So much history is involved when the U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock Hills, the only golf club to host this major championship in three centuries.<\/p>\n
Scottie Scheffler will try to take his place in history when the No. 1 player goes after the final leg of the career Grand Slam. Should he win, he would be the seventh player to win all four majors and join Tiger Woods as the only players since 1960 \u2014 the modern era of the slam \u2014 to get it done on his first try.<\/p>\n
That ordinarily would be the sole focus of the 126th U.S. Open, to be played June 18-21, except for the recent history at Shinnecock Hills.<\/p>\n
It has not been smooth sailing off the Great Peconic Bay on Long Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard when you run one tournament a year \u2014 and you run it on a different golf course every year \u2014 to get it just right,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cAnd you\u2019re trying to make it hard. I think in the U.S. Open, they push the boundaries. If they\u2019re going to continue to push the boundaries, eventually they\u2019ll screw up and then they\u2019ll dial it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2004 U.S. Open already was brutally tough when the USGA failed to account for the strength of the warm wind. The par-3 seventh, with its Redan green, became so impossible to hold that officials had to douse it with water between groups on the final day. No one broke par, and the average score was 78.73.<\/p>\n
Among the blistering comments came this from Jerry Kelly: \u201cI think they\u2019re ruining the game. They\u2019re ruining the tournament. This isn\u2019t golf.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the U.S. Open returned to this New York gem in 2018, the greens were so glassy from sun and wind the last 45 players on the tee sheet Saturday failed to break par. Phil Mickelson staged a bizarre protest by swatting a moving ball on the 13th green. Brooks Koepka saved the week by becoming the first repeat champion in 29 years.<\/p>\n
So a return to the fabled course evokes one thought: What will go wrong this time?<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, they get the balance right of all the different challenges, and it\u2019s not contrived,\u201d Adam Scott said. \u201cThese great tracks, they\u2019ve gotten into trouble when they\u2019ve been manipulated.\u201d John Bodenhamer, the USGA\u2019s chief competitions officer, was asked to take a hard look after 2018 to see what went wrong and why. The short answer was greens not properly hydrated.<\/p>\n The real answer comes over four days at Shinnecock Hills, the sixth time for it to host the U.S. Open, never under this much scrutiny. The early scouting report from Scheffler and Rory McIlroy was wider fairways than they are used to seeing at a U.S. Open. That wasn\u2019t a mirage.<\/p>\n Bodenhamer said the USGA wanted to present a course the way William Flynn designed it in 1931 when he was brought into reshape a course that first opened in 1891, the oldest golf club in America still in the same location.<\/p>\n That means an average fairway width of 48 yards, compared with 42 yards in 2018 and 32 yards wide last year at Oakmont. He anticipates slower green speeds to account for so many putting surfaces perched on a hill and exposed to the wind.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way we\u2019re thinking about this year is to let Shinnecock be Shinnecock,\u201d Bodenhamer said.<\/p>\n That should be enough. In the five U.S. Opens at Shinnecock Hills, three players have finished the tournament under par \u2014 Raymond Floyd in 1986, Retief Goosen and runner-up Mickelson in 2004.<\/p>\n McIlroy said the green speeds were just over 11 on the Stimpmeter \u2014 slightly under the target speed the USGA has in mind \u2014 and the Masters champion doesn\u2019t thing they need to be much fasters.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they can keep them at that green speed, they can get them firm, and they can use the hole locations that they want to use without having some of the struggles that they have had the last couple of U.S. Opens,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cIf it\u2019s set up the right way, I think it\u2019s one of the best championship tests in the country. It\u2019s an amazing golf course.\u201d McIlroy became the most recent player with the career Grand Slam by winning the Masters in 2025. At the time, Scheffler had two green jackets but only one leg of the career slam. And then he steamrolled the competition at the PGA Championship and British Open.<\/p>\n \u201cFixed that,\u201d Scheffler said with a laugh at the start of the year.<\/p>\n Now he\u2019s on the cusp of the most elite club in golf. McIlroy had to wait 11 years to get the final leg. Jack Nicklaus (1966 British Open) and Gary Player (1965 U.S. Open) each waited three years for their final pieces. Scheffler is the betting favorite, even though he hasn\u2019t won in five months.<\/p>\n He was runner-up in 2022 at The Country Club, his best chance. He was in the mix at Los Angeles in 2023 and on the fringe of contention at Torrey Pines.<\/p>\n \u201cI like the challenge of playing a really hard golf course against a really good field,\u201d he said. Scott is among three players \u2014 potentially four depending on alternates \u2014 who is playing a third time at Shinnecock Hills, though he has yet to make the cut there.<\/p>\n He still has cause of celebration. Scott is playing in his 100th consecutive major, dating to the 2001 British Open, the second-longest streak behind Nicklaus and his incomparable run of 146 in a row.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s crazy,\u201d said Jordan Spieth, next in line at 52 in a row. \u201cIt\u2019s not only playing at a high level, it\u2019s take care of yourself the right way. Almost every single person you think of that could have reached 100 missed it because of injury.\u201d Players were due to start arriving around the weekend to prepare a major with a reputation as being the toughest test in golf. For Shinnecock, the test starts with wind on a course that more closely resembles a Scottish links than any other in America.<\/p>\n Flynn created a series of triangles \u2014 holes that run in that shape so players are forced to cope with different wind direction no matter which way it\u2019s blowing.<\/p>\n And for the players, the test can be what goes on between the ears. Nicklaus once said he could rule out most players having a chance when he hears them complain. And there\u2019s been a lot of complaining the last two times at Shinnecock Hills.<\/p>\n \u201cYour acceptance meter, you\u2019ve got to add some at the top end,\u201d Xander Schauffele said. \u201cIf it\u2019s 100, you need to make it 150 because 100 is not enough. It might be the second or third hole of the day and you might have already had four bad breaks. It\u2019s really penalized. It\u2019s the most tired I am of the four majors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So much history is involved when the U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock Hills, the only golf club to host this major championship in three centuries. Scottie Scheffler will try to take his place in history when the No. 1 player goes after the final leg of the career Grand Slam. Should he win, he would … Continue reading US OPEN \u201926: Scottie Scheffler trying to make history and Shinnecock tries to avoid recent history<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1515223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-14 12:39:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1515223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1515224,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515223\/revisions\/1515224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1515223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1515223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1515223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWider fairways planned for this year<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nScheffler goes for the career Grand Slam<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nAdam Scott playing his 100th straight major<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nThe toughest test<\/strong><\/p>\n