2026 U.S. Open: A hole-by-hole guide to Shinnecock Hills Golf Club

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — The phrase the United States Golf Association has adopted to describe the sites chosen to host its flagship U.S. Open Championship is "cathedrals of the game."

And while the glass in the historic clubhouse of Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is not stained, gazing through it is nevertheless as inspiring and near-holy as it gets for a golfer in this country. If Pinehurst No. 2 is American golf's Notre Dame (literally "Our Lady," since the public can play it), Shinnecock is our Chartres or Amiens - refined across generations and built to inspire reverence forever.

Shinnecock occupies a glorious acreage in world golf - way out on the south fork of New York's Long Island, in an environment as close as any American course comes to true linksland: firm, fast, nearly treeless, windswept and mixing milder terrain with tumultuous undulations. The widest fairways in U.S. Open history - an average of 48 yards across - will play much smaller in crosswinds, and being in the correct third of them will yield significantly better approach angles across deep bunkers into a set of greens reminiscent of Pinehurst No. 2 in both firmness and convexity. William Flynn, one of the greatest pre-World War II architects, is most responsible for the Shinnecock Hills of today, thanks to renovation work in the early 1930s. But flashes of the original work of Willie Davis and Charles Blair Macdonald, dating all the way back to 1891, add true old-world charm to the golf course.

It seems safe to say that as long as there is a U.S. Open, it will be held at Shinnecock once or twice per decade. One of the five founding clubs of the United States Golf Association, it is as bound up with the ideals the year's third major espouses - relentless challenge, changing course conditions, spine-splintering pressure - as any that has ever hosted it. Every modern U.S. Open at Shinnecock - 1986 (Raymond Floyd), 1995 (Corey Pavin), 2004 (Retief Goosen), 2018 (Brooks Koepka) - has been won by players synonymous with the qualities of grit and persistence under pressure and adversity. At times, that adversity has teetered on the edge of reason, with both the 2004 and 2018 U.S. Opens at Shinnecock involving moments where parts of the golf course threatened to become unplayable.

The USGA swears it has learned from those past episodes, where "championship" green speeds proved a touch too fast for certain chosen hole locations. At the annual U.S. Open media day in May, setup chief and traveling archbishop of the USGA's cathedrals John Bodenhamer insisted that target green speeds for the week would be between 11.5 and 12 feet on the Stimpmeter, a full two and a half or more feet slower than the speeds reached at Oakmont Country Club in the 2025 U.S. Open.

The main reason for the moderation of Shinnecock's putting surfaces: that everpresent wind. The early forecast for the 2026 U.S. Open calls for a healthy dose of it out of the south on Thursday, switching more westerly over the remaining rounds. Gusts could top 30 miles per hour, and no one - players, fans or USGA brass - wants to see golf balls moving freely on the greens at any point. We want to see players battle those conditions to the hilt.

The presence of wind accentuates the brilliance of Shinnecock's routing, which changes direction constantly as it curlicues across the property. Three triangular formations of holes - 4 through 6, 10 through 13 and 14 through 16 - are particularly interesting tests of a golfer's ability to deal with different winds in quick succession - courses within the course. Another prominent design feature at Shinnecock is a quartet of par 3s that, as a unit, might be the toughest in the world. Gutsy par and even bogey saves will be key to maintaining momentum for the highest finishers in the 2026 U.S. Open. Some poor saps will make 6s, 7s and maybe even 8s, adding to the lore of U.S. Open carnage. It will be tremendous theater.

As gentle a handshake as one could expect from a course of Shinnecock’s caliber, the desire to start with a birdie puts its own kind of pressure on players. Two bunkers down the right side of this dogleg-right will exert their own gravity on shots from the elevated tee area; they pinch the fairway from 58 to 31 yards wide. Players who can fly a tee ball more than 310 yards in the air can get within pitching distance of one of the largest greens on the course.

What the first hole may yield up, the second hole is likely to take back. The longest of Shinnecock’s four world-class par 3s is a brute, playing uphill to a green with some grace short, but also a false front that will need to be negotiated for tee shots that bail out. As a result, dozens of rounds are likely to start birdie-bogey.

This stately long par 4 glides down from a tee on the western edge of the property, where Shinnecock and the National Golf Links abut. The slight right-to-left angle of the landing area may make players who work drives left-to-right uneasy. Micro-contours in the fairway - a staple of courses of Shinnecock's vintage - can create ever-so-slightly awkward lies that may mess with players’ heads. The green is large and open in front, and if conditions are as firm as the USGA hopes, it may be necessary to land an approach shot short and bounce it up the false front.

Repeating a theme established at the first hole, the landing area here is naked on the left and beset by bunkers on the right, pulling the eye towards a line of play that is likely more aggressive than necessary. One of Shinnecock’s many convex greens can brandish all sorts of spicy hole locations.

Double-fairway holes seldom function properly, but shifts in wind, tee location and general player comfort will likely send tee shots to either the left or right fairway section here. One of the course’s most elevated greens, surrounded by fairway and a single bunker, will slough most long approaches off to one side or another. That’s where the fun and frustration begins; there’s not much up-and-down hope for short-sided misses of any kind.

This graceful but foreboding dogleg-right par 4 can be tricky to tackle because the wide fairway is partially concealed by waving long fescue grasses. A pond poised out of reach of tee shots and well short of the putting surface is an anachronism, the only body of water to be found at an otherwise bone-dry Shinnecock Hills. The angle of another domed green will make most players want to shape some sort of right-to-left approach.

