Shinnecock Hills Golf Club

Shinnecock Hills was a founding member of the United States Golf Association in 1894, alongside Newport, the Country Club at Brookline, St. Andrews of Yonkers, and the Chicago Golf Club. The current course is the third routing on the same Southampton, Long Island property — Willie Davis laid out an early twelve-hole version in 1891, Willie Dunn extended it in 1895, and William Flynn and Howard Toomey produced the modern eighteen in 1931. The Flynn-Toomey course is the routing all five modern U.S. Opens have been played on — 1986 (Floyd), 1995 (Pavin), 2004 (Goosen, the Sunday setup criticized for greens too firm to hold approach shots), 2018 (Koepka), and the upcoming 2026 — and the course is one of the most-photographed in American championship golf.

The course plays around 7,440 yards par 70 from the championship markers, with fescue rough and a slope in the upper 140s. The third hole is a 478-yard par-4 with the fairway tilted right-to-left through the dunes; the seventh is the Redan-style par-3 that Macdonald used as inspiration for the National Golf Links across the road. The fourteenth is a 519-yard par-5 with a green set on a rise above the fairway. Flynn and Toomey kept the property's natural fescue and the original dune contours, and the modern routing reads as substantially the same course Bobby Jones would have played in the 1930s.

Shinnecock is private and access is members and accompanied guests only. The clubhouse — the oldest in continuous use in the United States, opened in 1892 — sits high on the property with views across to the National Golf Links. The membership is small, regional, and quiet; the club operates without the hospitality apparatus of the modern destination clubs.

Long Island coastal climate gives Shinnecock a long playing season with the firmest conditions in September and October. The Atlantic wind builds reliably through the afternoon, and U.S. Open setups have historically suffered when the USGA underestimated how quickly the property dries out under sustained breeze.