The 126th US Open returns to Shinnecock Hills on June 18-21, and the field that will tee it up is taking shape in the most colourful corner of the year's qualifying calendar. Local qualifying for the 2026 US Open closed earlier this month at 109 sites across the United States, with a record 10,201 entries — a number that the USGA confirmed is up roughly 8% on 2025's intake.
The pipeline is producing the kind of stories the championship is built for. Twenty-nine of the 110 local qualifying sites filled within 24 hours of registration opening, an indicator of how popular the qualifying route has become as the championship's open-door identity continues to drive amateur and developmental-tour participation.
Former NFL quarterback Tony Romo is once again attempting to qualify, a fixture of the local qualifying conversation since his post-broadcasting golf renaissance gathered pace in 2022. Romo plays the US Open qualifier ladder with serious intent — he has carried a sub-2 handicap for years and has competed in PGA Tour events as a sponsor invite at the Korn Ferry level — but has not yet broken through to a US Open field. The 2026 attempt is his fourth in five years.
Jordan Spieth, conspicuously, is also in qualifying. The three-time major champion missed the automatic exemption windows after a flat 2025 season produced no top-10 in the FedExCup standings and no top-25 at a major. The exemption category that has historically protected former US Open champions for 10 years from their win expired for Spieth at the end of 2025 — 2017 plus 10 — making the 2026 championship the first major he has had to qualify for since turning pro in 2012.
The age spread in qualifying captured headlines again. A 13-year-old amateur and a 71-year-old club professional both entered the field in 2026, with USGA records showing four qualifiers across the country who were 60-or-older entries. The 13-year-old's pre-qualifying score was reported by the USGA as 'within shouting distance' of the local cut.
Vaughn Harber earned medal honours at the Cleveland local qualifying on May 13, posting one of the lowest scores in the country across the 109 sites and progressing to the final-qualifying stage. Sam Saunders, Arnold Palmer's grandson and a past Tour player, was a featured storyline through Week 3 of local qualifying, attempting a return to a US Open stage that has been a recurring backdrop in his career.
Final qualifying — known affectionately on the qualifying circuit as 'Golf's Longest Day' — will be staged at two-loop 36-hole sites in mid-May and June, including a Dallas venue and the championship's only international final-qualifying location at Walton Heath in England. The qualifying results will produce the bulk of the 156-player Shinnecock field, joined by the 15 past major champions inside the championship's recent-major exemption category and the various official-world-golf-ranking-cutoff and Tour-exempt categories that complete the bracket.
Shinnecock has hosted five US Opens before, most recently the 2018 championship that crowned Brooks Koepka in a setup that produced a Saturday so firm and so windy that the championship had to apologise for the conditions. The USGA has spent the seven years since reworking its agronomy partnership with the club and modelling its setup pipeline against firmer-but-fairer course-setup metrics. The 2026 championship will, in many respects, be the result of that work.