About 15 years ago, I got a call from a former high school classmate. Her boyfriend (now husband) was a junior member at Oakmont Country Club and had just finished graduate school in Pittsburgh.

My friend knew how much I loved golf. She said "My boyfriend needs a fourth for tomorrow out at Oakmont. He asked me if you wanted to play."

It took me three seconds to say "Yes." I called out of work the next day and nearly got fired on the spot. I stuffed the golf bag with every Titleist I had in my trunk, threw a toothbrush in the backseat and laid down a crisp five-hour time trial from Washington D.C. to her apartment on the north side of the Steel City.

I got there at 10 p.m. and I was giddy.

Of all the golf courses "on my list" to play, any-old school U.S. Open venue gets emergency priority. Your Oakmonts, Merions, Winged Foots, Oak Hills, The Country Clubs, Baltusrols or Medinas are typically difficult "gets."

Plus, I absolutely love that style of course. L-O-V-E it!

The next day at Oakmont, with my new best-buddy-junior-member-who-was-dating-my-friend-from-high-school, I was positively flying. The course was everything I had envisioned while watching it on TV when Larry Nelson won the Open in 1983 over Tom Watson.

It was a parkland beast. A wonder of immaculate conditions, fiendish greens, and bunkers tucked everywhere. And yes, I positively adored all the trees.

I don't recall what I shot that day, but I did not care. On my tidy Excel spreadsheet list of every course I had ever played, Oakmont CC went straight to the top. Ahead of Pebble Beach, ahead of Congressional, ahead of 109 less-worthy layouts.

Atop the list Oakmont stayed, while another 100 or so courses piled onto my list beneath it. Even though I had never been back, my memories and love of Oakmont remained vivid and untouchable.

So consider my shock and awe when I saw that Oakmont had razed nearly every tree on the property in advance of this year's Open. At first, I had heard they cut down "a lot" of trees.

Then, it was "between 3,000 and 4,000" trees.

When I saw the pictures, I thought: "why didn't people just say: ‘They left 5 trees standing.'" It would have been much easier to visualize.

I read with great interest -- and horror -- every advance article of the Open on how and why Oakmont decided to shave its head, Britney Spears style.

The reasons started with "increased turfgrass health" and were liberally reinforced with a desire to "restore founder H.C. Fownes' original vision" for the course. I even read how much USGA officials raved about the process and its benefits, and said other mature championship venues should consider doing it as well.

Well, I'm not going to bet that any of the other US Open parkland style classic venues I listed above are going to follow suit; certainly, not to that extent. I bet those clubs like their trees and are going to manage their growth in a sensible manner. To me, trees and golf go like peanut butter and jelly. Oakmont razing all 8,000 of theirs seemed as insane as St. Andrews suddenly planting just as many.

When I played Oakmont, I didn't notice any turf condition crisis. In the years since, I never heard people say: "Boy, those trees at Oakmont are just turning the place into a pasture. There's clover on the tee-boxes, and weeds in the fringes."

I can understand the challenges trees present to a well-maintained course. I get that limbs which overhang tees and greens can be a hazard, change shot values, and block light needed for growing. I'm cool with trimming them, taking some out, and keeping the growth manageable.

But, I've played dozens upon dozens of courses that are magnificently bracketed by trees of all sizes. I've played on lush country clubs where they co-exist with grass just fine, and the same for lower end muni's that cost $40 to play and don't have anywhere near Oakmont's maintenance budget.

Yet, the recurring vilification of trees in all these Oakmont articles bordered on the insane. I practically screamed at the articles: "Don't trees have rights, too!?"

If anything, turf conditions are getting better every year in golf, as designer blends are concocted on sod farms in Florida and elsewhere that withstand heat, drought, lack of sunlight, fat guys tromping on it with lit cigars and all kinds of golf course related maladies.

I refuse to believe that Oakmont HAD to cut down ALL of its trees out of agronomic necessity. It's just not possible. So stop selling me that bull. Taking down 25 percent of them around the greens and tees might have more realistic to improve turf conditions. I'd even go with 40 percent.

