Inside Shinnecock Hills, where Phil Mickelson double putted, Greg Norman fought fans, history

The year was 1986, and the fury within Greg Norman was rising.

He was being heckled from pillar to post at Shinnecock Hills with the Australian a popular target.

Watch every round of The 2026 U.S. Open LIVE & EXCLUSIVE is Fox Sports, available on Kayo 19-22 June | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.

The crime?

Leading America’s national Open at one of its most revered courses, no less.

It was hardly murder, but they don’t take kindly to anyone who isn’t one of them in these parts.

“(They were) just saying ‘Go home you effin’ Aussie’, ‘You can’t play golf’, ‘You’re a choker’,” Norman told sportscaster Dan Patrick in 2019 about the 1986 US Open.

“It was very hard because they get you in between walking from the green to the tee when you’ve got six feet of space and they’re yelling in your ear.”

Norman, fresh off throwing away that year’s Masters to Jack Nicklaus, was once again in the lead of a US major during the third round.

But instead of just playing his rivals, the course — easily one of the world’s most brutal — and himself, Norman had a global behemoth against him that Saturday.

He admitted that what came next was a mistake.

“I should’ve never done it. I went up into the gallery and I just knew who it was,” he said.

“There was this sea of faces and I just swung to the right, walked right up to this guy, and I said ‘Look, if you want to say something to me, say it to me in the car park at the end of the round when I can do something about it.’”

There was no fight.

There was on Sunday, however, a different mauling at Shinnecock, which hosts this week’s US Open.

READ MORE

100 NOT OUT: How Scott became all-time Aussie hero… and why perfect moment may still come

TEE TIMES: When Adam Scott makes majors history as blockbuster groupings revealed

Norman brutally unravelled in a familiar fashion having played the final round with Lee Trevino flanked by police officers.

Reports at the time suggested the extreme measure subdued the crowd with Norman receiving a more favourable reception in the final round.

Another explanation for the shift would be that Norman flamed out, carding a five-over round to finish outside of the top-10 despite leading after 54 holes. Threat extinguished.

“I will rethink playing tournaments in this area,’’ Norman said at the time. “I may not come back here unless there’s an Open here.’’

He’d be far from the only non-American to take a dim view of playing on Long Island, New York.

Golf’s centuries-long obsession with grace and decorum is no match for New York sport fans, who routinely turn major events in the area into some sort of bloodsport.

The playbook is simple: Gather in one spot with the American flag flying high, consume a few “libations”, as Tiger Woods likes to call them, and let it rip.

If not drunk from the alcohol at ‘Shinny’, then fans may still be intoxicated from the New York Knicks winning the NBA championship for the first time in 53 years — triumph that sparked a borderline riot in midtown Manhattan this week.

Scary, indeed.

History tells us that if you’re not from America, and you’re posing a threat in this area, you’re going to cop it.

Last year, it was Rory McIlroy who was public enemy No.1 while playing the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, a one-hour’s drive back towards Manhattan.

Just like Norman — who McIlroy detests — the Northern Irishman was targeted throughout tournament. Beer was thrown at his wife, Erica, while the first tee MC shamelessly led a chant of “f**k off, Rory” over the PA system.

Like Norman, McIlroy needed a police escort. And again, like his Australian foe, McIlroy eventually bit back, telling a fan to “shut the f**’ up”, while he also needed to be restrained after the beer projectile.

McIlroy had the last laugh with Europe winning 15-13, before he castigated the fans in the media.

“I think golf should be held to a higher standard than what was seen out there this week,” McIlroy said. “Golf has the ability to unite people. … It teaches you how to respect people. Sometimes this week, we didn’t see that.

“So, no, this should not be what is acceptable in the Ryder Cup.”

A veteran tour caddie, speaking under the condition of anonymity about the rise of rowdy golf fans in the US, agreed.

“Look at the Ryder Cup at Bethpage — that was a disgrace. You have to think that mobile phones should be banned like at the Masters,” he said.

“That way, there would be way less bulls**t.”

Fellow European great Sergio Garcia has been there before, too.

At the 2002 US Open at Bethpage, he was mercilessly heckled in the final Sunday pairing with Woods. Fans sick of his lengthy pre-shot routine nicknamed him ‘Waggle Boy’, while some even raised their fists in a threatening action.

“You can’t control them, unfortunately,” Garcia later said.

“The people had to realise that we’re trying as hard as we can out there, and sometimes they make some stupid comments.”

Back up the Interstate at Shinnecock Hills has been a similar story involving international players.

In 2004, South African Retief Goosen outlasted Phil Mickelson in a deeply unpopular US Open victory.

His crime was much the same as Norman’s. He simply wasn’t who fans wanted to win.

“Some of the things people were saying to me in my face from the green to the tee was very unsportsmanlike,” he said after winning the major anyway.

“But in a way, that made me more determined to fight my way through and win this thing and battle that negativity.”

His caddie, Colin Byrne added: “As the day went on, the crowd got mouthier and more aggressive. They were hurling a lot of abuse at Retief.

