Players arrive with high praise for Shinnecock Hills

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Shinnecock Hills was a lot bigger than Graeme McDowell expected. But not too big.

McDowell was among those who began preparing Sunday for the U.S. Open on a course where golf first was played in 1891, and where the U.S. Open was last played 14 years ago. He had never been out to the Hamptons — “Only as far as Bethpage, if that’s even considered part of Long Island,” he said — and his imagination told him it would be a golf course tucked in among high-end real estate, like Pebble Beach.

More than the size of Shinnecock Hills was the way it played. “It’s back to being a pure U.S. Open with serious discipline in your iron play,” said McDowell, the 2010 Open champion at Pebble Beach. “I don’t look at it and say, ‘I’m not long enough to win here.’ And that excites me. I haven’t seen anything that has upset me.”

Tiger Woods, playing the U.S. Open for the first time since 2015, arrived late Sunday afternoon and teed off with Jordan Spieth.

Adam Scott, Rory McIlroy and Hideki Matsuyama were also on the course. Only 19 players from the 2004 U.S. Open are back for this year’s edition at Shinnecock Hills, a short list that includes Scott. Just don’t get the idea that Scott needed to be reacquainted with Shinnecock. He has played what he said was a “fair bit” of golf, including a courserecord 63 from the championship tees in 2013 (a record broken the following year by Kevin Stadler).

Shinnecock went through a restoration project to widen the fairways to about 65 yards, and restore the angles and shot values. But after wide-open Erin Hills allowed for record scoring last year — seven players finished at 10 under or better — the USGA decided to replace some 200,000 square feet of short grass with fescue to bring the fairways in to about 40 yards.

Chuck Burton / Associated Press Phil Mickelson, pictured here on May 5, needs the U.S. Open to complete the Grand Slam, and this is his fourth attempt.