Shinnecock Calls Them Home

There is something about Shinnecock Hills that quiets people down. Pull off Tuckahoe Road, climb the rise past the clubhouse and the talking tends to stop. The fescue leans east in the breeze off Peconic Bay, the fairways tumble away beneath you, and for a moment the place looks less like a championship venue than a stretch of Scottish coastline that has somehow ended up in Southampton.

From 18 to 21 June, golf''s national championship returns here for the sixth time. Six US Opens. Three different centuries. No other course on earth can say that.

A welcome list as long as the queue at the gate

The USGA accepted 10,201 entries for the 126th US Open — the second highest total in the championship''s history, just one short of the record set at Oakmont a year ago. Players signed up from all 50 states, from Puerto Rico, from the District of Columbia, from the United States Armed Forces, and from 49 foreign countries. The youngest is a 13-year-old from Chino, California. The oldest is a 71-year-old club professional from a course you can almost see from Shinnecock''s back nine.

You suspect a few of them fancy their chances. Most know they have signed up for a long summer''s pilgrimage that will end politely at some local qualifier in May.

Spaun returns, with a memory that won''t leave him

The defending champion is J.J. Spaun, who in any reasonable year would be a footnote rather than a headline. He is neither flashy nor a celebrity, and until last June he had won precisely one PGA Tour event. Then came Oakmont, the rain, and a 64-foot putt on the 72nd hole that disappeared into the cup as though it had been steered there. Two strokes clear of Robert MacIntyre. A maiden major. The most unlikely champion since — well, since the last unlikely champion.

He arrives at Shinnecock as the world No. 10, no longer obscure, and presumably aware that successful defences of the US Open are the sport''s rarest currency. The last man to manage it was Brooks Koepka, in 2018. The last man to manage it on this course was, well, also Koepka.

Scheffler''s slam, McIlroy''s sequel, Young''s homecoming

Scottie Scheffler arrives at Shinnecock with the world No. 1 ranking, four majors in his pocket, and only the US Open missing from his collection. The career Grand Slam is a club of six. He would like to make it seven. His record here is encouraging without being conclusive: a tie for runner-up at Brookline in 2022 is his best US Open finish, which on a Scheffler CV counts as unfinished business.

Rory McIlroy needs no further commendation. He completed his own career Slam at Augusta last spring, then went and successfully defended the green jacket a few weeks ago — the latter feat managed by only three men before him. He is the 2011 US Open champion, and he has finished inside the top ten in six of his last seven appearances at the tournament. Eighteenth start. Still hunting his second.

And then there is Cameron Young, up to world No. 3 and, conveniently, a native of Scarborough, New York. Roughly an hour up the road from Shinnecock. He won this year''s Players Championship in March and finished tied for fourth at Oakmont in June, which is the sort of form that suggests his coming-home week might be a noisy one. He has never won a major. New York would not mind if that changed.

A roll of honour with proper names on it

Shinnecock''s champion list reads like a syllabus of the modern game. James Foulis in 1896, when the championship was thirty-six holes and the trophy had barely cooled from the casting. Raymond Floyd in 1986. Corey Pavin in 1995 with that four-wood on the 72nd that still makes Sky pundits clear their throats. Retief Goosen in 2004, a championship better remembered for the seventh green on Sunday than for the South African''s second putts. And Koepka in 2018, on the way to back-to-back titles.

A founding member club of the USGA, and the only venue ever to host the national championship in three different centuries. You will hear that statistic a great deal between now and Sunday evening. It is worth hearing.

A course that asks the question and waits

What Shinnecock does, more eloquently than almost anywhere else in America, is ask players to commit. The fairways slope. The greens fall away. The fescue does not negotiate. Get above the hole and you are putting on glass; get into the rough and you are essentially having a long conversation with your sand wedge. There is no hiding place — only a series of polite enquiries about your nerve.

For the Golf150 entrant, the puzzle is the same as always and never the same twice. Three golfers, combined odds of at least 150/1, and every one of them must make the cut on Friday evening. One of them blows up — perhaps undone by a 12 at the par-three seventh, as has been known — and the entire team goes home. The neat little maths of it is what makes it interesting.

Picking the favourite alone is not enough. Picking three of them is not allowed. You have to find the value somewhere in the field of 156, weigh it against the course, against the form, against the weather forecast that nobody trusts anyway, and hand your team over to the gods of links-on-Long-Island golf.

Entries are open now. The first ball is in the air on Thursday 18 June. Shinnecock, as ever, is waiting politely to see what we have brought it this time.