McIlroy hopeful Shinnecock greens won't get out of hand

Last month, while attending a media day ahead of this year’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, I learned a truly mind-bending stat.

Across the four modern U.S. Opens at Shinnecock, 624 players have competed in the field. Of that group, the number of players who have recorded a score under par?

Three.

“There are just golf demons around this place,” said John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s golf course czar. “They come up out of these putting greens in a devilish, wonderful, charming way.”

More than any other golf tournament, it might be said that a U.S. Open is a test of endurance. The player who survives four days of brutal conditions with their head screwed on straightest is usually the one who wins. This is particularly true at Shinnecock, where the course has become famous in large part for its difficulty. After all, it was the last time Shinny hosted a U.S. Open, in 2018, that Phil Mickelson provided what might be the best modern example of an on-course meltdown when he (infamously) raked his ball to keep it from rolling off the front of the green. The winner of that tournament, Brooks Koepka, carded a 72-hole score of 1-over.

This is the subtext that brought stars like Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy to Shinnecock over the last several days for pre-tournament practice rounds. Both players had heard the legends of the 2018 Open — McIlroy even took part, missing the cut — and both wanted to get a good look at the golf course before tournament week arrived.

The stakes are high for both players entering Shinnecock: McIlroy is looking to solidify the third act of his career with a late run of major success, while Scheffler remains a U.S. Open away from the career Grand Slam. And after both took in the sights and sounds from the golf course that will host the national championship in two short weeks, the scouting report for both included a surprise.

“Shinnecock looks good. The fairways are very generous,” McIlroy told reporters at the Memorial Championship on Wednesday morning. “They’re more generous than they were in 2018. But the first cut of rough is 5 inches long. So it’s like the first cut is maybe three paces wide and then it gets into the fescue. So if you miss the fairway even by a yard, you’re going to — but you shouldn’t. The fairways are very, very generous. So if you miss the fairway, I feel like you deserve a bad lie.”

McIlroy wasn’t the only golfer to be surprised by the width at Shinnecock in 2026. His sentiments were shared by Scheffler, who visited the property for the first time on Monday.

“I hadn’t been there prior. That was my first time on property,” he said. “I was a little surprised at the width of the fairways, but the green complexes there are extremely difficult, and I think that’s where the greatest challenge comes from.”

As it turns out, that surprise was well-earned. According to Bodenhamer, the fairways at Shinnecock will play an average of 48 yards wide in 2026 — a massive expansion off the first modern U.S. Open held at the venue in 1986, and an unusually wide number for a U.S. Open held … anywhere.

“It’s widest we’ve been in 50, if not 75, years,” Bodenhamer said.

Bodenhamer’s words reflect a broader shift in sentiment that the USGA has pursued under current CEO Mike Whan — endeavoring to produce the fairest test of golf rather than chasing even par as the winning score. But, as both McIlroy and Scheffler said, the width of the fairways will do very little to change the winning score should Bodenhamer and his team turn up the temperature on the course’s real test, the greens.

“The rough, also, was a really good penalty, I think, for the width. Once you start missing fairways out there, you have no chance,” Scheffler said. “But the fairways are generous enough to where it provides you some opportunity and that way it’s just that the green complexes are extraordinarily difficult, and so they can put the pins wherever they want and make the scores as high as they could possibly want ’em to be.”

Both McIlroy and Scheffler seemed particularly taken with the difficulty of Shinnecock’s greens, which are fairly large by square footage but infinitesimally small by strategic upside. From the wrong side of the fairway, the landing area to keep your ball on the green is often only a few feet wide, maybe the size of a hula hoop. From the right side of the fairway, things aren’t much better.

“The greens are rolling around 11, 11.2, something like that, and I really don’t think they need to get much faster,” McIlroy said. “I think if they can keep them at that green speed, they can get them firm, and they can use the hole locations that they want to use without having some of the struggles that they have had the last couple of U.S. Opens.”

In other words, the width off the tee will be a pleasant surprise for some of the best golfers in the field at this year’s U.S. Open … but it might be the last one.

“If it’s set up the right way, I think it’s one of the best championship tests in the country,” McIlroy said. “I mean, it’s an amazing golf course.”

This article originated on Golf.com