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If you’re worried about these U.S. Open greens, you shouldn’t be

admin — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 09:11:06 +0000

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — If you were worried about whether Rory McIlroy, the reigning Masters champion, would find suitable partners for some Wednesday-afternoon tune-up golf, here on the eve of the sixth U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, you can stop worrying.

McIlroy went off the 10th tee a little after 2 p.m., playing with Mason Howell and Hamilton Coleman. Both are 18-year-old native Georgians who will matriculate at the University of Georgia at the end of summer, where they will be roommates. Both had tour bags every bit as big as Rory McIlroy’s bag.

The fellas chatted easily with McIlroy, 37 and bound for the World Golf Hall of Fame. Both are McIlroy’s match for swing speed and ball speed and get-on-with-it speed. If they were intimidated at all, there was no outward sign of it. McIlroy made a subtle nod when Coleman, who looks to weight about 138 pounds, smashed a driver off 10. Coleman nodded back like this — a practice round with one of the best golfers in history — is an every day. Kids these days. Kids!

Waiting to play a hole, McIlroy started doing the bouncing ball thing, turning the face of his wedge into a trampoline, bouncing his ball again and again of its scoring lines until one bounce got away from him. McIlroy watched as his ball went right into his golf bag, falling straight to its bottom with an immediate and audible thud. He offered a rueful laugh and he and his caddie, Harry Diamond, started to pull the clubs out of the bag, with a plan to retrieve the ball, before giving up. McIlroy put out his hand for a new ball.

All the while, Howell kept doing his own bouncing ball routine, stopping the ball in the face of his wedge whenever he felt like it. A kind of magic trick, really — fun-and-games, on the eve of the U.S. Open. Howell was wearing an embroidered belt with ANGC stenciled on it. That is, the Augusta National Golf Club. In April, Howell played in his first Masters, earning a spot in the field, and a spot in Rory McIlroy’s Thursday-Friday threesome, as the U.S. Amateur champion.

If Mason Howell and Hamilton Coleman are two of the prominent faces of elite American amateur golf for the next couple-three years, elite American amateur golf will be in a good place, for skill, for poise, for a do-it-right ethos. In case you were worried about it. Rory McIlroy didn’t agree to join these kids, half his age, out of happenstance.

If you were worried about the quality of the greens, here at Shinnecock Hills, based on Michael Kim’s comments or anything else, don’t be. The Korean-born golfer, with a notably active social-media life, described the greens as “spongy” and “quite bumpy” and pockmarked with “aerification holes” in a post on Tuesday. The greens were not spongy by Wednesday afternoon, and Rory & Friends went around. They were not bumpy. The teenagers were rolling one tumbling putt after another. The greens were dotted with dark healed aerification holes. They will do nothing to a well-struck end-over-end putt.

These beautiful and sloping William Flynn greens here are a variety of colors, as exposed greens on windblown courses near open water often are. You can see shades of poa and rye and bent on the greens, along with the aeration dots. These are not Oakmont greens or Augusta National greens. They’re Shinnecock greens and they are more than ready for the test.

If you were worried about the USGA and how it will handle the demands of putting on a U.S. Open on an exposed and hilly course with four days of wind in the weather forecast, don’t be. For starters, golf is an outdoor sport (with all due respect to TGL indoor play) and the challenges of weather are elemental parts of the game. More to the point, this current USGA regime — the president, Kevin Hammer, whose father was a club pro; the CEO, Mike Whan, who made his way in golf as an effective LPGA commissioner; John Bodenhamer, who runs the USGA’s championships and has obsessively watched previous Shinnecock Opens to learn what he could — is comfortable reducing green speeds and keeping the greens moist in the name of keeping balls on the green in the wind.

In other words, we’re going to get 72 holes of golf in, over these next four days, and it will be good, by which we mean it will be interesting. So don’t worry. As the kids say, or used to, it’s all good.

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com

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Brooks Koepka’s new partnership might surprise you. It shouldn’t

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:30:13 +0000

If you’ve been pining for a break from the slog of stroke-play events on the PGA Tour schedule, this is your week.

On Thursday, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans kicks off at TPC Louisianna, with self-selected two-man teams playing four-ball in the first and third rounds, and foursomes in the second and final rounds. Most of the squads’ origin stories don’t require much explanation: Matt and Alex Fitzpatrck? Brothers! Jacob Skov Olesen and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen? Fellow Danes! Ben Griffin and Andrew Novak? Defending champions! But there is at least one partnership that might give you pause: Brooks Koepka and . . . Shane Lowry?

