Colin Montgomerie makes the winning putt in the U.S. Senior Open at Oak Tree National.
Photos courtesy USGA
After hosting successful U.S. Senior Open, Oak Tree National leaders look ahead by ken macleod
It takes years to prepare for a major golf championship. After the championship, it takes about a month to tear everything down, ship it off and get back to a semblance of normalcy. That’s been the scene at Oak Tree National in Edmond since the conclusion of a very successful U.S. Senior Open Championship, won in a playoff July 13 by Colin Montgomerie over Gene Sauers. Once the playoff was set, Oak Tree National really couldn’t go wrong. It was either going to have as its champion the feel-good story of Sauers, who has overcome a debilitating skin disease, or the formerly irascible but now mostly lovable Montgomerie, the Scot who fell in love with Oak Tree at first blush and promised to sing its praises to all of Great Britain. Oak Tree National co-owner Everett Dobson and President and Chief Operating Officer Tom Jones both said the club 30 •••••• www.golfoklahoma.org
stands to do reasonably well financially thanks to strong corporate sales. It also helped that good crowds turned out despite daily temperatures near 100 and the fact that the local contingent didn’t fare well and some key stars such as Tom Watson and Fred Couples did not play. The Senior Open held in Omaha in 2013 set records for attendance with more than 140,000 spectators Everett Dobson Tom Jones and corporate support. better with all the nice things the players Oak Tree did not match those numbers, were saying about the course.” but when final numbers are tallied it will Montgomerie, Vijay Singh, Sauers and likely wind up second or third all-time. many others were unanimous that Oak “Omaha was a tough act to follow, but Tree National was fully capable of hosting from our standpoint, we accomplished a U.S. Open. From a course standpoint, what we wanted to accomplish,” Jones there’s no doubt. The Pete Dye creation said. “We put Oak Tree National back on is hard enough and fair. There were few the map. We couldn’t have scripted it any