NEW YORK, June 15 (Reuters) – Five storylines to follow as the world’s best players descend on Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York, this week for the June 18-21 U.S. Open:
SCHEFFLER’S GRAND SLAM BID
World number one Scottie Scheffler, a two-times Masters winner who won last year’s PGA Championship and British Open, will get his first crack at completing the coveted career Grand Slam of golf’s four majors.
A win for Scheffler would make him only the seventh man to win all four of golf’s blue-riband events, joining Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen.
Scheffler has seven top-10 finishes in 12 starts on the PGA Tour this year, including a win at La Quinta in January to open his season and a trio of runner-up finishes at the Masters, Cadillac Championship and RBC Heritage.
EUROPEAN DOMINANCE
When Englishman Aaron Rai won the 2026 PGA Championship a month after Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy retained his Masters title in April, it marked the first time in the era of the four current major championships that the season’s first two majors had been won by Europeans.
The pair will lead the European charge in New York, where McIlroy’s winning Ryder Cup teammates Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick will hope to keep the momentum after each notching up wins this season.
SCOTT SET TO JOIN NICKLAUS IN RARE 100 CLUB
When Australian Adam Scott tees off in the opening round on Thursday he will join golfing great Jack Nicklaus as the only men to play in 100 consecutive majors.
Scott’s remarkable streak, which includes a triumph at the 2013 Masters, began at the 2001 British Open. Nicklaus played in 146 consecutive majors from the 1962 Masters to the 1998 U.S. Open.
KOEPKA IN DOUBT
Brooks Koepka was poised to have a huge advantage at the famously tricky New York course this week, having won his second U.S. Open title at Shinnecock in 2018. But his withdrawal from the final round of the RBC Canadian Open on Sunday with a mysterious hand injury has put his participation in doubt.
“(I) got to the range and went to grip the club and I just couldn’t even grip it,” he told reporters.
HAMPTONS SUMMER
The U.S. Open arrives in the Hamptons, the chic beach playground of celebrities and Manhattan’s ultra-wealthy, where city-dwellers fleeing the sweltering summer streets create famously snarling traffic across Long Island.
A temporary Long Island Rail Road platform has been constructed adjacent to the tournament grounds as organisers pleaded with ticketholders to use public transport and prices for home rentals sky-rocketed in the area.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto and Amy Tennery in New York; editing by Clare Fallon)
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