Whether or not you think Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is a proper links course (reigning Open champion Scottie Scheffler does not), it shares at least one thing in common with Scotland’s greatest seaside courses: high ocean winds.
And at the 2026 U.S. Open, brutal winds are forecasted to wreak havoc on play. The outlook for Thursday’s opening round is particularly dire, with fears already bubbling that the wind could cause the USGA to “lose the golf course,” as was alleged at the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.
Here’s what you need to know.
Scheffler explains why high winds are major issue at Shinnecock U.S. Open
As Scheffler explained in his pre-tournament press conference on Tuesday at Shinnecock, true links courses do often feature stiff winds as a primary defense, but they counter the challenge with slow, relatively flat greens.
“[Shinnecock Hills] may look like a links course. I don’t think it really plays like one. Links golf is really interesting in a sense of once you get the ball onto the green, most of the greens are pretty flat and they’re fairly slow compared to these greens, just because you have so many elements,” Scheffler explained on Tuesday.
Scheffler continued by saying that while links courses can be “fairly easy” once you get on the putting surface, at Shinnecock “you can be in the middle of the green and be like, ‘wow, I don’t know how I’m going to two-putt from here.’ I think it may look like links golf but doesn’t necessarily play like it.”
Most importantly for our purposes here, Scheffler said that due to Shinnecock’s lightning-fast, sloping putting surfaces, “you’ve still got to be hitting the ball up in the air in order to hold the greens.”
That’s going to be a major problem for the best players in the world when they tee it up on Thursday, because it’s expected to blow.
U.S Open weather forecast calls for extreme winds on Thursday
According to Windy.app, when the first groupings tee off for Round 1 at 6:35 a.m. ET on Thursday, they’ll face steady 20 mph winds with gusts reaching all the way up to 36 mph.
For any mortal golfer, that level of wind is already too much to have any hope of a good round, even on a course that doesn’t have treacherous greens.
But it’s nothing compared to what players will be facing in the middle of the day.
By 11 a.m., the forecast calls for winds of 31 mph, with near hurricane-force gusts of 52 mph. The outlook doesn’t improve much through the rest of the day. When the final players are finishing up their rounds Thursday evening, they’ll be fighting gusts in the mid-30 mph range.
The wind is forecasted to give the U.S. Open competitors a break on Friday and Saturday, but only relative to Thursday. On Friday, winds will be in the high-teens with gusts in the 20s. On Saturday, winds will increase again into the 20-mph range, with gusts getting into the 30s.
As for Sunday, when the final pairings are contesting Shinnecock’s closing stretch, they’ll do so in the face of 20-mph gusts.
The brutal wind forecast for this 126th U.S. Open may turn into a major headache for the players, though Scheffler isn’t scared.
“It looks like it’s shaping up to be a pretty windy week. I think the golf course will play pretty nice,” the World No. 1 declared.
One thing is for sure: the high winds will definitely provide a lot of entertainment for us viewers at home.
