Wyndham Clark’s wire-to-wire US Open victory was a masterclass in grinding out a major under fire, yet the week that matters most to British golf fans is still to come, and Rory McIlroy arrives at Royal Birkdale carrying unfinished business from Long Island.
There were moments across the four days at Shinnecock Hills when it genuinely felt as though the 2026 US Open might slip away from Wyndham Clark. The Long Island crowd had decided, loudly, that it would prefer almost anyone else to win. Scottie Scheffler, playing alongside Clark in the final pairing on Sunday, was serenaded with happy birthday wishes as he turned 30. Clark got something closer to a pantomime villain’s welcome. He won anyway, by a single stroke from Sam Burns, finishing at four under par to claim his second US Open title in just four years.
For those watching from this side of the Atlantic, though, the sharper story belonged not to the man who lifted the trophy but to the one who trudged off the 18th green at six over par, wondering what might have been. Rory McIlroy was four shots off Clark’s lead at the turn on Saturday, three birdies in a row having sent the Shinnecock crowd briefly delirious. Then came the back nine, five bogeys, a scorecard that read 40, and the kind of collapse that has no clean explanation. By Sunday evening he had described Shinnecock as having won the battle.
Speaking to BonusFinder, a leading expert on pay-by-mobile casino options and wider sports betting analysis, one golf analyst put it plainly: “The back nine at Shinnecock cost McIlroy the tournament, but nothing about that performance tells you he cannot win at Birkdale. He was two under through nine on Saturday at arguably the hardest course in major golf. That form translates to links.”
It had. But a new battle starts on 16 July at Royal Birkdale, and McIlroy, for all his frustration at Shinnecock, arrives in Southport as second favourite in the market at 7/1, behind only Scheffler at 4/1.
The Course That Finds You Out
Clark’s total of four under put him in genuinely historic company at Shinnecock. According to the USGA, only three players across the previous four US Opens held at the venue had finished their week below par. Clark got there inside two rounds. His 36-hole total of seven under broke the course record at the halfway stage, and while the final round required considerably more scrambling than the opening two, the clinical putting that had defined his week held when it needed to.
Former Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley, speaking during Sky Sports coverage, was blunt in his assessment of McIlroy’s performance: “It has been a seesaw week for McIlroy. One step forward and two steps back has been the order of play for him all week long. As he has made a few birdies, he has followed it with mistakes.”
The specific technical fault was McIlroy’s approach play on the inward half on Saturday. On the par-four tenth, he bombed a drive 365 yards to the base of the green, then airmailed a wedge over the back. Three-putt bogeys followed at 12 and 14, and a missed two-footer at 15 effectively ended any realistic pursuit of Clark. It was not a collapse born of nerves. It was distance control, a problem that Shinnecock, with its swirling sea wind, exposes mercilessly.
McIlroy Heads Home for Links Redemption
McIlroy himself has already mapped the route back. He told reporters after signing his Sunday scorecard that he would be heading back to links golf immediately, describing the next few weeks as his favourite time of the year. The Genesis Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club on 9-12 July sits between now and The Open, a chance to groove the low-flighted iron play and re-acquaint himself with the kind of running game that Birkdale’s dune valleys reward.
For context on just how well McIlroy suits the links game, he was tied for fourth the last time The Open visited Royal Birkdale in 2017, and he won his Claret Jug at Royal Liverpool in 2014 by a comfortable two shots. Royal Birkdale’s amphitheatre layout, where holes run through the valleys between towering dunes, also tends to suit players who can flight the ball low into a crosswind off the Irish Sea.
The Odds, the Contenders, and a Question of Patience
McIlroy’s 7/1 price reflects a market that still believes Birkdale suits him better than any other remaining major venue on the calendar.
Scheffler opens as favourite at 4/1 and arrives as the defending Open champion after his Royal Portrush victory in 2025. His US Open week was a quiet one by his own standards, finishing tied for fourth, but quiet by Scheffler’s standards still means two rounds under par at Shinnecock Hills. He is not going away.
Tommy Fleetwood, meanwhile, carries his own set of expectations to Southport at 16/1. The Lancashire man will be playing on a course he knows extremely well, having grown up a short drive from the venue. His ball-striking on links turf is as reliable as anyone’s in the field, and he remains one of the game’s most compelling nearly-men, the kind of player for whom a home-links major feels, eventually, inevitable.
One Major Left, One Course That Knows How to Deliver
Clark’s second US Open title rounds out a major season in which Scheffler’s Grand Slam bid has been twice thwarted, at the PGA Championship earlier in the year and now at Shinnecock. McIlroy, the Masters champion, arrives at Birkdale knowing that a second major of the season is there to be claimed.
The course will ask questions that have nothing to do with distance and everything to do with patience, flight control, and the ability to take a bogey, accept it, and move on. Those are not easy qualities to demonstrate when a season’s worth of expectation is pressing down from both sides of the gallery rope. McIlroy has the answers. He just needs to hold on to them for 72 holes in Southport.
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