Well, well, Shinnecock Hills is the perfect test for the ultimate golf test

Places to stay in Shinnecock Hills this year’s host US Open, it draws you in with its magnificent clubhouse, up on the hill and oh so lovely. Then there’s the course, well and good – the perfect test for the ultimate golf test. So, how did the players handle this New York golf icon? Others, not so well. (I’m looking at you, Leftist.) Others were in the right frame of mind.

Like other beautiful creatures, you have to see the Shinnecock Hills up close to fully appreciate its complexity. Near, and later. Beautiful, yes, but smiling like you wouldn’t believe! The vast course has changed over the decades, as do all living things. But Shinnecock also changes in any one day – especially in the long days of early summer. He’s like the Old Course that way, or Dornoch or Troon. Shinnecock Hills, on the sandy South Fork of Long Island, is our nod to the country. Some holes have Scottish names. (Ben Nevis, Redan.) But Native American names too: Peconic, Sebonac, Montauk and Shinnecock. How appropriate. The course was built by Shinnecock men, using a template imported from Scotland.

None remain from the 1896 Open at Shinnecock Hills, but there are many boats still among us who were there to return to, 90 years after the start. Jack Nicklaus, the reigning Masters champion, played his first round of the ’86 US Open on a dreary and wet afternoon. The Golden Bear went out on the back nine, past the Stanford White clubhouse, and watched his girl shoot 10 over the wide, rough yellow fairway and toward a bunch of dirty trees. For the first time as a pro, Nicklaus had lost a golf ball. He walked lonely back to the teahouse, holding the driver by the hand, looking as if he had just buried his dog. Three days later, Ray Floyd, North Carolina’s aging champion and son of one, hugged the Open trophy, his eyes narrowing in the afternoon glow. Father’s Day, 1986. Raymond was reborn, and so was the lesson.

The third Open at Shinnecock was in 1995. 4-wood; a par putt on a green that is more slanted than a putter. After battling the course for four days, Pavin had shot 280, even par. Straight ball, wind attack golf is not played at Shinnecock Hills. At least, it doesn’t win. Little Cheeky Pavin won by two.

In Shinnecock’s fourth Open, in 2004, the course was still under 7,000 yards but this time it was dying of thirst. Phil Mickelson also finished second agonizingly while Retief Goosen won. Fourteen years later (No. 5; 2018), Phil was still nursing a Shinnecock Hills/USGA hangover. You may remember that moment when he hit, turning his putter into a hockey stick and his ball into a puck. Brooks Koepka won, a shot ahead of Tommy Fleetwood. Tom Watson said Koepka is the real deal, a player with all the tools. Tom Watson. Not known for efficiency. But Koepka did what he did at Shinnecock, and that made a difference. Koepka will be 36 when the US Open comes to Shinnecock Hills for the sixth time, in June. Thirty-somethings and US Opens — there’s a long marriage there.

Watson won his solo US Open at Pebble Beach (at age 32) and it’s tempting to say that Pebble is to the West Coast what Shinnecock is to the East, but it’s not. There’s no crashing-surf excitement at Shinnecock Hills, and it’s anti-social. (The group’s roots are old guard WASP, elitist, exclusionary.) Shinnecock’s three neighbors – National Golf Links, Southampton Golf Club, Sebonack Golf Club – are sprinkled with moments of quirk and funk. Shinnecock unfolds sensibly on 260 rolling and treeless acres, with fairways that act as wind tunnels. From start to finish the lesson… noise. Loud, demanding and relentless. Somehow, Tommy Fleetwood shot a 63 on Sunday when Koepka won. That’s like shooting 60 at Augusta.

He was 27 then, 35 now, and will be 45 when the Open returns to Shinnecock to meet No. 7, in 2036. Raymond Floyd was 43 when he won 40 years ago. He bought a house in Southampton and joined the club, and you could see him, time and time again, slipping from the car park to the clubhouse in snazzy loafers and metal-framed shades. The ’86 Open made Floyd a star. The 2018 Open, for Koepka, did the same.

That clubhouse, broadly similar to Muirfield’s in Scotland, sits atop Shinnecock’s highest hill. To visitors and members, to motorists driving by, the clubhouse is a beacon, a landmark of the weathered American game. With solid white columns around its perimeter, and flagpoles on its east and west sides, the Shinnecock clubhouse makes a proud local statement.

But let’s consider another shape here, an unlikely one, from the back tee on the 4th hole, in an almost rural area of ​​the course, in its northernmost depths. If you could go up to the cherry stop at that point and look south you would see it all: a pale, moving place; beautiful clubhouse; the east-west tracks of the Long Island Rail Road; garages and malls; modern mansions in old potato fields; sea ​​beaches; the dark wonder of the Atlantic.

Then, somewhere beyond the horizon and in your wandering mind, the old world itself, the birthplace of all this imported, madcap beauty. In Shinnecock, nothing is lost in the way of travel. You’ve got those potato-chip fairways, ball-eating bushes, magic-carpet greens plus, at the Open, a drinking bowl trophy awaits the winner. Enter the golfers, from all corners of the world, every last one motivated and inspired by the vague promise of ecstasy.