Oakmont’s roughly 700 members have learned their lesson.

“The ditches are a pain in the butt, but most of us know that we’re better off just taking a drop and the penalty,” said Gerry Hickel, a member of Oakmont’s archive committee and one of the club’s historians. “We do that seven out of 10 times, at least.”

That may be the course chosen by recreational golfers, but golfers on the PGA Tour have exceptional skills and will not be so quick to turn away from a challenge.

“As good as they are, there might be a belief that they can get their ball out,” Davis said. “There will be some players who try that and do not get it out. But there will be others who hit it out and we’ll all be saying, ‘That was spectacular.’ ”

Davis, in fact, said he believed that in some cases a player whose ball tumbled into a ditch would still be able to advance it 100 or 150 yards. When was the last time that happened from a water hazard?

“That’s what makes the ditches so strategically fascinating,” Davis said. “Yes, standing on a tee at Oakmont, you don’t see an ocean or a pond or lake. But you know the ditches are out there. Sometimes they are literally right beside the fairway.”

Curtis Strange, the last golfer to win back-to-back United States Open championships and who will be a Fox Sports on-course reporter during this month’s tournament, said the players were indeed cognizant of the placement of every prominent ditch because they are so punitive.