Shinnecock Hills: What It Takes to Win the US Open
Two days. The major season has belonged to Rory McIlroy's back-to-back Augusta defence and the season's second test at Aronimink. Now the caravan rolls into Southampton, Long Island, for the toughest examination on the calendar. Shinnecock Hills is windswept, sun-baked and unforgiving in a way no other major venue manages. It is the only US Open course where the wind has a louder voice than the rough. The bomber who treats it like a parkland course will be on the highway by Friday evening.
This is the third US Open at Shinnecock since 1986 and the second since Coore & Crenshaw completed their restoration. The fairways are wider than they used to be, but the run-offs around the greens are steeper, and the surrounds are sharper. The USGA will set the course up to be the most exacting test of the year. Bogeys are not failures here. They are conversions, depending on which side of the green you missed.
Know the Course
Shinnecock Hills was founded in 1891 and is one of the five charter clubs of the United States Golf Association. The modern routing is largely the work of William Flynn, who reshaped the course in 1931 to accommodate a longer ball and a stronger generation of players. In 2012, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw led a sympathetic restoration that brought back many of Flynn's original lines, widened the playing corridors, and re-established the native fescue throughout. The course that hosted Brooks Koepka's second US Open in 2018 is, in essence, the course the field will tackle this week.
It plays as a par 70 stretching to roughly 7,440 yards. Length is a factor, but not the dominant one. What matters here is the wind. Shinnecock sits on a high, exposed ridge between Peconic Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. There is no tree line to shelter the holes. When the wind gets up, and the forecast suggests it will, clubbing decisions become guesswork and the player who can flight the ball low and shape it both ways earns his edge. This is not a course for the player whose stock shot relies on a high, vertical ball flight.
The fairways are firm and undulating. A drive that lands in the short grass can roll thirty yards through to the rough if it catches the wrong slope. The fescue lining the playing corridors is wispy and intermittent. Sometimes you can advance a 7-iron, sometimes you can barely move a wedge. The visual width off the tee is genuine, but the effective width is narrower than it looks. Position matters here more than it does at any other major bar Augusta.
The greens are bentgrass and fast, and several are perched with steep run-offs in every direction. Miss in the wrong spot and you are not chipping. You are deciding between putting back through a collection area or playing the bump-and-run that locals know. The par-3 11th and the closing stretch of 14 through 18 are where the championship is typically decided. The 18th, a long uphill par 4 to a green that breaks more than it looks, has seen plenty of bogeys turn into doubles when a player is trying too hard to finish.
The 2018 US Open: Brooks Koepka's Second
The last US Open at Shinnecock saw Brooks Koepka become the first player since Curtis Strange in 1988-89 to win back-to-back US Open titles. He posted 1-over par over four rounds, a total nobody beat. The week is best remembered for Saturday afternoon, when the USGA pushed the greens past playable and the leaderboard turned into a survival exercise, and for Tommy Fleetwood's Sunday 63, one of the great closing rounds in major history. Fleetwood needed to hole a short birdie putt on 18 to shoot 62 and post the lowest round in US Open history. He missed. He still finished T2.
The Six Things That Win Here
The player who wins this week will likely shoot one or two under par for the championship, possibly over. They will not be the bomber who flew it 320 yards down the middle. They will be the player who hit nineteen of twenty-four fairways under pressure, kept their irons below the wind, and held themselves together when the USGA's afternoon hole locations tried to break them. Think of Shinnecock as a links-influenced US Open: the skills that win The Open Championship transfer here more cleanly than the skills that win the Masters.
Who Arrives in Form
Two months of major championship golf behind us. Rory McIlroy made history in April. The PGA Championship at Aronimink crowned a new Wanamaker champion last month. Now the field shifts focus to a venue that asks completely different questions to either of those tests. Four players stand out as worth the closest attention.
Scheffler has been the most consistent ball-striker in the world for three seasons now and his strokes-gained approach numbers are still in a different category to the rest of the field. His T2 finish at Augusta in April, bogey-free across the final 36 holes and the first such feat at the Masters since 1942, was the kind of week that confirmed what the data has been saying for some time. He is in the form of his career.
Shinnecock will ask different questions to the major venues that have suited him most obviously. His high ball flight will need adjusting in the wind. His occasional issues on quick, severely contoured greens, Augusta last summer being the obvious example, will be tested again here. But Scheffler's strength is his ability to identify what a course is asking of him and recalibrate within the week. The early prep work on his ball flight will tell us a lot. The bookmakers have him at the head of the market and they are right to.
