For course and players, chance at redemption
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Toward the end of May, Phil Mickelson took a reconnaissance mission to Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in preparation for the U.S. Open and came away impressed.
“I think this year’s U.S. Open is the greatest setup going that I have seen in my 25-whatever years of playing the U.S. Open,” said the five-time major winner, who is an Open title away from becoming the sixth golfer to complete a career Grand Slam.
For all his achievements, Mickelson, who will turn 48 on Saturday, owns one dubious distinction at the Open — six times, he has been the runner-up.
When he finished in a three-way tie for second in 2009, the U.S. Golf Association only had one silver medal available to hand out during the awards ceremony. Mickelson, who would have another runner-up finish in 2013, famously said, “I’ve got four of those. I’m good.”
This will be his third Open at the famed William Flynn-design of Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on the South Shore of eastern Long Island. In 1995,
Mickelson was at one point tied for the Sunday lead, but a double bogey at No. 16 sealed his fate and he finished tied for fourth. In 2004, Mickelson was tied for the lead on the 71st hole when he three-putted from four feet for a double bogey and lost to Retief Goosen by two strokes.
During the final round that year, the course got too firm (especially the par-3, No. 7) and well executed shots were penalized. It took Goosen’s terrific putting to win the title on a final day when no one broke par and the average score was 78.7. That was the last Open setup by Tom Meeks, the USGA’s director of rules and competition, and gave rise to the Mike Davis era.
Ever since Davis, the chief executive of the USGA, began overseeing the Open setup, he has shifted away from the association’s formula of narrow fairways, unforgiving rough and greens as hard as a cart path. Par was often a winning score.
Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, the 2011 Open champion, charged the USGA with overthinking the setup. He said if there was a course in the country that could claim kinship to the links courses of the British Isles, it was Shinnecock Hills, on a strip of Long Island between Great Peconic Bay and Shinnecock Bay, unguarded against the winds of the Atlantic Ocean.
“I don’t think they need to do much with it,” McIlroy said. “You don’t need to trick it up; you don’t need to try and make it too tough. Basically they don’t need to do what they have — they just, they leave it as is, and they will get a good winner.”
Shinnecock, which opened in 1891, is one of the five founding members of the USGA in 1894, and it hosted the second Open in 1896. This will be the club’s fifth national championship and first since 2004. But in a sign of how beloved this wind-swept, timeless classic is, the USGA already has committed another Open here in 2026.
Preparations for this Open began in earnest in 2012 when the club hired the design firm of Coore & Crenshaw. With aerial photos from 1938 and an archive of black-and-white photos as a road map, architects Bill Coore and two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw enlarged Shinnecock’s greens, cleared scrub brush and removed several hundred trees so that golfers can see 15 of the 18 holes standing on the first tee. The club also expanded the width of the fairways to as much as 65 yards, and added length. Shinnecock in 2004 was the last Open to be played at less than 7,000 yards. With Davis’ input, new tees were added to holes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16 and 18, stretching the yardage on the official scorecard this week to measure 7,440 yards for the par 70 layout.
“We didn’t add distance just to add distance,” Davis said. “We really wanted to bring the shot value back to what Flynn had designed in the late 1920s. So we looked at each drive zone and said, ‘What would it take to get the drive zone back into play?’ We now have that again.”
Davis determined that accuracy off the tee needed to play a bigger role in determining a champion and so in late September a decision was made to truck in swaths of fescue grass and reduce the fairway widths to an average of about 41 yards. (They averaged 26 yards the last time the Open was held here.)
Paul Azinger, a former major winner and Fox Sports lead golf analyst, remembers experiencing claustrophobia the first time he played Shinnecock in the 1986 Open. He said Davis made the right call to narrow the fairways.
“These guys are flying it three full football fields in the air. Half a football field is too wide,” Azinger said. “I’m glad they tightened it.”
No two holes at Shinnecock play in the same direction, with the shorter par-4s typically playing into the wind, and the longer ones with it. Another par-3, the 159-yard 11th hole, is the shortest. Its sloping green, which is protected by bunkers, has earned a reputation of being the shortest par-5 in golf.
Who does Shinnecock favor? Look for the best short games, Azinger said. “As wide and long as it can play, it’s not a bomber’s paradise,” he said. “The player that wins is going to stand out on and around the greens. Not the guy who drives it the best and the prettiest and the farthest. You better have a delicate touch with these closely mowed areas around the greens.”
That happens to match the skill set of Mickelson, who would become the oldest champion to hoist the silver trophy. If only the USGA can leave well enough alone and let them play, he implied in his pretournament reflections.