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COURSE OF THE WEEK · SOUTHAMPTON, NEW YORK
There are golf courses that test players. There are golf courses that humble players. And then there is Shinnecock Hills, which does both of those things simultaneously and in ways that somehow still manage to feel surprising even to players who’ve prepared for precisely this. The 2026 US Open will be held at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York, from June 18 to 21. It will be the sixth US Open at this venue. The course has not lost yet.
A History in Three Centuries
Shinnecock Hills is the only golf course in the United States to have hosted a US Open in three separate centuries — 1896, 1986, 1995, 2004, 2018, and now 2026. That kind of longevity is not accidental. It reflects a design of such enduring quality that successive generations of USGA officials and course setters have returned to it as the truest expression of what an American national open championship should ask of its players: width management, wind reading, sustained precision under pressure, and the psychological fortitude to make pars on holes where the design seems almost philosophically opposed to par.
The club was founded in 1891, making it one of the oldest golf clubs in the United States. The original course was designed by William Dunn Jr. and revised over the decades by C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor, among others. The version that exists today is primarily the work of William Flynn, who undertook a significant restoration in the 1930s and created what is widely regarded as one of the finest inland-links layouts in the world. The course sits on terrain that was shaped by the retreating glaciers of the last ice age — undulating, exposed, windswept in a way that makes every hole feel simultaneously ancient and urgent.
“Playing Shinnecock in a wind is like trying to solve a puzzle that keeps changing the rules on you. The hole you played Tuesday is not the hole you’ll play on Sunday.” — A veteran Open Championship competitor on first experiencing Shinnecock
Why the Course Is Different
Shinnecock Hills plays differently from almost every other major venue in American golf. Where Augusta National is a course of elevation and nerve — where the putting surfaces are the puzzle and the trees and azaleas are the scenery — Shinnecock is a wind course. The fairways are generous by US Open standards. The rough is punishing by any standard. The greens are fast, true, and positioned with a cruelty that feels almost personal. But the wind — the prevailing Atlantic breeze that rolls off Southampton Harbour and through the hills — is the real course setter. When it’s blowing, Shinnecock Hills becomes a different examination. Shot shapes that worked on Tuesday are obsolete by Sunday. Club selection becomes almost philosophical.
The 2018 US Open at Shinnecock produced one of the most dramatic and controversial major championships of recent years — a weekend when the greens dried to the point of un-holdability, when the USGA was forced to water certain holes mid-round, when the concept of a fair golf course was debated across every golf media outlet in the world. That controversy, perhaps unfairly, overshadowed what was otherwise a brilliant performance by Brooks Koepka, who became the first player in nearly three decades to successfully defend a US Open title. What the controversy confirmed, however, was that Shinnecock Hills is a course that demands precision from the golf course management as much as from the players. It gives nothing.
Key Holes
The seventh hole — a par-3 over a valley, playing into the prevailing wind with a green that falls away in three directions — is among the finest short holes in American golf. The 11th, a par-4 dogleg left that requires a perfectly placed drive to open the approach angle, is a masterclass in Ross-era strategic architecture. The 16th, a mid-length par-4 that plays into the teeth of any westerly wind, has yielded more dramatic leaderboard swings than perhaps any other single hole in major championship history. Ben Hogan famously finished his final round at Shinnecock in 1986 with a double-bogey here that cost him a tie for the lead.
The 18th is a par-4 of modest length that plays like an examination question in applied psychology. With the entire gallery watching, with a leaderboard behind you telling you exactly what you need, with greens that have been baked into unpredictability by four days of summer sun, you need to make something like a four. On a different course in a different week, a four on a 450-yard par-4 sounds routine. At Shinnecock in June, it is anything but.
What to Expect in June
The USGA will undoubtedly be watching the weather forecasts with one eye on 2018. Shinnecock in June can produce anything from mild and playable to a punishing Long Island summer wind that turns a 7,000-yard course into something that feels considerably longer. The betting field will be roughly familiar — Scheffler, McIlroy, Rahm, Young, Schauffele in the top tier — but major championships at Shinnecock have a history of producing winners who were not obvious favourites entering the week. The course rewards comprehensive games rather than single dominant skills. Whoever wins here in June will have done everything right, for four consecutive days, on one of the most honest test grounds in the sport. That is exactly what the US Open should be.