown Detroit and twenty minutes from Detroit Metropolitan airport by way of the interstate.

The season runs roughly from April to October. June and September give the best conditions; Michigan summers are humid and the greens are cut fastest in the shoulder weeks. Play is by invitation of a member.

Green fees

Guest conditions are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, the club’s published history and encyclopaedic entries for the architects, the opening date and the championship record, and public course records for par, length and setup. The opinion section summarises public reviews and guest accounts read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations.

We have not played this course, and this page is no substitute for a round. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.