2026 Golf Majors Odds: Rory & Scheffler Top Favorites To Win “The Open”

Shinnecock is one of the five founding clubs of the USGA and hosts its sixth U.S. Open — only Oakmont has hosted more. The 1931 William Flynn layout sits on Long Island's windswept South Fork and plays like a true links in everything but the official designation: firm fescue fairways, waist-high rough, rolling native terrain, and greens exposed to an ocean breeze that can turn the scoring average by three shots in an afternoon. A Coore-Crenshaw consultation ahead of the 2018 Open widened several corridors and rebuilt some of the course's original strategic angles.

• Relentless ocean wind that changes club selection every round
• Fescue rough that punishes any ball slightly offline
• Wide, rolling greens with severe runoff areas — short-siding is death
• Rewards creativity and the ability to flight the ball down
• Historically plays as one of the toughest par-70 U.S. Open tests

Cleatz take: Shinnecock rewards wind-players and punishes anyone who cannot control spin and trajectory. DeChambeau's second U.S. Open came at Pinehurst on firm fescue — conditions that mirror Shinnecock exactly. Koepka (the defending venue champion from 2018) and Rahm remain course-fit archetypes. Watch the weather the week before: a dry run-up turns this into one of the hardest major tests on the planet.

Birkdale hosts The Open for the 11th time, making it the most frequent venue other than St Andrews. The routing threads between enormous sand dunes that form natural amphitheatres around greens and tees — a feature that defines spectator experience at the Championship but also shields the fairways from the worst of the Irish Sea wind. That makes Birkdale fairer than many Open venues; fewer blind shots and fewer bad bounces mean elite ball-strikers can assert themselves here. Jordan Spieth's 2017 win — including the recovery from the practice range at the 13th — is the most recent Open memory at the course.

• Fairways routed through, not over, the dune system — clearer sightlines than most links
• Less exposure to crosswind than St Andrews or Royal St George's
• Pot bunkers severe enough to cost a full shot from the sand
• Firm, fast greens that demand precise spin control on wedges
• A back-nine stretch where momentum shifts can be dramatic

Cleatz take: Birkdale's dune-sheltered fairways favor ball-strikers over pure links artists — which is why Spieth, Harrington, and O'Meara have won here. Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood (a Southport native), and Scheffler top the model picks. The wildcard is always weather: a single day of horizontal rain completely re-sorts this leaderboard.