U.S. Open 2026: Shinnecock’s 10th and 13th holes showed why they’re two of most intriguing par 4s in American golf
SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — The first piece of content with any real traction from the 2026 U.S. Open was posted by the championship’s X account at 6:56 a.m., and concerned an approach Harry Higgs attempted on Shinnecock Hills' 10th hole—his first of the day:What looked in the air like a prelude to a reasonable birdie attempt instead became a bogey after the ball spun back off the front of the green.Four holes later, on the 367-yard par-4 13th, he did it again, spinning a good-looking wedge off the green and making bogey.Higgs fought back through a fog delay and windy conditions to post a one-over 71, but after his round, the wedge on 10 was still at the front of his mind."I hit a great shot and just got smacked in the mouth to start," he said. "I got claps, then I got groans, and I think I heard some laughs, too. The difference between yesterday and today, especially early in the morning, was pretty stark in that the greens were a lot softer. Never in my wildest dreams did I think hitting a gap wedge from 100 yards would ever have spun back. That ball usually just skips forward and stops."Higgs and playing partner Chandler Phillips joked that they should do wellness checks on each other every few holes, and he could have used another on 13." I hit a gap wedge from 90 yards, and it landed just short and spun all the way off the green," he said. "Same thing. Usually, I can do a good enough job when you just basically baby it, it bounces once and just kind of stops. ... There's like two yards to land it in. And it has to have the right spin, and the right shape, and the right height. It's just, that's why they're so hard."Thirteen's a sneaky little hole," he added a moment later, " it would be damn near impossible, I think, to get it close to any flag. And then you should damn near fist pump when you hit it on the green."What Higgs experienced was just one way that the 10th and 13th holes, which might look easy on paper due to their modest length, but which played as the second- and sixth-most difficult holes, respectively, on a nasty day at Shinnecock. A few basic statistics taken late in the day on Thursday give the outline:10th hole, par-4 408 yards: 4.524 scoring average, 8 birdies, 57 bogeys or worse13th hole, par-4 367 yards: 4.308 scoring average, 10 birdies, 40 bogeys or worseIn the midst of a week where the topic of excessive distance and a pause in the possible implementation of a rollback dominated the pre-championship discussion, these holes aren't just difficult. They speak to a style of design that can still stare down professional golf's technological evolution and not just live to tell the tale, but come out decisively on top.Let's take a closer look at what makes them so potent even as shorter par 4s.No. 10On Thursday, the wind here was mainly off the right, and the tee shot presents you with an option: Carry it around 250 yards, and watch it roll to around 320 down a slope, leaving you with a short but difficult wedge, or laying back on top of the hill, which might present a slightly better angle, but also typically leaves a shot between 160 and 180 yards. For some, like Padraig Harrington, the choice was obvious."Cam [Young, his playing partner] laid up, and I think he had 180," he said. "I don't want that shot. I had 110. I'd definitely go for it. I just do not see it as a layup. ... I know it's not the easiest shot from down there, but I think it's easier than the 180-yard shot from the top of the hill."He might be understating the difficulty of the approach from down the hill. Early in the week, Adam Scott singled it out as one of the most treacherous shots on the course."The second shot into 10, I think, is fascinating, and it's mostly a wedge," he said. "It's not often that we get scared with a wedge."The scatter chart during the opening round showed a mostly divided strategy, but several of the apparent "lay-ups" were not intentional—just safer attempts to reach the downhill chute that got hung up on the upper shelf, particularly a section to the left where Rory McIlroy ended up en route to making par."I would probably prefer to be down the hill, especially today hitting a wedge," he said, "but the way we had that wind on Monday that comes out of the north where you get it straight down, I think it's almost better to be up on top because you can come in from a bit more of a height, and you're able to stop the ball a little bit quicker."Miles Russell is just 17 and still an amateur, and after a perfect drive—a "stinger finder”—he managed to stop a 96-yard wedge 14 feet from the hole and make par. Even he, though, found the approach unsettling."You just don't have that shot very often," he said. "It's so uphill and, and at that distance it's pretty unique. But you have to take the wedges when you can get them out here."Ben Silverman made a double bogey on 10 and spoke about his own dilemma off the tee."It's tempting to wanna stay up top of the hill on 10 to not deal with all the slopes, and you get more of a guaranteed lie," he said.Ultimately, he took the risk of going down the hill because he wanted the shorter distance, but he missed the fairway right, which is a fatal mistake."It got caught in the weeds, so then you're screwed," he said. "You have to hit the fairway on that hole pretty much unless you get a good lie and it kind of breaks left or something. You're going crazy uphill elevated to the green with maybe a 5-to-10 pace area of the green where you can actually hold the green. You need a good lie off the fairway."The stats bear him out—the combined greens in regulation stat from the left and right rough was 3-for-20. And once you miss the green, as Keith Mitchell found out, you're on the hook for a disaster. He flew his approach past the green, and the structure of the putting surface, which James Nicholas had depicted by making his hands into a steeple, means you have to be perfect; too long, and you'll roll off the front, too short, and it'll come straight back. Mitchell made the latter mistake and finished