If there is a concern, it is the relentless major-week scrutiny on the world number one. Scheffler has handled it impeccably before and he is unlikely to wobble under it now. But the US Open punishes the player who is even a fraction off his best. He needs to be all the way on.
The form picture for McIlroy could hardly be brighter. He has just become one of four players in history to defend the Masters title, joining Nicklaus, Faldo and Woods. He held his nerve on the most pressurised Sunday in golf and walked away with the green jacket. Whatever questions existed about his capacity to finish what he starts have been answered. Twice over.
His US Open record is also worth revisiting. He won the championship at Congressional in 2011 with a record-breaking 16-under total and has been close on several occasions since, most notably at Pinehurst in 2024, where a missed short putt on 18 cost him a playoff he would have been a strong favourite to win. The hunger to add a second US Open to the cabinet is well-documented. The venue suits him too. McIlroy hits one of the lower, more piercing tee balls of the modern era and his ability to control trajectory in wind has improved every season.
The possible knock is fatigue. Two majors won in two months at the highest level of pressure golf has to offer takes a toll. History suggests defending champions and recent winners often struggle in the major immediately following a victory. McIlroy has rarely shown that fragility, but he will be a short price and the value may sit elsewhere this week.
You cannot ignore the player who lifted the trophy here eight years ago. Koepka won the 2018 US Open at Shinnecock at 1-over par. He was the only player to break the round number for the championship that year. He has five major titles to his name, including two US Opens, and his record in this specific event is among the best of his generation. He thrives when the rest of the field is grumbling about the setup.
The post-LIV form picture is murkier than it once was, but Koepka was still in the mix at the PGA Championship and his recent ball-striking metrics, on the tour information available, suggest he is closer to his major-winning best than the market is giving him credit for. He has won this exact tournament at this exact course. That kind of pedigree compounds when conditions get nasty.
If the forecast holds and Saturday afternoon turns into another survival round, Koepka is the player most likely to keep grinding pars while others fold. The price will not be short. He is the type of selection that quietly returns each-way money when the more glamorous picks fade in the wind.
Fleetwood's relationship with Shinnecock Hills is the stuff of betting folklore. He shot 63 in the final round of the 2018 US Open here, missing a short birdie putt on 18 to set the championship record. He finished T2. He has spoken at length since about how comfortable he felt on the course and how the conditions suited his ball flight. The links sensibility he developed growing up on the English coast is a real edge at a venue that rewards it.
His form throughout 2026 has been steady rather than spectacular, but his strokes-gained ball-striking numbers remain elite. He sits regularly in the top five on tour for strokes gained approach and his iron play, on its day, is as good as anyone in the world. The missing piece has been getting his putter to cooperate at the right moment in a major. Shinnecock's greens, fast but not impossibly contoured, should suit him.
At 35, Fleetwood remains one of the best players never to have won a major. The course history at this venue is rare and meaningful. If you are looking for value below the obvious two, Fleetwood is the player whose case stands up to the most scrutiny.
The Profile to Avoid
Be wary of the high-ball hitter who relies on stopping iron shots vertically into soft greens. Shinnecock's bentgrass will firm up by the weekend, and the wind will dismiss soft-flighted approaches into the surrounds. Players whose recent wins have come on Florida resort courses or summer tour stops with calm conditions and receptive greens are likely to find this an awkward test.
Also be cautious of the player who hates the USGA setup philosophy. Some players go on the record before US Open week complaining about the rough, the green speeds and the setup choices. Almost without exception, those players struggle to contend. The winners here lean into the difficulty rather than resent it. Mental tone matters at Shinnecock more than at any other major.
The Betting Angle
US Open place terms are typically slightly weaker than the PGA Championship. Most bookmakers pay 7 places at 1/5 odds, with a few offering 8 places. The field of 156 includes a long tail of sectional qualifiers and amateurs who will not threaten, so the effective each-way depth is shallower than the headline number suggests. Players priced between 25/1 and 80/1 with the wind-play credentials and major championship pedigree to handle a Sunday at Shinnecock represent the most interesting part of the market.
Look at recent links and links-adjacent form. Look at the player's flight numbers in any wind data you can find. Look at who has performed in the previous US Opens of this generation: Pinehurst 2024, Los Angeles 2023, Brookline 2022. The names that recur on those leaderboards are the names to lean toward. The market will be top-heavy with Scheffler and McIlroy, and that is reasonable, but the each-way value sits two or three tiers down the board.
Two days until the first ball is in the air. Compare prices, find the value, and get on before Thursday morning. The most exacting trophy in golf is waiting.
Compare live US Open odds across all 14 bookmakers and find the best each-way prices right now.
View US Open Odds Get Email Picks