The Greatest Stage Returns To Our Backyard

Every June, the Hamptons transforms. The summer people arrive in their familiar rhythms — the Jitney filling at dawn, the farm stands restocked with the first strawberries, the sun dropping slowly into Mecox Bay in shades of copper and rose. But this June will be different. This June, the entire world arrives with them.

On June 18, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, that magnificent stretch of linksland rising above the scrub oak and bayberry just north of the Montauk Highway in Southampton, hosts the 126th U.S. Open Championship. When the USGA announced the return to Shinnecock as far back as 2016, then-executive director Mike Davis called it an honor to revisit a venue whose “architectural genius offers a complete test of golf for the world’s best players and a fascinating spectacle for the fans.” A decade later, the anticipation has only deepened.

Shinnecock is not merely a golf course. Founded in 1891, it is one of the oldest golf clubs in the United States and was among the five charter clubs that formed the USGA in 1894. It hosted the U.S. Open as early as 1896, and that history is not lost on those who govern the game. “The U.S. Open returning to Shinnecock Hills is always special because it connects the championship to some of the deepest roots of the game in America,” said USGA Chief Championships Officer John Bodenhamer. “Every time we return it feels like the championship is coming home to one of its historic stages.” The club also built what is often cited as the first golf clubhouse in the country, designed by the celebrated firm McKim, Mead & White and opened in 1892. The course’s William Flynn routing, dating to 1931 and lovingly restored by architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw in the years leading up to 2018, rolls through 7,434 yards of Peconic Bay scrubland with the unhurried authority of land that has never needed to prove itself.

The 7-day championship week kicks off on June 15, with practice rounds leading directly into 72 holes of stroke play for the 156-player field. The tournament traditionally concludes on Father’s Day, culminating in the crowning of the 2026 U.S. Open Champion. “When the world’s best players arrive, it will once again showcase everything that makes the U.S. Open unique: an iconic venue, a challenging championship test and the kind of drama that unfolds when the best in the game are pushed to their limits,” said Bodenhamer. As for the qualifying field, his ambitions were equally broad. “The U.S. Open is the most open championship in golf. It is a global invitation into the United States’ national championship. Thousands of professional and amateur golfers with diverse backgrounds will have an opportunity to earn a place in this year’s championship at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club.”

The defining storyline of the week, however, belongs to one man. No player has been more dominant in the world of golf over the past five years than Scottie Scheffler, who added his third major title with a five-stroke victory in the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow and then claimed his fourth at The Open Championship at Royal Portrush, leaving him one U.S. Open title shy of the career Grand Slam. His first opportunity to complete it comes on June 21, the final round at Shinnecock, which happens to fall on his 30th birthday.

Scheffler, characteristically, is measured in his public hunger for history. Four days after Rory McIlroy completed his own Grand Slam at Augusta last spring, Scheffler was asked who might be next. “I’ve only won one, technically,” he said of his two Masters titles at the time. “I’ve been playing some pretty good golf and I’m not even close.” That was then. Now, with four majors in hand, he opens the season projecting the same grounded confidence. “I always do my best to try to stay in the present,” he said at The American Express in January. “I feel like my game’s in a good spot, and I’m definitely excited to get out there.”

The legends of the game are watching. Xander Schauffele put it bluntly after Portrush: “I don’t think we thought the golfing world would see someone as dominant as Tiger come through so soon, and here’s Scottie sort of taking that throne of dominance. He’s a tough man to beat, and when you see his name up on the leaderboard, it sucks for us.” Golf analyst Brandel Chamblee, meanwhile, has been in direct conversation with USGA officials about how the course will be presented this summer. “I talked to the powers that be at the USGA and they were like, this is what Shinnecock is going to be like next year — I think there is going to be more,” Chamblee said. “The U.S. Open is about execution and intimidation, and there is no other golf course that is more about that.”

Dame Laura Davies, England’s most accomplished female golfer, watching watching from across the Atlantic, offered a revealing insight into what distinguishes Scheffler’s chase from the decade of torment that defined McIlroy’s pursuit of the Slam. “Rory took his time and was tortured by it, but I don’t think Scottie will want that,” she said. “He will have seen the impact it had on Rory. If what we are seeing is anything to go by, Scottie will take it in his stride and get the Grand Slam done early.”

The field beyond Scheffler is formidable. Defending champion J.J. Spaun returns after his stunning 65-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole at Oakmont sealed victory last summer. And then there is Rory McIlroy, who arrives at Shinnecock carrying a momentum that the sport has rarely witnessed. After completing his long-awaited Grand Slam at Augusta last spring, McIlroy returned to the Masters this April and won it again, back-to-back green jackets that announced, with quiet authority, that his game has entered a new and perhaps more fearless chapter. A second U.S. Open title is very much on his mind. Tommy Fleetwood, who shot one of only six rounds of 63 in U.S. Open history at Shinnecock in 2018 and still lost by a single stroke to Brooks Koepka, arrives with the most personal of motivations. And Scheffler himself arrived at the season’s first event as a study in focused hunger. “I’m excited to feel the adrenaline and the juices,” he said. “This is the best place to do that.”

For those who live among these dunes and bayberry hills, the championship week carries its own rhythm. The infrastructure that rises along Tuckahoe Road is staggering in scale. The back roads through North Sea and Water Mill carry more traffic than any August weekend. The great restaurants book out completely. And then, on Sunday evening, it all dissolves, the grandstands, the crowds, the noise, and Shinnecock returns to its unhurried self.

The 2026 U.S. Open will mark the sixth U.S. Open and ninth USGA championship at Shinnecock Hills. Each time, the course has written a new chapter. This June, with a Grand Slam on the line, the world’s greatest players standing in our backyard, and a newly emboldened Rory McIlroy with consecutive Masters titles at his back, the chapter being written may be the most extraordinary yet.

Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is the lone course to have hosted the U.S. Open in three different Centuries

• Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, founded in 1891, is the oldest incorporated golf club in the U.S. 
• Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is one of the five founding member clubs of the USGA, which
  was established in 1894 and conducted its first championships in 1895
• In 1896, Shinnecock Hills hosted the second U.S. Open (35 total players) and second
  U.S. Amateur (58 total players)
• In 1995, the Centennial U.S. Open was played at Shinnecock Hills and won by Corey Pavin
• The 126th U.S. Open is the 10th USGA championship to be conducted by the club
• The 2026 U.S. Open will be the sixth played at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club
• Shinnecock Hills Golf Club will also host the 2036 U.S. Open and 2036 U.S. Women’s Open