Among the world’s most famous hazards, the Church Pews at Oakmont sit at the top of the cruelty list. Eight long ridges of grass run diagonally through a single sand pit between the third and fourth fairways, and they have been wrecking U.S. Open scorecards since the 1930s. This guide explains what the Church Pews actually are, why they punish so effectively, and how a recreational golfer can escape them when fate (or a hooked drive) sends a ball into Oakmont’s most photographed bunker.
What Are the Church Pews?
The Church Pews are a single, enormous sand bunker on the left side of Oakmont Country Club’s 3rd hole, also bordering the 4th. Inside the bunker sit eight raised grass ridges, evenly spaced, that resemble the pews of an empty church when viewed from above. The bunker stretches roughly 100 yards in length and is one of the largest single hazards on any major-championship course in the world.
Each pew is roughly four feet wide and three feet tall, with steep faces of dense fescue grass. The sand strips between them are narrow, deep, and raked into a soft, fluffy texture that punishes every kind of recovery shot. A ball can settle on top of a pew, in the trough next to it, or buried at the foot of a steep grass face. Each lie demands a different response and almost none of them allows a full swing.
A Brief History of the Church Pews
The original hazard at Oakmont’s 3rd hole was a series of separate cross-bunkers designed by Henry Fownes when the course opened in 1903. Fownes, whose design philosophy held that “a poorly played shot should be a shot irrevocably lost,” kept tinkering with the bunkering for decades. By the 1930s the cross-bunkers had been merged into a single long pit, and the grass pews had been added to make even successful escapes difficult.
From Eight to Twelve and Back to Eight
The number of pews has not been constant. Photographs from the 1953 U.S. Open show a different configuration than today’s. A 1973 restoration brought the count to twelve pews. A 2007 restoration by architect Tom Fazio, undertaken before the 2007 U.S. Open, returned the bunker to its iconic eight-pew appearance. The pews you see when the Open visits Oakmont — most recently for the 2025 Championship — are essentially the modern post-Fazio version, faithful to historical intent.
Major Championship Carnage
Oakmont has hosted the U.S. Open more times than any course in history. Across those championships the Church Pews have collected casualties from the best players in the world. Bunkers at Oakmont are intentionally not raked smooth — they are kept firm and furrowed — and the Pews compound the problem with the grass ridges. The result is a hazard where a tour-class player is grateful to escape with a bogey and an honest hacker can lose three or four shots in a single excursion.
Why the Church Pews Punish So Effectively
Three design features combine to make the Pews unique. The first is sheer size. At roughly 100 yards long, even a ball that finds the very edge of the bunker is closer to a fairway lie than a buried one — but the soft sand still robs distance and the next pew is rarely far away.
The second is unpredictability of lie. The combination of sand troughs and grass ridges produces six or seven distinct lie types. Your ball might be on flat sand with a clean look at the green. It might be plugged in the steep front face of a pew. It might be perched on top of a pew in thick fescue. The shot you would play from each is completely different, and there is no way to tell which lie you have until you walk to the ball.
The third is the psychological cost. Standing in the Church Pews, the player can usually see the green clearly, often only 80 to 120 yards away. The temptation to attempt the recovery — rather than chip safely sideways back to the fairway — is enormous and almost always wrong. Most double bogeys at Oakmont’s 3rd start with a heroic attempt from inside the Pews.
How to Play the Church Pews: Strategy First
The single most important decision is made before the swing: where to aim. Most recreational golfers stand in the bunker, see the green, and try to reach it. The correct play is almost always sideways or slightly forward, into the fairway, accepting a bogey at worst.
Step 1: Read the Lie
Walk to your ball before you grab a club. The four lies that matter are: clean sand with no pew between you and the target line; clean sand with one or more pews in the way; ball sitting against the steep face of a pew; and ball nestled in the fescue on top of a pew. Each calls for a different recovery, and only the first allows any thought of going forward.
Step 2: Pick a Target You Can Actually Reach
Walk to the front of the bunker and look at the trajectory you would need. If a pew is in the way, the ball must climb steeply within a few feet of leaving the clubface. Most amateurs cannot reliably produce that flight, especially from imperfect sand. Choose the widest gap in the pews — even if it is sideways or backwards — and play through it.
Step 3: Commit to the Plan
Once you have chosen the line and the club, do not change your mind in mid-swing. Half-committed swings from the Church Pews leave the ball in the pews. The course design rewards a confident bogey and savages an indecisive double.
