AN OPEN QUESTION: WHAT DO OAKMONT'S CHAMPIONS HAVE IN COMMON? UM...

If there's one thing golfers (and golf writers) love (and hate), it's a cliché. Drive for show, putt for dough. Tee it high, let it fly.

- By Evan Rothman

Never up, never in. Never mind that they're generally about as useful as a 1-iron in a pot bunker.

Then there's "horses for courses." Conceptually, it makes sense. And, yes, Tiger won eight times at Torrey Pines, Firestone and Bay Hill. But when you're Secretariat, every track suits you. Save your stamp, Mark O'Meara: We know you won five times at Pebble Beach, almost a third of your 16 Tour wins, which include a Masters title.

Augusta National, there's a rub. Given its length, it's a long hitter's heaven-except when it isn't. Charl Schwartzel? Zach Johnson? Mike Weir? At what point do the exceptions that prove the rule suggest that maybe it's not really a rule after all?

Which brings us to Oakmont, the most visited and maybe most feared of all U.S. Open sites. It became the longest ever Open host upon its debut in 1927 at a whopping 6,929 yards. It's bombers who win Opens at Oakmont, like Jack and Ernie and DJ and Ángel Cabrera. Except when it's great iron players, like the OG Tommy Armour, Ben Hogan, Johnny Miller and Larry Nelson. If we're going for clichés, how about "the cream rises to the top at Oakmont"? Except, of course, when a local head pro, Sam Parks Jr., wins his only big title, following in the footsteps of Oakmont's first USGA champion, the Bob Jones-slaying Davidson Herron, an Oakmont member who won the 1919 U.S. Am here. Horses generally do like their home oval.

Here are the U.S. Open winners at Oakmont and how they got it done. Like a snowflake, each is unique.

TOMMY ARMOUR, 1927