The ghosts of the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills — the last time the event was held on the east end of Long Island — still seem to be around the course a little less than 10 years later.
Those ghosts, for the uninitiated, are those of Zach Johnson telling Sky Sports during the 2018 tournament that officials had “lost the golf course” and saying a “championship that comes down to sheer luck, that’s not right.” Or Phil Mickelson being so frustrated that same year by the slick greens that on hole 13, he ran after his own ball to putt it while the ball was still moving, so that it wouldn’t roll off the green.
Or in 2004, when officials had to halt play in the middle of a round to water the seventh green because the golf balls wouldn’t stay on.
United States Golf Association officials are not looking for a repeat of all that when the field tees off early Thursday morning.
“I have great respect for this cathedral of the game and about these great players,” USGA chief championship officer John Bodenhamer said Wednesday in Southampton. “Really, when you think about it, it should be about this magnificent cathedral and these great players, and that’s what we want the story to be.”
Still, talk all week leading up to Thursday’s first round has been about the course conditions and the efforts to keep situations from 2004 and 2018 from happening again in 2026. Bodenhamer outlined an extensive plan to manage the course, which included a tactic to “syringe” the grass with water on Thursday and Friday in between the morning and afternoon waves.
Tee times were pushed 10 minutes earlier than they normally would be in order to accommodate the needed course maintenance.
The process, according to Bodenhamer, is akin to what would be seen in a grocery store when they spray vegetables with a mist of water. The plan is necessary due to the unique nature of the course, which tends to dry quickly due to the sun exposure and the high winds from the nearby ocean.
“We’ve communicated this to the players, that it is really important,” he said. “We believe that it will present a more consistent playing presentation to both the morning and afternoon waves on both days. It will be consistent across both days, which we think enhances competitive fairness.
“This is also a practice that is used on a regular basis right here at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. In fact, if you ask the club, they’ll tell you they do it daily. It is just the nature of this club and the nature of this property to preserve turf health and so on.”
Rory McIlroy said this week that he was originally not a fan of the idea.
Nevertheless, he later came around on it, especially with the wind expected to pick up on Thursday.
“I think, when I first heard of it, my first reaction was, ‘That’s stupid, why are they doing that?’ ” he said. “Then once you actually listen and you’ve let them break it down to you, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ ”
USGA officials said they are preparing for winds that can be “problematic” during the course of the tournament, with expected sustained winds of 12 to 24 mph, with potential wind gusts of more than 40 mph, that could last from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the first day.
Friday’s winds aren’t expected to be as severe, though a change in direction to the west/northwest Saturday could create another challenge. “On Saturday, some of [the greens] with a north and northwest wind blow from back to front, and we are concerned about that,” Bodenhamer said.
But the USGA’s chief championship officer insisted that officials had accounted for all of the elements that could be thrown at them by Mother Nature.
“As we came into this year, we thought a lot about our plan,” he said. “We reflected on 2018, and we learned a great deal from 2018 and the experience there. We had intended to come into this week really unlike 2018 in ways that, instead of preparing the golf course for seven or eight days straight for a U.S. Open experience for the players, it was really more easing in.
“We see the firmness and the speeds come to us by Wednesday and Thursday, and by the weekend, we would crescendo into what a U.S. Open has always been. We think that because that’s what the players have told us. That’s their expectation.”