Greetings!
Major weeks can be difficult for us as fans. You don’t want to go too hard too early. If you watch 11 hours of coverage on Monday, including three reruns of Live From, you’re going to be cooked by Friday afternoon. Like the agronomists who manage the golf course, it has to be a slow and steady build until you’re just immersed in the thing on Saturday and Sunday.
My experience this year has been maybe a bit too slow. However, I spent the morning on Tuesday researching things like “crazy 7th green at Shinnecock in 2004” on YouTube, and buddy, let me tell you, that sucked me all the way in to this year’s U.S. Open and convinced me that all U.S. Opens should only be played at either Shinnecock or Pinehurst. Get back to me at the end of the week to see if that still stands.
Today: 10 predictions for how this week’s tournament is going to play out.
Name drops: ZJ, Brooks, Akshay, all the Fitpatricks and of course … The Mink.
But first, I have one prediction that should be pretty easy to nail, barring some sort of coffee or TSA incident: I will be wearing Holderness and Bourne to the golf course every day this week. We just got received a new drop with Norman all over the best stuff H&B makes, and I brought everything with me to Shinnecock.
And while the wind will likely (hopefully!) howl off the Atlantic at Shinnecock this week, you know those H&B collars won’t going anywhere.
You should check out their excellent U.S. open collection right here.
Or you can comment right here on Twitter with whatever obscure storyline most excites you for this 126th U.S. Open and be entered to win a little U.S. Open gear giveaway from them, which we’ll announce on Wednesday afternoon.
Thank you to them for being a supporter of our work and now let’s get to the news predictions.
I talked about a few of these on the Normal Sport Show on Tuesday, which you can listen to (Apple | Spotify) or watch on YouTube right here. Hayden Martin and I had a blast chopping it up about the CWS and what we’re expecting at Shinnecock.
Here are the rest of those predix.
1. The top three players in the world — according to Data Golf, not the Crooked OWGR — will finish in inverse order. I have Rahm first, Rory second and Scottie third. This is mostly a Rahm take but partially a Scottie take, too.
Data Golf had a good bit on him earlier this week about how he’s fallen off his probably unsustainable pace of a year ago. And though he’s still (easily) the best player in the world, there are some cracks where you don’t really want to see them, namely in the approach play, which will be paramount this week.
Scottie has also been most frustrated most often by both of the Opens, and I can see that popping up again this week.
Rahm, on the other hand, seems to be ascending. He was awesome at Aronimink despite a sketchy start and has been astounding at U.S. Opens since, well, missing the cut at Shinnecock in 2018.
He’s also having (by far) the best approach play year he’s had since going to LIV in 2024. And if Aronimink was any indication, I think he probably feels a bit of freedom with LIV slowly fading into the past. Rahm will either win or come extremely close to it this weekend at Shinnecock.
[Jason's prediction] This week, hat's will replaced by temporary tattoos.
2. Brooks will miss the cut. I don’t trust his hand injury. I don’t really trust him at majors anymore, and I don’t think he’ll ever win another one.
By the way, this is how careers normally go. Most of the guys who won 5+ majors did so in tiny windows. Rory and Phil are very much the outliers here.
Palmer: 1958-1964
Watson: 1975-1983
Hogan: 1946-1953
Brooks: 2017-2023 fits better into this than 2017-2026 would.
Part of the reason I believe all of this is because I think his body has understandably broken down a bit as he’s gotten older. Part of it is because the psychological advantage he once held over the field has evaporated. He’s a good player, maybe even a great one. But the “oh crap, Brooks is within two” days just don’t hit like they used to for these fields. I think to say they still do is to be a bit delusional about the present reality (which, by the way, looks like this).
3. The USGA will water the golf course during play this week. Yes, really.
They basically said as much. This is from the excellent Geoff Shackelford newsletter.
It all depends on the weather, of course, but if we have to, I think we’ve actually got a little bit more of a window between our morning and afternoon wave tee times, so if we need to go out and put a little bit of water on the greens, because that was the issue in 2018. It’s really just keep the leaf blade of the Poa Annua hydrated.
I’d rather not do that, but we’ll do it if the weather dictates it, and we’re going to tell the players that. The subsurface isn’t impacted. It’s just what’s on top. And a lot of the guys probably don’t buy it, but Shinnecock is so different than anywhere else I’ve ever been.
John Bodenhamer
Keep the leaf blade of the poa annua hydrated.
This is … reasonable (?), but players will lose it. I don’t know if we’ll quite get to Defcon ZJ and be gifted another meme for the ages, but I suspect we’ll get something in that ballpark if and when this happens.
This post will continue below for Normal Club members (all 1,057 of them) and includes why I’m big on Jackson Koivun, Patrick Cantlay and … Russell Henley (?) this week as well as some thoughts on what the winning score could be.
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