with a double bogey on his first hole of the day."If you miss the green and you miss in the wrong spot, it's almost impossible to get on," he said. "I remember saying at the green, 'I really have no idea if I can even get this ball on the green from off the back.' The elevation just drastically just sits up and then it goes down like 20 yards off the back."Again, the stats bear him out—the proximity of scrambling shots like chips and pitches from around the green was over 26 feet, making it the most difficult on the course.Jackson Herrington, runner-up at last year's U.S. Amateur and collegian at the University of Tenneseee, may have summed up the hole's inherent peril best after missing his approach and making bogey. "I know 10 seems pretty easy," he said. "I mean, you hit it 250 and it rolls all the way down to 320. But then, if you do do that, the pin's tucked over the right bunker, and even into that green, if you hit it down there, you gotta watch your spin."In short, there are pitfalls everywhere, from the first shot to the last, and as if the drive and approach weren't difficult enough, the shape of the green meant that it played as the hardest hole to putt from various distances, including 10-15 feet and inside five feet.No. 13The puzzle here seems simpler, because the hole is shorter at 367 yards with some general movement to the right, but while the most difficult shot is either the approach or the chip at 10, on 13 the unanimous vote was for the drive. With the wind almost directly in players' faces, and with an angled fairway, it played as the toughest hole on the course in accuracy, with only 54.39 percent of all players finding the fairway."It's straight into the wind off the left, and the fairway kind of slopes that way, so it's probably one of the tighter fairways on our golf course," Mitchell said. "And when the wind's in off the left for right-handed players, it's tough."Harrington made the argument that perhaps players were too conservative off the tee, and that landing in the fairway bunker 275 yards away wasn't the worst fate in the world. He used himself as an example—he missed the fairway badly to the right, but still hit to 15 feet and made par.Sam Burns adopted that strategy after discussing it with his caddie in the practice rounds."You don't have a lot of framing on that hole to shape it off the bunkers or grandstands or anything," he said. "It kind of just sits out there by itself. Yeah. In the practice round, I think we had like three wood, sand wedge, and today I hit like a driver, you know, pitching wedge or nine iron."Burns didn't mind going in the fairway bunker, but as it turned out, the wind was so strong that his drive went just 248 yards."We were laughing because we got up there, it was like 275 to the bunker," he said. "So I hit this chippy cut driver, and I looked back at my caddie, and I was like, 'I don't think that's within, like, 30 yards of the bunker.'"Ben Silverman was a victim of missing the fairway and knew that it would be tough to make par once he ended in the left rough."There's multiple mounds in the fairway that just send the ball sideways," he said, "so if you're not landing in the, in the right pocket, then it can just scream somewhere.The other difficult element of the tee shot, as Russell (who called it a "sneaky good hole") noted, is that it's elevated, meaning the ball stays in the air longer."You either have to hit it straight or fight the wind the way you want to," he said.Even from the fairway, though, the uphill approach isn't easy. Multiple players spoke of the small landing area for holding the green, including Ludvig Aberg, who was delighted to make one of the few birdies on the hole."The green is difficult," he said. "It's sloping quite dramatically left to right. Obviously with the wind kind of in off your left on the second shot, it presents a challenge."Russell noted the need to take spin off the approach—a lesson Higgs learned the hard way—and the stats showed that the only place where you could expect to hit the green more than half the time was from the side of the fairway.Nicholas might have suffered the most on 13, and his double bogey presented almost every element of difficulty the hole presents."It's straight into the fan today, and it's blowing 25 sustained out here. You've got to hit a wood, and you've got to keep it low. Put a spin on it, and it's going to go absolutely nowhere," he said of the tee shot. "I talked to my caddie off the tee, and we're like, we either take our risk here or take it going into the green...so I hit mini driver, hit a great shot, but it just kind of went up and soared right into the fescue. Thought I had a decent enough lie to go to the green, and I ended up getting it closed down, went way long left. At that point, you're just trying not to make triple. I tried to hit it in the bunker to give myself a chance to get up-and-down."He did, and avoided becoming the only triple of the day, but the damage was done.The only silver lining on 13 is that the green complex is slightly easier, meaning that proximity from around the hole and putting were slightly harder. This is the green where Phil Mickelson, frustrated in 2018, hit his own moving putt, but conditions were significantly less harsh on Thursday.• • •These two holes are rare creatures in American golf—short par 4s that nevertheless present a massive headache to professional golfers. It's true that the near-constant wind at Shinnecock gives them a boost in this regard, but in both cases, the design neuters modern advantages in unique ways. You can hit a big driver on 10, but the elevated, sloping green requires a deft touch with a risk of disaster, and 13 takes the driver completely out of play and puts an emphasis on finding the fairway.None of this is to suggest that it's possible for other courses to duplicate the time-defying black magic inherent to these holes, but only to heighten the appreciation of what makes them special, and to recognize the tactical and psychological challenge they'll pose to players who decimate holes of this length at the majority of stops on tour.
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