The U.S. Open is the most demanding test in golf, and this year’s host course, Shinnecock Hills, is known for flummoxing and frustrating the world’s best golfers. In 2018, Brooks Koepka shot one over par to win at Shinnecock. In 2004, Retief Goosen prevailed at four under. Only he and Phil Mickelson finished the week under par.
Next week’s test on Long Island promises to be a brutal examination for the world’s best — one that will ask them to be sharp in every facet to survive and thrive at William Flynn’s masterpiece. In short, it’s not a place where you hope to find (or reignite) your game. But that’s where some of golf’s best find themselves.
With Shinnecock looming, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler arrived at last week’s Memorial Tournament ready to face a major-grade tune-up.
Scheffler entered the week after another frustrating near-miss at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. The World No. 1 won in his first start in 2026 but has consistently found himself on the wrong side of golf’s fine line ever since, racking up six top-three finishes without a win in the four months since the American Express. Scheffler’s game has been good in 2026 but just a tick worse than his world-beating ways of 2025. Still, he showed up at Muirfield Village as the two-time defending champion at a course that suits his eye and methodical game. McIlroy, meanwhile, had teed it up only twice since his Masters win (T19 and T7) and has been battling a driver issue that cost him on Sunday of the PGA Championship.
The Memorial was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for the major=championship grind that awaits in Long Island next week. A win wasn’t necessary, but leaving with a polished game and no thorny questions was the preferred outcome for two greats whose years are defined by their results in the four tournaments that matter most.
Four grueling days at Muirfield Village saw Scheffler rant at caddie Ted Scott after a first-round water ball, had McIlroy hug Justin Thomas after a brutal second-round battering— and, more generally, had two of the U.S. Open favorites still searching for their best.
McIlroy finished T12 thanks to an early Sunday birdie barrage where he took advantage of a softer Muirfield Village after thunderstorms on Saturday softened up Jack Nicklaus’ meat grinder. McIlroy’s iron play was stellar at Muirfield Village; he ranked 10th in Strokes Gained: Approach for the week. But his inconsistent driving plagued him. While he ranked 11th for the week in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, McIlroy hit only 53 percent of his fairways as he struggled with what is normally his super power.
“Off the tee still wasn’t where I want it to be,” McIlroy said on Sunday. “Thankfully, the fairways at Shinnecock are a little wider than they are here. But, yeah, still need to work on that. I need to work on how I’m hitting it off the tee. But everything else, putting felt pretty good, for the most part.”
McIlroy was then asked for the diagnosis of his driver issue, something he survived to win at Augusta National but couldn’t weather at Aronimink. He knows what the issue is but fixing it has been challenging.
“I get a little bit underneath the plane on the way down and then from there I try to drag the handle to match it up, and then I get toe strikes,” McIlroy explained. “So if I’m aiming a touch left trying to hit a cut and I get a touch underneath it and then I try to save it by dragging the handle, I hit it off the toe and then it goes left. But then, if I try to hit with one that’s a draw or pretty neutral, I’ll still get a little bit underneath it, and I’ll release it, and it will overturn a little bit. But I have to try to get the club back out in front of me. But then when it gets out in front of me, if I do get it there, then it’s about having the right release pattern on the way through.”
Got all that?
When a reporter quipped that he was “limited” in his understanding of the intricacies of the swing, McIlroy said, “I feel limited at the minute, too.”
Scheffler also finished T12 the Memorial, after an up-and-down four days in which he yo-yoed between lethal precision and uncharacteristic sloppiness that resulted in nine bogeys and a double on the week. In Round 1, Scheffler lost 2.5 shots on his approaches but in the third round gained 3.5 shots. He picked up 1.2 strokes off the tee on Thursday but on Friday lost almost a full shot in that category.
Little of this, little of that. But not what was expected or what will be required next week.
“I would say pretty frustrating,” Scheffler said of his week on Sunday. “But the way I played the last two days, I definitely feel a lot better with kind of where things are at than I did coming off the course on Friday. I guess I should say in the middle of the round Friday. I started hitting some good shots on the back nine Friday, and then I played decent the last couple days. I just wasn’t sharp enough to make the big move that I needed to make.”
Scheffler noted a myriad of “silly mistakes” he made at Muirfield Village, including some sloppy putting and leaving himself in the wrong spot when he missed the green. All of that means some fine-tuning will be needed before he heads to Long Island in search of the career Grand Slam.
“Just little things, little mistakes that I don’t typically make, I felt like I was making this week,” Scheffler said. “So a few things to clean up in the off week, but overall, I feel pretty comfortable with where my game’s at.”
Scheffler and McIlroy aren’t the only stars trying to find their peak form with the U.S. Open around the corner.
Over on LIV, Bryson DeChambeau’s prep for the U.S. Open saw him continue to battle some of the same swing issues he fought during a missed cut at the PGA Championship — until a conversation with Google Gemini helped him make some tweaks.
“Golf swing felt in sync, and then it started getting out of sync, and it felt like my hands were getting ahead of me,” DeChambeau said after a third-place finish at LIV Korea. “It continued that way for the next two rounds, and it was very frustrating. I spent some long hours on the range trying to figure some stuff out, and I was talking to AI quite a bit last night trying to go through some different physics principles that make the club turn over … I came out here today with just a little bit more freer hands, and I felt the club a lot better, and I felt like I could close the club a lot more effectively and then I started striping it.”
DeChambeau followed that third-place finish in Korea with a T11 at last week’s LIV Andalucia. After missing the cut at both the Masters and the PGA, DeChambeau faces a big week at Shinnecock, especially with his professional future unclear as LIV tries to find funding for life after 2026. DeChambeau has played well on LIV this year, but his major flops have been glaring. Despite that, DeChambeau told Flushing It that his short stays at Augusta and Aronimink don’t give him cause for concern.
“To be honest, missed cuts are gonna happen. I might miss all four of them in majors this year,” DeChambeau told Flushing It. “That’s just golf. Like, I’m playing great. I just haven’t shown up when it mattered most. But I’ve played well out here on LIV, and I’m working on my golf swing really hard, and, I feel like it’s in a really solid place. It’s very close to some of my best golf ever.”
Big questions loom for three of golf’s biggest stars. They’ll seek to answer them at the game’s ultimate examination.
This article originated on Golf.com
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