Weekly Update: Shinnecock Hills Setup, Miles Russell, and Ryder Cup Captains

No graphic this week. We’ll be back next week with U.S. Open contenders. Instead, I wanted to briefly touch on three news items that caught my attention, with an eye toward the 2026 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.

1. Appearing on Golf Channel during Golf’s Longest Day coverage, USGA Managing Director of Rules and Open Championships Jeff Hall mentioned that next week’s U.S. Open will be the first played at Shinnecock with the fairway widths William Flynn intended. Prior to the 2018 U.S. Open, Coore & Crenshaw restored the fairway widths to align with Flynn’s vision, but the USGA opted to narrow them for that championship. This year, the organization has decided against doing so, and the fairways will play at member width. 

It is the right decision, and an enlightened one. The USGA has mutilated golf courses by restricting playing corridors far too often in the past, leaving bunkers stranded in rough and covering land that should be short grass with thick strips of rough, as has been the case at Pebble Beach. Those decisions have been rational, even if misguided. The USGA wanted to place a premium on accuracy and protect par. Too much width, even if it reflected the golf course’s design, was viewed as giving players too much margin for error. 

Fortunately, the USGA isn’t narrowing the golf course this time around. Fairways will bleed into hazards — the way golf should be. We shouldn’t need to change the DNA of a championship golf course for the one week professional golfers descend upon it. For those concerned that a wider Shinnecock won’t provide a stern enough test, I wouldn’t worry about that. If the wind blows, Shinnecock is going to be all the best golfers in the world can handle, just like if the fairways were nominally narrower. 

Beyond next week, I hope this decision signals a broader philosophical shift at the USGA. Let golf courses play to the dimensions they were designed. If a course can’t adequately challenge the best players in the world without artificially rearranging the hazards, perhaps it shouldn’t host a U.S. Open. Or maybe there is a deeper issue that explains why it is so difficult to test modern professionals that should be addressed. And I think we all know what that issue is! 

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2. I wrote about this more extensively on Monday evening, but I remain blown away by Miles Russell. Making it through U.S. Open Final Qualifying despite making a double-bogey and a triple-bogey isn’t just incredible mental resilience; it’s the sign of a player who is flat out much better than most of the field. And he is only 17 years old.  

It probably comes across as overreactive that I’ve been writing about how both Jackson Koivun and Miles Russell are two of the best prospects in a long time, but it is true. Blades Brown is obviously quite a talent as well. Getting to watch at least two of the three — Russell and Koivun, Brown is an alternate — in action next week at Shinnecock will be a treat. 

3. This didn’t generate as much buzz on social media as I would have thought, but Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Steve Stricker, captain of the successful 2021 U.S. Ryder Cup team, “never had any conversation with the PGA of America” regarding the 2027 captaincy. “I probably would have welcomed it to try to do it again,” Stricker went on to say. 

I am cautiously optimistic about Jim Furyk’s upcoming captaincy, but I don’t understand why Steve Stricker isn’t a bigger part of the fold. There’s a good case to be made has has been the best U.S. Ryder Cup captain of the last 10 years. He was humble, made intelligent decisions, and captained the American side to a blowout win at Whistling Straits. Yes, there was a big talent disparity between the teams, but that shouldn’t diminish the success of Stricker’s captaincy. 

I hope we see Stricker captain the Americans again someday. Assuming he wants the job, which he appears to, I can’t think of anybody more deserving.