Southern fried in the Hills of Oklahoma

US PGA Southern Hills: Of the 10 days in majors when the heat hit 100°F, five were at Southern Hills, writes Philip Reid.

These days, no golf course can stay the same. There's always a need to tweak, to improve.

So, although just six years have passed since the famed Southern Hills course played host to its last major, the 2001 US Open, in which Retief Goosen defeated Mark Brooks in a play-off, the course for the 89th US PGA Championship has undergone the type of surgery that will make it play longer and, most probably, tougher, with the addition of quicker greens and steep, shaved-grass banks.

It was here, back in the 1958, that a certain Gene Sarazen, a seven-time major champion, described the first round of the US Open as "the most harrowing, heartbreaking experience" of his career.

"I was shaking at the end," Sarazen is quoted as saying: "The guy that did those pin placements should be brought before the jury, convicted . . . and hung."

Such a sentiment as Sarazen's might have been a tad extreme, but, given the forecast temperatures of over 100 Fahrenheit for this week's final major of the season, it is probably a good thing that one of the few constants at the club since it opened in the mid-1930s is that the original showers in the locker-room - with, ironically, pipes and shower heads purchased from a local prison - provide the sort of gushing effect designed to ease the effects of playing in such heat and humidity.

The heat, as much as the course, will be a huge factor this week. The hottest major in the history of the game was the 1970 US PGA here (average temperature 100.3 F), while each of the six previous majors played at Southern Hills rank in the top-25 hottest majors.

Of the 10 days in major history that the mercury climbed into three digits, five of them were recorded at Southern Hills.

Apart from the heat, the course will make players think over every shot: since 2000, $30 million has been invested in the facility, with $22 million going towards the renovation of the mock French clubhouse and another $7.3 million into the course and maintenance facility.

The course, originally designed by Perry Duke Maxwell, has been lengthened from 6,973 yards (when it staged the 2001 US Open) to 7,131 yards.

Southern Hills has an interesting past. The course was designed by Maxwell, who apparently knew nothing about golf until he read an article in Scribner's magazine. He was 30 at the time, and a banker. But he took up golf, bought some land near a town called Ardmore - between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Forth Worth, Texas - and built a nine-hole course which he called Dornick Hills. It was noteworthy for being Oklahoma's first with grass greens.

When Maxwell lost his banking job in 1917, he cashed in some oil holdings and then decided to devote his working life to course design. He spent a year visiting courses in Scotland and around the US and, on his return home, was hired to build municipal courses in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

He was one of a kind. He never drew up plans, but rather walked sites and staked out features. One of his daughters prepared sketches for the greens, while his brothers-in-law did the physical labour.

Maxwell was known for creating large greens with bold contours, swales and undulations.

Remarkably, in 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, he was given the job of designing Southern Hills. It was five years after the crash on Wall Street.

Money wasn't easy to come by in the mid-1930s when one in every five Americans was unemployed. But more than 100 Tulsa businessmen and sportsmen made financial pledges when the idea to build a country club near downtown Tulsa was mooted.

The 300 acres of land was donated by a local philanthropist and banker, Waite Phillips, who made the condition that his friend Maxwell - who had completed a rebuilding of the greens at Pine Valley and remodelled National Golf Links - be awarded the job as course designer.

So keen was the architect to have a hands-on approach during that course's construction that Maxwell lived on-site in tents while the work was completed.

From the start, club officials envisioned Southern Hills as a site for significant tournaments, and within a few years of its debut they landed the US Women's Amateur, but the second World War forced plans for that tournament to be shelved.

But the event did arrive in 1946, crowning Mildred Babe Zaharias, who had won gold medals in the 80 metres hurdles and javelin in the 1932 Olympic Games, as champion.

Its first major was the US Open in 1958, won by Tommy Bolt, while it also staged that championship in 1977, when Hubert Green won, and most recently in 2001 when Goosen claimed his first major.

This week's staging of the US PGA will be the fourth staging of that event there. Previous winners were Dave Stockton (1970), Ray Floyd (1982) and Nick Price (1994).

Yet, it should be noted that Southern Hills doesn't always reward favourites. While Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gene Sarazen, Tom Watson and Tiger Woods - men with 70 majors between them - have all played here, none has won a major at Southern Hills. From 1937 to 1963, Snead missed just one cut in a major. It came at Southern Hills.

The course this time round is different. It is longer, and has been renovated to "recapture" the spirit of Maxwell's original layout while incorporating modern design elements that would better handle thunderstorms: greens were rebuilt to USGA specifications and trees (there was a tree-planting binge in the 1950s) were lifted or removed and the faces of bunkers were lowered. Last winter, a subsurface root-cooling system was installed to ensure faster draining.

There has also been some design tweaking: the 464-yard opening hole now embraces two bunkers down the right, at 272 yards, while players will be tempted to use driver off the tee to avail of a fairway slope at 292 yards that can kick the ball on and leave players with the tantalising reward of a wedge to the the green.

The par four second features a new tee that increases the hole by 17 yards to 488 yards (with a carry of 255 yards to the fairway), while, on the third, the club removed Oklahoma's largest elm tree to lengthen that hole and allow some sunlight and air to find the second green.

Other changes to the course include an extensive tree removal programme on the sixth and the installation there of a closely-mown creek bank by the green, while the dogleg par four seventh hole of 384 yards features an entirely new green, replacing the Robert Trent Jones creation installed prior to the 1958 US Open.

And the finishing 18th hole has had its fairway widened (compared to 2001) to 38 yards so players will be asked to use imaginative shotmaking rather than madly slashing out of rough.

But while surgery has been carried out to the course, the aim is that it will help to recreate the way that Maxwell wanted it to be played.