GCA speaks with the USGA’s Jeff Hall as the Long Island club prepares to host the tournament for the sixth time
By Richard Humphreys |
The US Open will be played at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island, New York, on 18-21 June 2026. It will be the sixth time the course has hosted the championship. James Foulis won the first, in 1896, just a year after the inaugural US Open at Newport CC in Rhode Island, and Brooks Koepka won the last, in 2018.
Shinnecock Hills opened in 1891 with a 12-hole design by Willie Davis, before Willie Dunn Jr expanded it to 18 a few years later. In 1916, Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor redesigned and lengthened the layout.
It was 1931 when the biggest changes were made, following the expansion of the Route 27 highway, which would bisect the course. The club acquired new land to the north and hired William Flynn for the design. He preserved some of the Macdonald/Raynor layout but created a largely new course, taking advantage of the property’s rolling and sandy landscape.
The eighth green at Shinnecock Hills (Photo: Fred Vuich/USGA)
Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw led restorative work in the 2010s, aiming to return the course closer to Flynn’s design. This included tree removal, widening fairways, restoring fescue and greens expansion to reinstate lost pin placements.
“The overall length of the golf course this year will be identical to 2018,” says Jeff Hall, managing director of rules and Open Championships at the United States Golf Association. His role is to select tee and hole locations, set rough heights and consult on course adjustments.
“The primary difference is in the width of the course,” says Hall. “Prior to the 2018 US Open, the USGA elected to tighten a few fairways, however, following that championship the fairway/rough lines were restored by the club, and we chose to play the course in its wider state for the 2026 championship. As a result, this will be the first time the true William Flynn layout will be played for a US Open.”
Fairway width has expanded from an average of 41 yards (for the 2018 championship) to 45 yards. The only other design tweak has been on the par-five sixteenth, where the teeing area has been enlarged and shifted to the right.
The par-five sixteenth is the longest hole on the course, playing around 616 yards (Photo: Fred Vuich/USGA)
What holes does Hall think will be key in this year’s US Open? “This is a very difficult question to answer because the weather will have such an impact, especially the direction and velocity of the wind,” he said. “The par-three holes at Shinnecock Hills are fabulous and it might be that the most challenging of the four holes is the shortest! The slightly uphill eleventh will measure 157 yards. The green has a great deal of pitch from back to front and is a very small target even at that length.”
The USGA’s Jeff Hall says the par-three eleventh will play around 157 yards during the 2026 US Open (Photo: Fred Vuich/USGA)