It seems any time the US Open heads to a traditional, Golden Age golf course, the days leading up to Thursday’s opening tee shot are dominated by images of players dropping golf balls into the long grass lining fairways and surrounding greens and having the ball all but disappear.

And then taking almighty thwacks at it and barely escaping.

Oakmont, the most penal of all the revered, old American courses, was founded by the Fownes family who believed a shot misplayed should be a shot irrevocably lost.

It’s not so much the principle of the golf at St Andrews or Royal Melbourne where a misplayed shot needs to be followed by something out of the top drawer as opposed to a hack out of the long grass.

Still, the US Open in the years immediately following the Second World War did a brilliant job of identifying four-time-champion Ben Hogan as the finest player of his generation.

His relentless accuracy wore down both the courses and the opposition and ever since the USGA has championed identifying players with skills replicating the man from Fort Worth. History has shown us the breath of his skills is hard to find or replicate.

Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods came closest, winning four and three Opens respectively with Nicklaus’s first, 63 years ago at Oakmont, the site of Hogan’s fourth.

The game has changed beyond recognition since 1953 Hogan.

The defending champion Bryson DeChambeau bludgeoned his way to the trophy at Winged Foot – another of America’s great old courses - in 2020 where he hit fewer than half the fairways. So far did he drive, he was often close enough to the greens to reach them with short irons no matter how deep the ball in the rough.

Pinehurst last year was a much different test, and it showed off the versatility of DeChambeau’s skills and his strength from the rough, allied with his length off the tee, will likely be an incalculable Oakmont advantage.

So will putting on greens cut so fine them might even make the fastest of the Melbourne Sandbelt look tame.

In Australia we have something of an unhealthy obsession with fast greens, but Oakmont’s members seem be the game’s most masochistic mob.

They love to boast that the greens are slowed down for the Open but was golf really meant to be played on something where the ball-surface friction is akin to putting on a linoleum floor?

Despite the distortions of speed and rough, Oakmont is one of America’s great courses.

Tom Doak perhaps described it best when he noted: “Like Carnoustie and Muirfield, Oakmont is a course universally respected but not often loved. Its relentless difficulty is beyond the ability of most golfers to appreciate.”

What it has done is identify the premier ball strikers including Hogan, Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Larry Nelson, Ernie Els, Angel Cabrera and Dustin Johnson.

All of which seems to suggest Scottie Scheffler is the most likely winner.

Scheffler has clearly played the most consistent high-level golf on the tour for at least a couple of seasons and a duel with Rory McIlroy to match what we saw at Roland Garros on Sunday would be something.

It’s simpler to arrange in tennis when the best players have an easier time of it – by dint of essentially playing match play against a limited number of opponents as opposed to 155 others – to reach the final day.

McIlroy was unusually terrible for him in Canada last week and Oakmont won’t be the easiest place to find his game, but hopefully last week was an aberration as opposed to a suggestion there are deeper problems with his game.

Either way, it’s the madness of the US Open and whilst not my favourite form of golf (we will have to wait for Portrush next month and Royal Melbourne in December), it’s fascinating to watch the best players in the game fighting to stay anywhere near par and having to drive with relentless accuracy.

Or do it the Bryson way.