U.S. Open is June 12-15 at Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, a golf course hosting the national championship for a record 10th time. That's almost as many times as there are past champions (11) in the field this year.

Very few people will ever know what the true relationship was between Arnold Palmer and O.J. Simpson. As two sporting icons, were they friends, or merely fellow “actors” shooting very corny Hertz commercials together in the mid-1980s?

Alongside a trove of memorabilia from its storied championship past, Oakmont exhibits a reminder of one man's nicotine habit.

"You can't buy history," said U.S. Open managing director Jeff Hall. "You just can't. I'm a New York Yankees fan, and to see old Yankee Stadium come down, even with its warts, that was a cathedral." Hall's absolutely right.

The story of golf could not be told without the Oakmont Country Club. Rory McIlroy is having the worst week of his PGA Tour career at the RBC Canadian Open, prompting wild reactions online. Charlie Woods, a rising junior at Benjamin School and son of Tiger Woods, played the Florida Amateur Championship on Saturday in Palm Beach Gardens.

The U.S. Open goes back to Oakmont for a record 10th time and there's a reason for it. The course as tough as Pittsburgh steel is renowned as the hardest course in the land.

“We want to get every club in their bag dirty, all 15 of them, 14 in their bag and the one between the ears,” declared John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s chief championships officer, intending to see what the game’s top players are made of.