We’re going to end the week by each giving our parting thoughts on the course/setup this week. But first here are a few “facts” on how the course ended up playing:

Variance in scoring was right around PGA Tour average, and significantly less than past Shinnecock U.S. Opens, and U.S. Opens in general.

Off-the-tee and approach only explained 40% of the overall variation in scores. They normally explain 50% at Tour events.

The bomb-o-meter slightly favoured accuracy, but overall played pretty neutral. This is reflected in the leaderboard, which finished with a variety of player types in the top 10. The missed-fairway penalty was higher than Tour average, but not nearly as high as in 2018.

The skill coefficient was 0.88, which means top players were separating slightly less than usual from low-skill players. This hasn’t been the trend in recent U.S. Opens, but pre-2017 it was not unusual for a U.S. Open to have a skill coefficient below 1.

With all that laid out, here are each of our parting thoughts:

First mine (Will):

I’ll leave the more in-depth takes to Matt and Miles. Shinnecock is an incredible property and I enjoyed walking each hole and getting to know it more in depth as the week unfolded. This afternoon, with the sun blasting the course and puffs of sand flowing through the gallery, it truly felt like a U.S. Open. My biggest takeaway might be that being on site reduces my attachment to how the course is playing. I’m still interested in the insights outlined above, but to a certain extent I’m just enjoying watching the test that is presented to the players.

Miles:

Shinnecock Hills deserves its spot among the top courses in the world. The landscape, routing, and conditioning are beautiful, of course, but I also love the green complexes. The severe runoffs separate good approach shots from bad but also give players an opportunity to show off their short game (side note: after watching the pros hit every chip perfectly crisp, I’ve realized just how lacking my chipping is). The runoffs get all the more consequential the firmer greens get, and I wish there was more of that firmness Thursday-Friday. I get that the USGA wanted to get everyone through in the first two rounds, not risk losing the course, and ramp up the course throughout the week, and they did all that successfully. The coolest part of the week was sitting on the corner of 10/11 for a few hours, where perfectly executed shots led to birdie chances but if you were off at all, a big number came into play. I came to realize this week that when I enjoy most in a golf tournament is high variance—the players who play the best separating as much as possible. We got bits of that this week, but perhaps not as much as we could’ve seen from Shinnecock.

Matt:

Shinnecock is a stunning property with a lot of green complexes that will stick with me for a long time. It would be very cool to play a course under the firm conditions we saw this weekend. But… I’m getting a bit frustrated with parts of the test that some of these restored, treeless golf courses provide for professional golfers. As we wrote about earlier today, the worst miss off the tee was one that ended 10-15 yards off the fairway in the thick fescue. Bigger misses—unless they exited the property—were generally penalized less. The widths of the fairways under benign Sunday conditions also reduced the importance of tee shots. I strongly believe hitting good drives under pressure should be part of what it takes to win a major. That wasn’t really the case today—Clark’s drive was pretty bad on 18, and I don’t think he should have been able to reach the green as easily as he did. It was fun to watch the test into and around the greens this week—highlighted by holes 10 and 11—but I would like to see a reemphasis on ensuring that tee shots play a big role in testing and separating players at major venues.