Always feared due to the ferocious front-right-to-back-left tilt of its relatively small green, this par 3 left over from the C.B. Macdonald era of the course became downright infamous in the 2004 U.S. Open, when play during the final round needed to be halted briefly due to dry, fast green conditions causing some balls to roll freely, rendering the hole unplayable until it could be hand-syringed by members of the grounds crew. With the USGA vowing not to let green speeds get out of hand in 2026, this green will once again be a bellwether. If it remains playable, the rest of the putting surfaces should be, too. Even in mild winds, nothing less than a soft-landing tee shot that is shaped against the prevailing tilt will hold this green. It is arguably the most exacting single shot in championship golf.

The last hole in the flatter section of the site offers a generous fairway, the preferred side of which will be dictated by wind and the day’s hole location. The expanded edges of the green roll off into bunkers and sunken short-grass surrounds. The banked middle-right portion of the green makes the putting surface appear smaller than it is from the fairway.

The first of a world-class four-hole stretch is a downright mean-spirited par 4 playing up and across the 50-foot hill on which sits Shinnecock Hills’ grand cottage of a clubhouse. The approach shot, likely from a hanging lie, is one of the game’s trickiest, as the elevated green is mostly obscured by the climb, with a rolling tilt from back-right to front left, which is guarded by some of the course’s deepest bunkers. If the wind blows in off the Atlantic Ocean, some players will leave Shinnecock on Friday having seen this hole ruin their week.

Great golf course architecture happens when players have to figure out how to get the ball to stop, rather than go, and this sublime hole is a maddening exercise in the former. The tee shot is the first puzzle – mostly blind, with a plateau in the fairway about 255 yards off the tee. Placing a tee ball here leaves a generous view off a flat lie towards the green, which plays shallow and drops off dramatically both short and long. Tee balls that tumble too far will careen downhill and end up within 100 yards of the green, but with a nightmare of an uphill, downwind wedge shot. Plenty of golfers have ping-ponged their way to misery here, and several more will do it in the 2026 U.S. Open, too.

As if the potential for carnage on the 9^th and 10^th wasn’t enough, Shinnecock triples down on draconian golf holes with this devil of a short par 3, which many have called America’s shortest par 5. Even though players will be hitting wedges and short irons here, the safe zone is small and semi-blind, while the penalties for miscues are tragicomic. Brooks Koepka averted disaster here in 2018’s final round when, after hitting his tee shot over the green, he intentionally sent a pitch shot into the front bunker rather than take the flag on directly. He then got up and down for a legitimately brilliant bogey that preserved his momentum en route to victory.

This appealingly sinewy par 4 is as much of a breather as a hole of its length can be, with a downhill tee shot to a generous (especially by U.S. Open standards) landing area followed by a mild uphill approach to a large and only moderately defended green. It is a somewhat meat-and-potatoes moment before things get tumultuous again.

The shortest par 4 at Shinnecock Hills was the site of controversy in the third round of the 2018 U.S. Open, when a spicy hole location prompted a bizarre move by six-time runner-up Phil Mickelson, who, after hitting his first putt too hard, intentionally struck his ball while it was moving past the cup towards the front apron, incurring a 2-stroke penalty and adding another chapter to his fraught relationship with the event. In more normal circumstances, this is a classically tricky wood-and-wedge hole where guile matters more than power.

One of the coolest-looking inland par 4s in America, the way this hole snakes through some choppy topography reminds of great overseas links like Royal Portrush and Royal County Down. The composition of the bunkering and the situation of the green between two hills (creating a rare concave green section) help make this hole a perfect kickoff to a sublime finishing stretch.

The many shortish green-to-tee transitions at Shinnecock make the 90-yard uphill climb to this tee box a bit of an outlier, but the view down the hole and across the property makes it worthwhile. Big hitters may try to swat a drive within 75 yards of the green, but they’ll need to commit to a specific line across the angled fairway. Otherwise, it’ll be a long iron or fairway wood out to the left followed by a short iron over a nest of bunkers to another green that wants to slough off any marginal approaches but has more interior pinnable area than most. This is what passes for a birdie hole out here.

If the wind blows in out of the west, the longest hole on the golf course will be a three-shotter in virtually all cases. But milder conditions could enable big hitters to lash two mighty swings past all 20 bunkers to a fiercely defended, elevated green with the clubhouse looming in the distance.

One last nerve-fraying par-3 repeats the angular orientation of the 7^th green, albeit with slightly less tilt. But the putting surface still brooks no mediocre approaches. Miss-management may well save the champion’s hopes here while chasers miss in the wrong spot and fade from contention.

Players will hit less club into this green than Corey Pavin’s famous 4-wood in 1995, but they will still have to contend with arguably the course’s most cantankerous putting surface, which looks like it is dripping down the hill below the clubhouse with all sorts of off-ramps and virtually no interior areas of less than 3 degrees of pitch. There are some concave areas, and perhaps the USGA will elect to place one or two cups in a spot where long-range fireworks could occur in front of thousands of fans strewn about the half-amphitheater setting. But good luck to anyone who may need to hole a downhill four-footer to make the cut or win the U.S. Open trophy.

Shinnecock Hills Golf Club

Southampton, New York

Private

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