A Few Final Thoughts Ahead of the 2026 U.S. Open

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — Greetings!

I have a few final thoughts from the grounds just ahead of the 126th U.S. Open, but first a big congrats to Luke M. for winning our Holderness and Bourne giveaway from earlier in the week.

That won’t be the last giveaway we do this week either so be on the lookout on Twitter and here on the newsletter for some other fun stuff from our partners.

For now, though, we have syringes and lettuce to get to.

Name drops: Mike Whan, Ron J. Ham, Bryson, John Bodenhamer and Elon Musk.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s newsletter is presented by our friends at OGIO. I am fully OGIO’d out this week with my Alpha Venture backpack and Renegade Vault carry on. Both have become must-haves for me when I travel.

After walking the greens at Shinnecock for a bit on Wednesday, I was disappointed that they felt less like the rock-hard shell of the Renegade Vault and more like the soft material that makes up the Alpha Venture, but you can’t win ‘em all.

What you can do, though, is go check out either (or both!) of these bags if you’re looking for some new travel gear this summer.

Renegade Vault

Alpha Venture

Thank you to OGIO for being a supporter of our work and now let’s get to the news.

Shoutout to Normal Club member John C. for this brilliant idea.

11 Final Thoughts Ahead of the U.S. Open

First, here’s my fantasy team for our members-only pool (link after the jump below). They will be a collective 76 over after the first round.

1. I walked for a few hours with the Jon Rahm group on Wednesday as I tried to get a feel for the golf course ahead of Thursday. I imagine it was as good of an experience as you can have following a practice round ahead of a major championship.

Rahm is a tremendous narrator of the game, the day and the course. Talks a ton of ball. Talks a ton of trash. Just the kind of person you want to be around when you’re playing or watching golf. He was playing with David Puig and Mexican Spieth, Carlos Ortiz.

A hole after I picked them up, I got a gift from the content gods. Bryson walked onto the tee box at No. 15 and said, “Is it OK if I play in with you guys?”

Rahm: “Actually … no.” [laughs] “I’m just kidding.”

But was he?

2. One of my favorite moments of following this group was the Spanish-speaking trio hitting all kinds of shots out of the greenside rough on No. 14 before Bryson joined up with them. Thinnies, chunk flops, high spinners, everything. The other two seemed to really enjoy watching the same thing I was there for, which was to see Jon Rahm do his thing.

He was as jovial and relaxed as is possible the day before a major championship. And it’s fun to close your eyes and listen to the shots. Everyone hit iron off the 15th tee box, and the sound at impact is just different for him. More compressed, more compact. Even than Bryson. Everybody thumps it at this level, but Rahm’s combo of deft hands and the hissing sound the ball makes off his club is marvelous.

A joy to see (and hear) up close.

3. It wouldn’t be a U.S. Open unless we got a distance update from the USGA. Many words were said. Many, many words. But here are the explicit (and implicit) takeaways I had from Kevin Hammer (USGA president), Mike Whan (USGA CEO) and John Bodenhamer (Chief Championships Officer).

Aside: Imagine your title on LinkedIn reading “Chief Championships Officer.” I might demand that my fam start calling me the Chief Championships Officer of my home. I am sure they will be happy to abide.

Anyway, the takeaways.

1. There will be no rollback in 2028. There will be no rollback earlier than 2030.
2. There may not even be rollback in 2030.
3. Other organizations (namely the PGA Tour) seem more onboard with rollback than they used to be (this was surprising).
4. Whan hinted at something bigger taking place than the measly 5-15 yards of rollback they were going to get with the golf ball.

There are of course two ways of looking at this … and we’ll talk about both of them below.

Here’s the link to our U.S. Open pool.

4. The first way of looking at what was laid out in the USGA’s press conference is that, as a steward of the game’s future they are abdicating their responsibility by not forging ahead with rolling the ball back. They are willfully ignoring the things that need to be done by kicking the can down the road and letting someone else deal with it when Bryson’s kid is driving the golf ball 415 yards in 20 years.

Basically this …

I get that.

My first reaction to the news that 2028 is off the table in terms of ball rollback at the professional level was, My gosh, just do something. Make any decision!

I think this negative response of the USGA is mostly fair, especially when you consider the fact that the USGA was the very organization that was asleep at the wheel in the late 1990s and early 2000s and let all of this get to where it did.

If that’s your opinion, I understand it. And I partly share it. Especially that last part.

5. The flip side of this is that I would rather them not try to spend all their relational capital with OEMs and other organizations pushing through a change that results in — by the time it’s implemented — 6 yards of discount from current driving distances.

Who cares about that.

What Whan hinted at toward the very end of the USGA’s hour-long presser on Wednesday was bifurcation. A more comprehensive overhaul. More widespread change.

I think maybe not said well in the joint statement, but I think a simpler, more narrow solution is exactly what we're going to spend time looking at. I think the alternative to what's on the table for 2030, things that we're going to look at together as a group are simpler, more narrow solutions, yes.
Mike Whan

This fascinates me. It also takes a bit of suspended disbelief to imagine the type of change that is needed actually being implemented given how many different constituents are at the table.

My biggest question was, Wait, why would the PGA Tour and the players — most of whom are individually against this — agree to widespread change in the name of bifurcation?

More Whan.

They understand that at the end we're going to have to make a decision that may or may not be right for individual agreements. That's why the governing bodies are where they are, so they're free to make those decisions.
… What really kind of changed with us more recently is the number of individual players that kind of stepped forward … with a real sense of kind of wanting to help and share and asking for more information. That's exciting.
Mike Whan

So who knows. I cannot begin to properly explain how pro-bifurcation I am and how incredible a huge rollback — ball, clubs, everything — would be for the pro game.

