Scheffler eyes career Grand Slam as U.S. Open opens at Shinnecock

Shinnecock Hills has never offered much margin for error, and the U.S. Open returning to Southampton has again put the sport’s sharpest questions front and center. Scottie Scheffler entered the championship with a chance to complete the career Grand Slam, and that alone gave the week its headline. With the world No. 1 already holding the 2022 and 2024 Masters, the 2025 PGA Championship and the 2025 Open Championship, a win would move him into the most exclusive corner of men’s golf.

That chase sits atop a course that has become a shorthand for major-championship severity. Shinnecock Hills, founded in 1891, is the oldest incorporated golf club in the United States and one of the five founding member clubs of the United States Golf Association. This is its sixth U.S. Open, and the last one there in 2018 reinforced why the venue still matters: Brooks Koepka won with a 281 total, 1 over par, and no player finished under par for the week. Koepka’s back-to-back U.S. Open titles made him the first repeat champion since Curtis Strange in 1989, a benchmark that still hangs over the course.

The week also carried a clear international thread. Rory McIlroy’s victory at the 2026 Masters in April gave Europe another major jolt, and Aaron Rai’s PGA Championship win extended that run. Together, those results gave the European contingent real momentum heading into one of the game’s sternest tests, where a good week often says as much about nerve and precision as it does about form. At Shinnecock, the path to the trophy rarely rewards anything else.

Adam Scott supplied another angle that spoke to durability at the highest level. The Australian was set to make his 100th consecutive major start at the 2026 U.S. Open, a streak that began at the 2001 Open Championship and left him alongside Jack Nicklaus as one of the only players to appear in 100 or more straight majors. Scott had to survive final qualifying in Columbus, Ohio, to reach Shinnecock in 2018, and in 2024 he needed a late push into the world top 60 just to secure entry. That kind of persistence has become its own measure of greatness.

Koepka’s fitness added the final layer of uncertainty. He withdrew from the final round of the RBC Canadian Open with a hand injury shortly before the U.S. Open, leaving his status unsettled for a course that punishes any loss of control. The USGA said local qualifying for the 126th U.S. Open took place in April and May, with final qualifying on May 18, 25 and June 8, and the scale of the process, 9,049 entries in 2018, underscored how open the championship remains before it hardens into a battle of patience and nerve.