The 126th U.S. Open stopped at around 8:30 p.m. on Thursday when darkness ended the opening round at Shinnecock Hills. The bigger issue for the first wave was what happened before the horn: the USGA had already softened the course for weather that never fully arrived, and fans reacted to the altered setup.
Rory McIlroy, the golfer from Northern Ireland, was pictured playing a shot from the 13th tee during the first round on June 18, 2026. His position in the round sat inside a course setup that had been watered, syringed and slowed in advance of a forecast that pointed to high winds and low humidity.
Shinnecock Hills and the softened greens
The USGA watered the greens between the morning groups and the afternoon groups. It also syringed them between each round both yesterday and today, trying to keep the surfaces from drying out before the weather turned. That left already-soft greens even softer for the afternoon wave of players.
The result drew criticism fast. The course conditions were described as the slowest U.S. Open in the past 30 years, a sharp contrast with the demanding setup often expected in this championship. Fans also had the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills in Southampton in mind, when the event drew complaints that the course had been lost.
Dan, Scheffler and McIlroy
Dan had already called out Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy for complaining about tough pin placements at the PGA Championship, and this week’s reaction at Shinnecock Hills fit the same larger argument about control versus complaint. At this venue, the debate centered less on hole locations than on how much the USGA had taken bite out of the course before play began.
The setup question was simple. The USGA tried to protect the course from expected high winds, but the winds never really came, so the softer greens became the story instead of the scorecard. That left the afternoon groups handling a surface that played easier than the one morning players faced.
For the reader tracking the championship, the immediate takeaway is that the opening round has already been shaped by course preparation as much as shot-making. Wyndham Clark’s four-shot lead entering Round 3 sits within that same softened setup, and the way Shinnecock Hills played on Thursday is now part of the story around the weekend.
The unanswered piece is how much those softened greens altered scoring when the first round finally closed under darkness. At Shinnecock Hills, that number will tell the real story of whether the USGA’s weather call helped the field or just changed the fight.