The reality of the USGA’s position is probably somewhere between “they need to do more sooner like right now!” and “they’re taking their time because they’re going to roll it back 100 yards.” And how much you trust the USGA (and R&A) absolutely affects where you fall on that spectrum of belief.

6. Speaking of the USGA, I was thinking on Wednesday in their press conference about what a glow up they’ve had since I started covering the game.

Remember when Rory was tweeting at them during DJ’s final round at Oakmont in 2016? We are a long way from that, and my own view of them has evolved over the years. I think some of that is due to their seemingly increased leadership within the pro game, their push for rollback and their new “tough but fair” setups that have been decidedly more conservative (and also, in my opinion, better) at U.S. Opens the last several years.

I just view them differently than I used to. Maybe that’s a me thing more than a them thing. And I admit that a lot of it is probably due to Whan’s ability to tell a story.

In other words, I might be getting got.

Not all glow ups are necessarily authentic, and while my perception of the USGA has certainly changed, I think this where this rollback lands will go a long way in determining whether my perception remains perception or whether it’s representative of what the USGA actually is now.

7. Let’s talk wind. I’ll say this, we’re either going to get an all time first round complete with some of the sickest shots you’ve ever seen and an amateur shooting 95+ OR we’re going to get multiple 63s and Elon spending half his new trillion on servers to handle the takes from Golf Twitter.

I see nothing in between.

The USGA slowed greens down all the way to the mid 10s for the early round(s), and it was noticeable when walking around. The greens are so green, especially compared to what I envision when I envision the agronomy of Shinnecock (which I do often).

Balls were bouncing a bit when I walked around today, but they were also backing up a lot on short iron shots. The USGA said they’re going to ease the course into the week in terms of difficulty — again, presumably to avoid the Defcon ZJ situation this time around — but people are going to be apoplectic if it doesn’t blow because Mighty Shinnecock is going to be Very Delicate and Powerless Shinnecock if they don’t get the gusts.

We're all weathermen this week.

8. All of this led to two all-time Bodenhamer quotes. Reminder, he’s (somehow) talking about the sport of golf here.

The last thing that we'll do, and I want to talk about this just briefly, is we will syringe the greens on Thursday and Friday. Just to be very clear what syringing is, it involves a very light application of water to hydrate the grass leaf blade to prevent wilt, most importantly, to preserve turf health, and to reduce stress on these poa annua greens. Poa annua reacts differently and more quickly than most other grasses in these types of conditions, so we think syringing is very important.
John Bodenhamer

Me in the back row.

Back to Bodenhamer.

I didn't see it directly, but Rory mentioned this in his familiarity of this the other day. Think about it as when you go into the grocery store and you go into the produce department and reach for that head of lettuce and that little mist comes on above and hits your hand. That's all we're doing to the putting greens. It doesn't impact playability. It hydrates the leaf blade. When it evaporates, it keeps it cool enough so we don't lose the friction on the putting greens.
John Bodenhamer

Me … watching all of this play out.

I legit cannot get enough. Heads of lettuce. Syringing blades. Just extraordinary details and language that is very much the point of why this dumb business was created.

[Jason here] My mom said she didn't understand this illustration from Monday. I think Bodenhamer's quote clears things up.

9. OK, a few other notes from following that Rahm-Bryson group on Wednesday.

• The greens and fairways are punch bowl-like in certain areas, which can be great (work the ball off them toward the hole) or terrible (work the ball off of them away from the hole). This also creates some wild slopes and contours in the rough and fescue that will be difficult to navigate. Oakmont rough is nasty, but at least it’s mostly flat. That’s not the case here at all.

• Those two were pretty chatty throughout. At one point they fell into the trap all of us eventually fall into, which was a discussion of Rory. I couldn’t make out most of it and probably wouldn’t disclose anything juicy even if I did hear it, but I heard Rahm talking about the number of people inside the ropes with Rory, Tommy and Rose earlier in the week and how ridiculous it was (which is true!). They also discussed Rory’s track 2 commentary.

• Carlos Ortiz even stands like Jordan Spieth. It’s unbelievable.

• The game today was one long putt or chip at the end of every hole. Rahm sank his on 15 and Bryson said, “Great, I just joined the group and lost $500.”

• The 16th hole is going to play 900 yards into the wind on Thursday if it’s ripping in the same direction it was on Wednesday. Puig hit driver-driver-wedge (I think) on Wednesday to reach it.

10. I loved this from Rory on why he doesn’t go too far down the path with changing coaches or even in making swing changes with the coaches that he has.

I've always wanted ownership because your coach can't be out there on the golf course with you when things start to go wrong, and you need to know how to manage your patterns. I feel like over the years I've definitely gotten better at that, and I think that's part of the reason why my consistency has been improving as my career has went on.
Rory McIlroy

You can have the best swing on planet earth built by the best instructors and the best machines. But the reality is you’re going to get pummeled in the teeth by places like Shinnecock, and in those moments what’s far more important than having a great move at the ball is knowing yourself.

I think Rory has evolved (like most players have to) into this type of player over the years, and I think part of the reason he’s great is specifically for this reason. Lots of guys hit it 320 on the range with ease. Not many people understand themselves and what makes them tick and how to amend that in the middle of a hurricane (perhaps literally on Thursday afternoon).

11. The pick!

The most meme-able man in golf.

He plays on LIV and was in the group I walked with on Wednesday afternoon.

He has played in multiple Ryder Cups and won a U.S. Open in the last five years.

I’m picking … of course … Ron J. Ham (aka Jon Rahm).