“It made him more determined and stronger. He was feeding off of their bad energy. You could see more resilience. The harder you pushed him, the tougher he was.”

‘CARNAGE IS COMING’

This week is likely to produce similar hostilities towards contending outsiders, of which there could be many with 68 non-Americans teeing it up.

Daunting for that foreign contingent is that blocking out the external noise is merely a fraction of the challenge when it comes to playing a Shinnecock major.

This place eats golfers alive.

What makes Goosen’s triumph 22 years ago all the more impressive was just how rare his under-par score was.

Four times has Shinnecock Hills – one of the founding members of the USGA – hosted the US Open, doing so across three centuries in 1896, 1986, 2004 and 2018.

Of 654 participants, just three players have ever walked off the 72nd hole with an under-par score — Goosen (four-under) and Mickelson (two-under) in 2004, and Raymond Floyd (one-under) in 1986.

Making Shinnecock Hills so hard is its links-style layout, which exposes the course to brutal winds. Meanwhile, the way holes are routed — in a series of loops, not back-and-forth or out-and-back — means players must constantly adapt to the wind playing in different directions.

On a bad day, course superintendent Jonathan Jennings said wind gusts of 60 mph (97km/h) are common.

Monday appeared to be one of those days when the media tent was rocking and howling, while vision from practice rounds showed putts being blown right off windswept greens.

Furthermore, the rough is thick and long. The first cut alone this year is five inches long, according to McIlroy.

Beyond that is the dreaded fescue, which was up to Bryson DeChambeau’s knees as he attempted a practice shot on Tuesday.

Survive that, and players have to contend with greens which are heavily-sloped, slick, and have a colourful history with the US Open.

In 2004, the seventh-green was watered mid-round after the par-three was deemed to have become unplayable.

In 2018, groundskeepers infamously ‘lost the greens’ again, meaning they reached a point of no return in which they were so dry, and so fast, they that were borderline unplayable again.

“I thought we were on the edge, but we’ve surpassed it,” former Masters champion Zach Johnson said when asked about the conditions.

“It’s pretty much gone … it’s pretty much shot, which is unfortunate because it’s, in my opinion, some of the best land and certainly one of the best venues in all of golf … but they’ve lost the golf course.”

He added: “When you have a championship that comes down to sheer luck, that’s not right.”

It’s safe to say that Mickelson also checked out that year.

In a career of eyebrow-raising moments, one of Mickelson’s most memorable came on his 48th birthday, during that year’s third round, as he imploded on his way to an 11-over 81.

On the 13th green, Mickelson missed a bogey putt before running after the ball and putting it again before it had come to a complete stop.

He accepted a two-stroke penalty for hitting a moving ball — but the real punishment would be how disgusted the golf world was by his act.

Mickelson ultimately said he was “embarrassed and disappointed” by his actions despite initially revealing after the round that it was a calculated act.

“I don’t mean disrespect to anybody,” Mickelson told Fox Sports. “I know it’s a two-shot penalty. At that time, I just didn’t feel like going back and forth and hitting the same shot over.

“I took the two-shot penalty and moved on. It’s my understanding of the rules. I’ve had multiple times where I’ve wanted to do that. I just finally did.”

Time and time again, Shinnecock is a place where even the most experienced pros lose their minds.

The winning score that year was Brooks Koepka’s one-over, while only four players had final scores better than five-over par.

Whether that particular grind was a thing of beauty, or a step too far, is up for debate.

Justin Rose walked off the course on the Mickelson day in 2018, and said: “I’ve never seen a golf course change that quickly.

“We came off pretty much shell-shocked.”

Kevin Van Valkenburg of ESPN, however, wrote at the time that that year’s US Open had “turned into a beautifully absurd fiasco” while arguing for the former.

“I loved every minute of it, even when it was stupid. And it was, at times, stupid,” he wrote. “It was also wildly entertaining.

“I’m now convinced the USGA can’t hold its biggest championship without it descending into some version of chaos.”

Former US Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick would’ve agreed, saying this week that he isn’t a fan of ‘birdie-fests’, and that he enjoyed the test in 2018 having finished T12 at eight-over.

“There was a big meltdown. ‘Oh, they’ve lost the golf course’. I never believed they lost it. I don’t think they lost the golf course at all here,” he said.

“For me, it was difficult, and the strength of this golf course is the difficulty of the greens.”

Either way, Shinnecock organisers appear fearful of a 2018 repeat.

Greens – which measured a reasonably fast 11 on the stimpmetre last week – were still being heavily watered early this week, while fairways are slightly wider than they were eight years ago.

The USGA’s John Bodenhamer told the No Laying Up podcast that changes were a result of lessons learnt the hard way in 2004 and 2018. As a result, he said “there’ll be some things different in 2026”.

Even so, whether it’s the fans or the course, things have never been benign at the revered, but hostile, Long Island venue.

Which is why Bodenhamer’s comments still came with one warning that’ll be sure to send shivers.

“We’re going to let Shinnecock be Shinnecock,” he said.

Look out.