Shot Mechanics by Lie
Once the strategic decision is made, the actual shot mechanics divide into the lies above. Bunker fundamentals are not unique to Oakmont, but the Pews demand the kind of disciplined execution that any rough sand teaches. If you have not drilled basic sand-save technique recently, that work needs to come before any trip to a place like Oakmont.
Clean Sand, No Pew in the Way
This is the only lie that lets you think about advancement toward the green, and even then only if the distance is sensible. Use a 56 or 58-degree wedge, open the face slightly, set up with the ball forward of centre and weight favouring the lead side. Swing along the line of your shoulders — which means swinging out to the left of the target for a right-handed player with an open face. Aim to enter the sand two inches behind the ball and accelerate through. The soft Oakmont sand needs commitment; a tentative swing leaves the ball short.
Plugged in the Face of a Pew
This is closer to a fried-egg recovery than a standard bunker shot. Close the clubface slightly so it can dig under the buried ball. Move the ball back in your stance and lean the shaft toward the target. Swing steeply down into the sand behind the ball. Distance control is almost impossible — your job is to get the ball out of the trough and onto flat sand, even if it does not reach the fairway on the first swing.
Sitting on Top of a Pew
Counterintuitively this is sometimes the best lie, because the ball sits up on grass with no sand to negotiate. Treat it as a thick-rough shot. Take one more club than the yardage suggests because the grass will grab the hosel and produce a flyer with reduced spin. Make a smooth, abbreviated swing — three-quarter length — and accept that direction will be more important than distance.
Against the Steep Face of a Pew
Forget the target. Turn around. The only shot is sideways to whichever side gives you flat sand or grass. Use a sand wedge with maximum loft. The ball will travel five to twenty yards. That is fine.
Equipment That Helps in Sand Like This
Oakmont’s sand is firm by championship-bunker standards, but the Pews still demand a wedge with the right sole geometry. A wedge grind with moderate bounce — somewhere in the 10-to-14 degree range — performs better than a low-bounce grind in mixed lies. High-bounce grinds slide through sand without digging too deep, which matters when you cannot predict whether the next sand grain is soft or compacted. Wedge condition matters too: grooves wear out, and a smooth-faced wedge from a bad lie gives no chance of holding a green even when you do hit it well.
What the Pros Do Differently
The strongest tour players in the world treat the Church Pews exactly the way recreational players should: as a recovery problem, not a scoring opportunity. Watch any U.S. Open broadcast from Oakmont and you will see top finishers chipping out sideways more often than going for the green. The difference is that their sideways shot lands within a wedge of the pin, while an amateur’s may still leave 80 yards.
The other difference is acceptance. Tour players treat a bogey from the Pews as a small win and move to the next hole. Amateurs often try to make the next shot rescue the hole, compounding a one-shot mistake into a four-shot mess. Oakmont is famously a course where every player will make bogeys; the winners simply avoid the doubles.
The Church Pews in the Wider Pantheon of Golf Hazards
Plenty of famous holes have a single defining hazard — the Road Bunker at St Andrews, the Devil’s Asshole at Pine Valley, the Hell Bunker on the 14th at the Old Course. The Church Pews are different because they are a single hazard that effectively contains many smaller hazards inside it, with completely different shot demands depending on which trough or pew you find. Few other places force a player to read the lie, choose a strategy, and abandon a swing pattern they were prepared to make on the tee — all in the space of a few minutes.
That makes the Pews a useful piece of architecture even for golfers who will never play Oakmont. Confronting a smaller version of the same problem — an awkward lie, a tempting target, a grass ridge in the way — happens on ordinary courses every weekend. The lesson the Pews teach is older than Oakmont itself: read the lie, choose the safest line that still scores, commit, and move on. The same lesson governs Pine Valley’s 5th and almost every other punishing hole at the highest level of the game.
Final Thoughts on Escaping the Church Pews
The Church Pews are designed to take a stroke from you, not to be conquered. Treating them as an obstacle to escape rather than a shot to attack will produce the lowest possible score for almost every golfer who lands in them. The mechanics matter — a proper bunker setup, a wedge with the right bounce, an open or closed face matched to the lie — but the mindset matters more. Choose the safe line, swing with intent, and accept the bogey. That is how the best players in the world play one of golf’s hardest hazards, and it is how anyone visiting Oakmont should plan to play it too.
