The USGA will play next week’s 2026 US Open Golf at Shinnecock Hills with the fairway widths William Flynn intended, Jeff Hall said, meaning the championship will not use the narrowed tournament corridors some expected.
Coore & Crenshaw restored those wider corridors before the 2018 U.S. Open, and the USGA narrowed them for that championship. For 2026, the fairways will play at member width — a choice that changes the calculus for players but does not guarantee softer scoring.
Shinnecock’s track record reminds why. In 2004 Retief Goosen won at four under and only he and Phil Mickelson finished the championship under par; in 2018 Brooks Koepka won at one over. Those numbers underline the point that wider fairways increase margin only until the weather and hole locations make them irrelevant.
The USGA is preserving Shinnecock Hills at member width, but the course is still expected to be a severe test if the wind blows. In calm conditions the fuller corridors should reward strategic placement off the tee; in gusts the native rough and bunkers will turn any wayward drive into a major swing.
How that plays against the field is the immediate question. Rory McIlroy used the Memorial Tournament as a final check and came out with mixed evidence: he finished T12, ranked 10th in Strokes Gained: Approach and 11th in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, but hit only 53 percent of fairways. "Off the tee still wasn’t where I want it to be," he said on Sunday, then added, "Thankfully, the fairways at Shinnecock are a little wider than they are here." McIlroy has been precise about the mechanical problem he’s wrestling with: "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." Fixing that under-pressure delivery will matter more on a gusty Long Island week than on a forgiving layout.
Scottie Scheffler arrives with a different dossier. He came into the Memorial after a frustrating near-miss at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson and has been collecting form: he won his first start of 2026 and, over the four months since the American Express, produced six top-three finishes without a victory. That steady run — and the confidence from a win — asks whether Scheffler’s baseline accuracy can convert into a major-week advantage when the margin for error tightens.
Young qualifiers add another wrinkle. Seventeen-year-old Miles Russell made it through U.S. Open Final Qualifying despite carding both a double-bogey and a triple-bogey, a reminder that volatility and opportunity coexist in this field and that member-width fairways can reward bold lines as well as conservative play.
Practical takeaway for players and viewers: expect strategy to matter in calmer spells and pure precision to decide matters when wind rises. Member-width fairways broaden the target, but on Long Island a broad target can become a sliver by afternoon. The setup hands golfers a choice that will define pairings and shot selection for every round.
The central unresolved question heading into next week is sharp: will the weather erase the advantage of member-width fairways and hand the championship to whoever can find fairways and recover best, or will calmer conditions allow players who can attack pins from wider corridors to separate themselves? The answer will tell us which kind of champion Shinnecock will produce in 2026.
