Shinnecock Ready to Shine As (Unofficial) U.S. Open Anchor Site

Shinnecock Hills Golf Club doesn’t have the official “anchor site” designation from the United States Golf Association that its iconic peers Oakmont, Pebble Beach, and Pinehurst boast.

But the U.S. Open is returning to the historic course in Southampton, N.Y., on Long Island, for a sixth time this week—and the USGA has no intention of taking Shinnecock out of its long-term championship rotation.

“We’re obviously coming back a lot,” USGA CEO Mike Whan told Front Office Sports. 

Shinnecock—one of the five founding clubs of the USGA in 1895—is already scheduled to host the 2036 women’s and men’s U.S. Opens in consecutive weeks.

“Imagine this place for two weeks with the women’s and men’s back-to-back,” Whan said. “So, we think of anchor sites as places where we can invest, they can invest, and the local community can invest because they know we’re coming back for 30 years, and we’re going to host all kinds of championships.”

Despite the praise for Shinnecock, the USGA has so far only announced three official anchor sites—an initiative that launched in 2020—Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina, Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, and Pebble Beach Golf Links in Northern California. 

“We don’t really get too hung up on anchor sites,” Whan said. “Anchor sites in my mind were to set a standard we wanted all clubs to think about.”

Those three official anchor courses are set to host a combined 20 men’s and women’s U.S. Opens over the next two-and-a-half decades. 

But the USGA also has a strong contingent of courses where it’s scheduled to play multiple future championships at, like Winged Foot, Merion, and Oakland HIlls, the latter of which is already on the docket to host the U.S. Open in 2051.

“To say we just have a few anchor sites is almost probably unfair,” Whan said. “We probably have 10 or 12 different anchor sites, because they’ve kind of followed that mode.”

Shinnecock’s Time to Shine

Shinnecock hosted the second-ever U.S. Open in 1896, but didn’t host the championship again until 1986.

Since then, it has hosted the 1995, 2004, and 2018 U.S. Opens—each making their mark in golf history with iconic shots like Corey Pavin’s heroic approach into the 18th, and more infamous moments like the USGA “losing the course” on multiple occasions when the setup became too difficult for players.

NBC lead play-play-play announcer Dan Hicks is happy to return to a familiar site.

“You don’t have to constantly remind people of maybe what this hole does or how this particular hole plays,” Hicks said during a media preview call ahead of the U.S. Open, which begins Thursday. “Obviously, it’s a far cry from—everybody’s seen Augusta National every year, but I think that’s one of the true appeals to The Masters is that it’s at the same place every year—I think the more [the U.S. Open] gets to Shinnecock, the better off we are.”

2003 U.S. Open champion Jim Furyk, now Golf Channel’s lead analyst, is on the same page.

“I think that history that you could look back at—when they pick a new venue, it doesn’t make the U.S. Open or the PGA Championship any less valuable, or a major championship any less valuable,” Furyk said. “But picking out the Oakmonts and the Shinnecocks and the Winged Foots, it has a special feeling because there is a history.”