Last month, while attending a media day ahead of this year’s US Open at Shinnecock Hills, I learned a truly fascinating statistic.
Beyond four modern US Opens at Shinnecock624 players competed in the field. Of that group, the number of players who have scored a score under par?
Three.
“There are only golf demons around this place,” he said John Bodenhamerthe USGA’s golf course czar. “They come out of these putting greens in a devilish, wonderful, charming way.”
More than any other golf tournament, it can be said that a The US Open is a test of endurance. The player who survives four days of brutal conditions with the straightest head is usually the one who wins. This is especially true at Shinnecock, where the course has become famous primarily for its difficulty. After all, it was the last time Shinny hosted a US Open, in 2018, when Phil Mickelson delivered what might be the best modern example of an upset on the course, when he (infamously) dropped the ball so it doesn’t roll off the front of the green. The winner of that tournament, Brooks Koepka, posted a 72-hole score of 1-over.
That’s the subtext that brought stars like Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy to Shinnecock over the past few days for pre-tournament practice rounds. Both players had heard the legends of the 2018 Open – McIlroy even attended, missing the cut – and both wanted to get a good look at the golf course before tournament week arrived.
The stakes are high for both players entering Shinnecock: McIlroy is looking to solidify the third act of his career with a late streak of major success, while Scheffler remains one US Open away from a career Grand Slam. And after both took in the sights and sounds of the golf course that will host the national championship in two short weeks, the scouting report for both included a surprise.
“Shinnecock looks good LOT generous,” McIlroy told reporters at the Memorial Championship on Wednesday morning. “They’re more generous than they were in 2018. But the first cut is 5 inches long. So it’s like the first cut is maybe three steps wide and then it goes into the fescue. So if you lack the freeway for even a yard, you’ll go — but you don’t have to. Freeways are very, very generous. So if you miss the freeway, I feel like you deserve a bad lie.”
McIlroy wasn’t the only golfer surprised by the breadth at Shinnecock in 2026. His sentiments were shared by Scheffler, who toured the property for the first time Monday.
“I hadn’t been there before. It was my first time on the property,” he said. “I was a bit surprised by the width of the fairways, but the green complexes there are extremely difficult and I think that’s where the biggest challenge comes in.”
As it turns out, that surprise was well-earned. According to Bodenhamer, the fairways at Shinnecock will play an average of 48 yards wide in 2026 – a massive expansion compared to the first modern US Open held at the venue in 1986, and an unusually wide number for a US Open held … anywhere.
“It’s the widest we’ve been in 50, if not 75, years,” Bodenhamer said.
Bodenhamer’s words reflect a larger thing change in sentiment that the USGA has been pursuing under current CEO Mike Whan – trying to produce the right one golf test instead of attending par as a winning result. But as both McIlroy and Scheffler said, the width of the fairways will do little to change the winning score if Bodenhamer and his team turn up the heat on the course’s true test, the greens.
“The rough, too, was a pretty good penalty, I think, for the width. Once you start missing the fairways there, you don’t stand a chance,” Scheffler said. “But the fairways are pretty generous where they give you some opportunities and so it’s just that the greens are extremely difficult, and so they can put the pins wherever they want and make the scores as high as they want them to be.”
Both McIlroy and Scheffler seemed particularly gripped by the difficulty of Shinnecock’s greens, which are quite large in square footage but infinitely small in terms of strategy. On the wrong side of the fairway, the landing area to keep your ball on the green is often only a few feet wide, maybe the size of a hula hoop. On the right side of the freeway, things aren’t much better.
“The greens are rolling around 11, 11.2, something like that, and I really don’t think they need to go much faster,” McIlroy said. “I think if they can keep them at that green speed, they can make them consistent and they can use the hole locations they want to use without having some of the struggles they’ve had the last couple of US Opens.”
In other words, the tee width will be a pleasant surprise for some of the best players in the field at this year’s US Open … but it may be the last.
“If it’s set up the right way, I think it’s one of the best championship tests in the country,” McIlroy said. “I mean, it’s a great golf course.”
