Editor's note: The First Call contributor Bradley Klein spent time with the USGA setup team earlier this week and offers an insight as to what will be needed to keep Shinnecock Hills from getting out of control.
SOUTHAMPTON, New York — How hard is Shinnecock Hills, the site this week of the 126th U.S. Open? One indication came anecdotally back in 2004, on the day after the carnage of that year’s U.S. Open, when the course got so baked out that play had to be halted Sunday morning to apply extra water to some greens. The Monday morning after, I went off with fellow golf writer Lorne Rubenstein for a round; we were first off. On the first green, I tried using a plastic ball marker and promptly snapped it in half; the greens were so firm. I had to switch to a metal ball marker the rest of the round.
Yes, Shinnecock Hills is notoriously tough. Consider that in the five U.S. Opens played there to date — 1896, 1986, 1995, 2004, 2018 — of the 654 individual players who teed it up, only three finished under par. And only two — Raymond Floyd (1 under) in 1986 and Retief Goosen (4 under) in 2004 — actually won. The other to finish under par, Phil Mickelson (2 under), came in second in 2004. That statistic, by the way, comes from golf journalist and data guru Justin Ray, who was recently hired with his partner, Hunter Stewart, to oversee golf analytics for the 2027 U.S. Ryder Cup team.
There is a very fine line between tough and impossible. Shinnecock Hills can cross the boundary line if ground conditions get too firm. That could be the result of overly severe mowing and rolling combined with extremely low moisture levels in the ground. Add some wind — which is standard here by the sea — and you have the combustible mix of a golf course out of control.
That’s what happened from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning back in 2004. To a much lesser degree, it appeared to happen (momentarily) again in 2018 on Saturday at the par-4 13th green. Phil Mickelson, facing a dicey hole location, got impatient with his overly strong putt as the golf ball started rolling off the green. Frustrated to no end, he chose to bat the still-rolling ball back and incurred a penalty for his blatant rules violation. Onlookers and commentators seized on the incident as evidence of yet another Shinnecock Hills disaster, though it turns out he was the only one all day who putted his ball off that green.
Still, the USGA is keen to avoid such a scene, not only because it looks embarrassing, but because it betrays a course that does not present a fair playing field to the contestants.
It’s Darin Bevard’s job to make sure that does not happen again. The 56-year-old USGA career turf guru has the impressive title of senior director of championship agronomy. It’s a post he rose to through the organization’s ranks, from making house calls at clubs throughout the Mid-Atlantic region to the point now where he works closely and well in advance with the maintenance teams of USGA championship venues throughout the country. At Shinnecock Hills, that means close coordination with veteran superintendent Jon Jennings and his entire crew.
It also means dealing with a golf course that will be the same length — 7,440 yards, par 70 — as it was in 2018. This is despite the average length for drives on the PGA Tour having gone up by eight yards in that period, from 296.1 to 304.1.
Translated into 14 drives and an approximate addition of half that distance per approach shot and second shots on par-5 holes, the cumulative gain entailed is 200 yards, or 2.7%. Meanwhile, the golf course will play wider, thanks to the restoration of seven acres of landing zone that had been removed for 2018 but that has been put back for 2026.
Course officials wanted to honor the vision, width and playing strategy articulated by course designer William Flynn when he redid the course back in 1931. To that end, fairways have been pushed back out to an average width of 48 yards, engaging the fairway bunkers and “bleeding into them” on the rollout side so that golf balls that hit marginally will find the sand rather than — as in recent U.S. Opens at Shinnecock — get cushioned by intermediate rough.
The course now has a more dynamic quality in the ground game, with bunkers more in play, and greenside rollouts more pronounced and dramatic. And yet for all the enhanced velocity of the ground game, course setup officials are also confident the course will play in a manner that is more receptive than — well, repellent.
The key is keeping the course what Bevard calls “well-hydrated.” A windswept, sandy layout like this can dry out very quickly. All the more so given the lack of extensive rain this spring, and the prevalence of wind. And with extreme winds forecast for Thursday, and perhaps for the entire week, USGA officials are erring on the side of caution to get through the first two rounds without any stoppage of play. That means holding back the setup a tad, with greens mowing heights relaxed marginally — raised, that is — so that target putting surface speeds will be around 10.5 rather than in the 11+ range as might otherwise have been the case.
This is both an exercise in caution to allow for threatening winds and a modest change in the USGA’s philosophy, as explained by John M. Bodenhamer, the USGA chief championship officer. The plan is to ease into the setup rather than to try to achieve championship stringency in course setup at the start of practice rounds. That creates the opportunity for flex in the setup. It also includes a plan for light mid-round watering — “syringing” — of the greens immediately before play and in between the morning and afternoon tee times on Thursday and Friday. That’s not a sign of panic or imminent wilting. It's a sign of precaution and wise anticipation.
The idea is to let Shinnecock be Shinnecock rather than some amped-up contrivance based on arbitrary metrics of squeezing pars out of the course. “Tough but fair,” Bodenhamer calls it, and it derives from confidence in the character of the golf course, which provides, as per Flynn’s initial plan, relative freedom and choice on the tee shots and mounting anxiety as you approach the greens.
That approach is all the more sensible given the anticipated weather, which calls for extreme winds Thursday out of the prevailing southwest, with a modest abatement of that severe breeze as the week unfolds, with one proviso. Namely, the wind is likely to shift westerly and out of the northwest by the weekend, which brings much drier conditions — like the wind that nearly baked out the course in 2004.
So far, the approach seems to be working, at least as far as player sentiment is concerned. It has been overwhelmingly positive, with no signs of alarmism. Typical was the comment of 2011 U.S. Open champion Rory McIlroy. “It's a great golf course. I think if everything is going the way everyone wants it in terms of weather, setup, I think it's the best championship test in the country. I think it tests all aspects of the game: driving, iron play, you need to have your wits about you on the greens. It's a lot of strategy, thoughtfulness.”
If the weather holds, it might early on Thursday, but by midday of Round 1, the winds could blow 15 to 25 mph and gust upwards of 40.
Course setup has to be ready for that.
Shinnecock Hills isn’t just hard to play. It’s also hard to get right for the conditions that prevail.