Lowry gets it.

“To the outside it might not look like it makes sense,” he said from the tournament Wednesday, his odd-couple partner by his side, “but, you know, to us it does.”

It might appear nonsensical because we’re more accustomed to seeing Lowry and Koepka locking horns than we are leaning on one another. They’ve never gone head-to-head in a Ryder Cup match, but they have twice played in the same Ryder Cup, including in the contentious edition outside Rome in 2023. That was the week when Day 2 of the matches culminated with Lowry and other Europeans chirping Patrick Cantlay’s caddie, Joe LaCava, on the 18th green. That tension spilled into the parking lot where Lowry had to hold back McIlroy from berating Justin Thomas’s caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay — and yet more ugliness back at the team hotel where McIlroy allegedly got into it with Koepka’s caddie, Ricky Elliott.

None of this is to say that Lowry has ever harbored any beef with Koepka or vice versa, but given the history between their camps (or at least their continents), it’s still surprising on some level to see them syncing up.

Thing is, though, Ryder Cup rivalries can evaporate quickly under the warm South Florida sun, especially in the Jupiter Island area where palms trees are outnumbered only by multimillionaire Tour pros. Patrol the Bear’s Club, Medalist or Old Palm on any Tuesday morning during an off-week and you’re likely to spot a cluster of brand-name pros from both sides of the Atlantic enjoying one another’s company, if not taking one another’s money.

“Everybody plays the same golf courses, so we see each other pretty much every other day,” Koepka said Wednesday. “I don’t go a day without seeing a guy out here, so there’s always conversations. There’s always people talking, having lunch, doing whatever, practicing together. It happens way more frequently than I think people realize.”

Also on the list of popular Tour-pro hangs in the neighborhood is Michael Jordan’s swank club, Grove XXIII, which is where Lowry and Koepka played a round together a few months back — and where Lowry popped the question.

“I said to him, ‘I might need a partner for New Orleans’” Lowry said. “He goes, ‘Well, I’m going to have to play there.’ That was it.”

Lowry played with McIlroy in the previous two Zurichs (they won together in 2024), but when McIlroy bowed out of this year’s edition, Lowry needed a date. Koepka, meanwhile, just needed starts. Since his January return from LIV Golf to the PGA Tour, he has lacked the necessary FedEx points to qualify for the Signature Events; he’s hopeful, with Lowry’s help, to improve his status this week.

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Lowry and Koepka’s relationship extends beyond the borders of South Florida. They first got to know each other in 2012 and ’13 when Koepka was cutting his teeth on the DP World Tour. Lowry has known Elliot, Koepka’s looper, for even longer. When Lowry won the Open Championship in 2019, Elliott, who is from Portrush, was among a swell of well-wishers waiting to congratulate Lowry by the 18th green.

A few weeks after Lowry and Koepka’s round at the Grove, Lowry texted a follow-up note to both Elliott and Koepka to make sure they were still on for the Zurich. But Lowry said he didn’t have a firm commitment from Koepka until he ran into him several weeks later.

“I said, ‘Are we going to tee it up in New Orleans?’” Lowry said. “He said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”

The betting sharpies like Lowry and Koepka’s chances this week, setting their odds only behind favorites Matt Fitzpatrick, who has won twice in the last month, and his brother Alex, who won the DP World Tour’s Hero Indian Open last month. And on paper Lowry and Koepka do look like a good fit.

Lowry is accurate off the tee and can work the ball in both directions. (“My job is to try and hit it in the fairway,” Lowry said.) Koepka’s iron play is nearly unrivaled (he’s 2nd in SG: Approaches). And Lowry has been holing putts (31st in SG: Putting).

The setup suits their eyes, too. “I like the way we’re going with him hitting off certain holes and me hitting off the other holes,” Koepka said. “Everybody feels comfortable on the holes that we’re going to play.” Koepka added, ”Then the best-ball side of this whole thing, he’s been playing great, so just let him go do him and stay out of the way.”

Lowry feels pretty good about his partner, too.

“He’s Brooks Koepka” Lowry said. “He’s got five majors. You know what I mean?”

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