THE US OPEN, GOLF

The US Open is the national championship of American golf: four days in mid-June on a different course each year, set up by the United States Golf Association to make scoring very hard, and finished on Father’s Day. Any professional may enter, and any amateur with a handicap index of 0.4 or better, and some ten thousand a year do.

In 1913 a twenty-year-old amateur who had grown up across the road from the course tied the two men then thought the best golfers in the world, and beat them in a playoff the next day. His caddie was ten.

Newport

The first US Open was played on 4 October 1895 at Newport, in Rhode Island, the day after the first amateur championship: four times round a nine-hole course, in a single day. It had been put back from September so as not to clash with the America’s Cup.

Eleven men played, ten professionals and an amateur. Horace Rawlins, a twenty-one-year-old Englishman who had come over that year to work at the club, won a hundred and fifty dollars and a gold medal, and the cup went to his club.

It has been played over seventy-two holes since 1898. British players won it until 1911, when John McDermott became the first American-born champion.

In 1913, at The Country Club in Brookline, the amateur was Francis Ouimet, whose family’s house faced its seventeenth hole and who had caddied there from the age of eleven. Tied with Harry Vardon and Ted Ray after seventy-two holes, he beat them in the rain the next day, by five strokes and six. His caddie was Eddie Lowery.

The upset did much to make the game popular in America.

The Rough

The set-up is the USGA’s: a long course, with narrow fairways, deep rough and fast greens, and a short par five or two played as a long par four. The winner usually finishes at around level par.

Qualifying is in two stages: eighteen holes at more than a hundred courses, then thirty-six in a single day, which television calls golf’s longest day. About half of the hundred and fifty-six who start have come through it.

Four men have won it four times: Willie Anderson, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus.

Shinnecock Hills, in Southampton, one of the five clubs that founded the United States Golf Association, held the second US Open, in 1896, and its sixth in 2026.

In 2026 Wyndham Clark led it from the first round to the last, and won his second US Open by a stroke, after a six-stroke lead on the final day had almost gone.

What to Know

It is played from Thursday to Sunday, and ends on Father’s Day, the third Sunday in June. The practice rounds are from Monday to Wednesday.

Smart casual, and shoes for a long walk.

Tickets are sold in advance by the USGA, and can sell out. Telephones are kept on silent, and calls made away from play. Cameras are allowed only in the practice rounds, and no bag may be larger than six inches each way.

In 2027 it is played at Pebble Beach, from 17 to 20 June, and in 2028 at Winged Foot, outside New York. Stay as near the year’s course as can be managed: on the Monterey Peninsula in 2027.

The mistake is to wait for birdies. At a US Open a par is a good score, and the shots worth seeing are the ones played out of the rough.

The Court

The US Open is not the Court’s own. Hospitality at the course is sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay near the year’s course, and the table afterward. The Open Championship follows in July.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.