Preview of 2026 US Open & My Own US Open Tradition.

There are certain weeks in golf that carry a weight you can feel before a single shot is struck. The U.S. Open is one of them. Brutal, exacting, unapologetic — it is the championship that strips the game back to its purest questions: who can control their nerves, their ball, and their imagination when the course begins to bite back?

The 2026 edition returns to Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, New York, a venue that needs no embellishment. It has hosted this championship since the nineteenth century and has a habit of exposing even the finest players when the wind turns and the greens firm up. The final round, as ever, arrives on Sunday, June 21st — which this year also happens to fall on Father’s Day.

And that is where this tournament becomes something more personal for me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve watched the final round of the U.S. Open with my father.

Not occasionally. Not when time allowed. But as a standing ritual. We would clear the afternoon, settle into the same chairs, and let the television bring Shinnecock, Pebble, Winged Foot, Oakmont — all of it — into our living room. It didn’t matter who was leading. It didn’t matter who was struggling. What mattered was that we were watching it together, hole by hole, shot by shot, as the drama unfolded in that very particular U.S. Open way: slowly tightening, then suddenly breaking open.

Now, as a golf instructor, I understand the championship differently. I see the angles players are forced to take. I recognise the tension between aggression and survival. I can hear the conversation a caddie is trying to have with a player who is no longer fully listening. But I still find myself slipping back into the same role I had as a boy — watching alongside my father, asking questions I already know the answers to, and learning the game all over again through someone else’s decisions under pressure.

That is what makes this week so special. The U.S. Open is not just about who is swinging it best; it is about who can endure the narrative the course writes for them. Shinnecock will demand patience off the tee, discipline into the greens, and a very clear acceptance that par is not a given — it is something to be earned, often the hard way.

And on that Sunday afternoon, when the final group makes the turn and the leaderboard tightens into a handful of shots, I know exactly where I’ll be. The same place I’ve always been. Watching the final round of the U.S. Open with my father.

Some traditions fade as the years go on. This one hasn’t. If anything, it’s become more important. Because beyond the trophies, the pressure, and the history, this championship has always given me something else entirely — a reminder of where I learned to love the game in the first place.