But I repeat: they took down all but five!

FIVE!

So the fallback argument seemed to be the "original vision" thing. And this one is even weaker than the first.

To begin with, let me be impolite enough to point out that H.C. Fownes was not one of the world's - or America's, for that matter - pre-eminent golf course architects. He did one layout. This one. And then he put away his shovel and rake.

I could understand if we're talking about an Alister Mackenzie original, or a Donald Ross, or a Tillinghast. But we're not. Sorry.

Fownes bought himself a piece of treeless riverside lowland, with a railroad easement slicing it in half. It was hardly the nursery paradise Bobby Jones laid eyes on in Georgia when he set out to build Augusta.

Fownes wanted a nasty brute, and that's just what he delivered - replete with heavy gray river bottom sand and the now infamous furrowed rakes. When every other course at the time was about 4000 yards, his was 6400 yards.

If the membership really wanted to bring back the old man's "vision" they would have had the balls to go all the way. Take out that pretty white sand. Bring back the 100 pound furrowed rakes. And while you are at it, take the green speeds back down under 10 on the stimp.

With modern equipment and Oakmont's much talked about "magic poa anna" (It never dies! It can't be found anywhere else in the universe! It's softer than velvet!) you can now groom the greens into supersonic coasters. I bet ol' man Fownes would have had his socks blown off at what his contoured greens are like at Mach-14 on the stimpmeter.

So really, the whole "This was Fownes' vision" argument for logging the place from corner to corner is an awful stretch. I bet Henry Ford had a "vision" for what he wanted his cars to be like someday, but I doubt he would still insist on crank starters.

Finally, if you can't hold your ground on the first two arguments, there's always the "but doesn't it look spectacular" defense of this Paul Bunyan act of over-correction. I heard that one too, from many in the media leading up to this week, and again through the tournament.

Well, I went to Oakmont on Saturday, and had a look for myself. It didn't look spectacular to me.

It looked stupid.

You can't argue that this now makes Oakmont a "links style" course because it has few - if any - of the hallmark features of a real links course. For one, links courses are mostly flat. This one is set on a dramatically sloping piece of ground. Plus, links courses are hard and fast tee to green, not lush and bordered with steroidal 6 inch ryegrass rough.

What amazes me most is that some will argue that Oakmont's head-shaving makes it a BETTER test of golf. Oh really. How so? If the rough is consistently grown for member play to a depth that makes hitting out of it onto the green virtually impossible, then you might as well just put red stakes around every fairway. If the opposite is true and you can actually get a decent lie well off the fairway, then there is absolutely no penalty for this poor shot, other than a little bit more math when it comes to figuring out your yardage.

And this is better?

Knowing the sadistic nature of Oakmont's membership, and their never ending fetish with achieving otherworldly green speeds, I pretty much get why they would go along with this makeover. Even though at first Oakmont's grounds crew took out trees by night -- like Tony Soprano whacking somebody and stuffing them in his trunk -- the ensuing threats of lawsuits were probably quelled by the promise of even faster greens once the trees were all gone.

Hell, Oakmont members would shave their own mothers bald if it meant another ½ foot on the stimp.

I won't go so far as to say they have "ruined" Oakmont by going on a Huskvarna rampage (did the members at least get free firewood?), but I won't back down from my belief that this is like a beautiful woman who shaves her head in hopes that it will improve her dandruff problem.

Oakmont is still a rugged beast of a course, unlike anything I've ever played or seen. But now it's like Demi Moore with the military crew cut in "G.I. Jane." The killer body is the same, but wouldn't you rather have her like she looked in "Indecent Proposal?"

I know that my chances of a future invite to play Oakmont are as gone as all those trees after this review, but I'm OK with that. It's not my club, and if the members are proud of what they have now, then bully for them.

I'm just trying to figure out what kind of asterisk to put next to Oakmont at the top of my list.