With U.S. Open looming, 3 superstars are seeking answers

three superstars – Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler leave the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village still hunting for the sharpness that Shinnecock Hills demands, while LIV’s Bryson DeChambeau is leaning on tech and recent fixes as he heads into a major-week where his past

The U.S. Open doesn’t just punish mistakes—it exposes them. With Shinnecock Hills waiting next week. Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler arrived on Long Island’s doorstep with a question they couldn’t fully answer. and Bryson DeChambeau—still trying to get his swing fully behaving on the sport’s biggest stages—has been searching for relief the same way everyone else does when time runs short: by looking for something that finally clicks.

Shinnecock Hills has a reputation for leaving even the world’s best feeling flummoxed and frustrated. In 2018, Brooks Koepka shot one over par to win at Shinnecock. In 2004, Retief Goosen prevailed at four under. Only Goosen and Phil Mickelson finished that week under par.

Next week’s test on Long Island promises to be brutal, and not the kind of course where you “hope to find (or reignite) your game.” It’s the opposite: the place where good golf has to show up in every facet, or it doesn’t survive.

McIlroy and Scheffler came into last week’s Memorial Tournament as major-grade tune-ups. each needing something to feel cleaner before the U.S. Open grind begins. It wasn’t about winning at Muirfield Village. Both were there for a polished game, fewer thorny questions, and the kind of steadiness that majors reward.

For Scheffler, the week followed another frustrating near-miss at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson. The World No. 1 won in his first start in 2026. but after that he “consistently found himself on the wrong side” of golf’s fine line—six top-three finishes without a win in the four months since the American Express. His game has been good in 2026, just a tick worse than his world-beating ways of 2025. At the Memorial, he showed up as the two-time defending champion at a course that fits his methodical approach.

McIlroy’s starting point was different, but the feeling was the same. He’d teed it up only twice since his Masters win—finishing T19 and T7—and he’s been battling a driver issue that cost him on Sunday of the PGA Championship.

Across four grueling days at Muirfield Village, the Memorial played like a preview of how quickly momentum can flip. Scheffler “rant[ed] at caddie Ted Scott after a first-round water ball.” McIlroy “hug[ged] Justin Thomas after a brutal second-round battering.” And even when the scoring looked workable. both men still ended up searching for their best.

McIlroy finished T12. His Sunday included an early birdie barrage that let him take advantage of a softer Muirfield Village after thunderstorms on Saturday softened up Jack Nicklaus’ meat grinder. His iron play was stellar for the week—he ranked 10th in Strokes Gained: Approach—but driving consistency betrayed him. He ranked 11th in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, yet he hit only 53 percent of his fairways.

“Off the tee still wasn’t where I want it to be,” McIlroy said on Sunday. “Thankfully, the fairways at Shinnecock are a little wider than they are here. But, yeah, still need to work on that. I need to work on how I’m hitting it off the tee. But everything else, putting felt pretty good, for the most part.”.

He was then asked about the diagnosis of his driver issue—the same problem he survived to win at Augusta National, but couldn’t weather at Aronimink. McIlroy explained the swing mechanics in careful, unnerving detail.

“I get a little bit underneath the plane on the way down and then from there I try to drag the handle to match it up. and then I get toe strikes. ” he said. “So if I’m aiming a touch left trying to hit a cut and I get a touch underneath it and then I try to save it by dragging the handle. I hit it off the toe and then it goes

left. But then. if I try to hit with one that’s a draw or pretty neutral. I’ll still get a little bit underneath it. and I’ll release it. and it will overturn a little bit. But I have to try to get the club back out in front of me. But then when it gets out in front of me. if I do get it there. then it’s about having the right release pattern on

the way through.”.

When a reporter quipped that he was “limited” in his understanding of the intricacies of the swing, McIlroy replied, “I feel limited at the minute, too.”

Scheffler also finished T12, but his story at the Memorial carried more volatility. He yo-yoed between lethal precision and uncharacteristic sloppiness that produced nine bogeys and a double across the week.

In Round 1, Scheffler lost 2.5 shots on his approaches, but in the third round he gained 3.5 shots. Off the tee, he picked up 1.2 strokes on Thursday, then lost almost a full shot in that category on Friday.

What made the week feel frustrating wasn’t just the numbers—it was how much of it was avoidable. On Sunday, Scheffler called it the kind of swing week that leaves you doing damage control rather than making the move you came for.

“I would say pretty frustrating,” Scheffler said of his week on Sunday. “But the way I played the last two days. I definitely feel a lot better with kind of where things are at than I did coming off the course on Friday. I guess I should say in the middle of the round Friday. I started hitting some good shots on the back nine Friday, and then I played decent the last couple days. I just wasn’t sharp enough to make the big move that I needed to make.”.

He also pointed to “silly mistakes,” naming sloppy putting and leaving himself in the wrong spot after missing the green. For Long Island, that means fine-tuning in the off week if he wants to chase the career Grand Slam with clean habits.

“Just little things, little mistakes that I don’t typically make, I felt like I was making this week,” Scheffler said. “So a few things to clean up in the off week, but overall, I feel pretty comfortable with where my game’s at.”

McIlroy and Scheffler aren’t alone. The U.S. Open is drawing other stars into the same tension: the need to peak while the course punishes everything that isn’t consistent.

On LIV, Bryson DeChambeau’s prep has carried its own struggle. His preparation for the U.S. Open continued to involve some of the same swing issues he fought during a missed cut at the PGA Championship—until a conversation with Google Gemini helped him make tweaks.

After a third-place finish at LIV Korea, DeChambeau described how his swing started feeling out of sync.

“Golf swing felt in sync. and then it started getting out of sync. and it felt like my hands were getting ahead of me. ” DeChambeau said. “It continued that way for the next two rounds, and it was very frustrating. I spent some long hours on the range trying to figure some stuff out. and I was talking to AI quite a bit last night trying to go through some different physics principles that make the club turn over … I came out here today with just a little bit more freer hands. and I felt the club a lot better. and I felt like I could close the club a lot more effectively and then I started striping it.”.

DeChambeau followed that third-place finish in Korea with a T11 at last week’s LIV Andalucia. After missing the cut at both the Masters and the PGA, he heads to Shinnecock with a major record that’s been harder to defend than his LIV results.

There are bigger questions around his future, too. DeChambeau’s professional future is unclear as LIV tries to find funding for life after 2026.

Still, he isn’t ready to treat those major flops as proof that he’s falling short of his own ceiling. Even with the missed cuts—he said he might miss all four majors this year—DeChambeau told Flushing It that his short stays at Augusta and Aronimink don’t mean his work isn’t moving.

“To be honest, missed cuts are gonna happen. I might miss all four of them in majors this year,” DeChambeau told Flushing It. “That’s just golf. Like, I’m playing great. I just haven’t shown up when it mattered most. But I’ve played well out here on LIV. and I’m working on my golf swing really hard. and. I feel like it’s in a really solid place. It’s very close to some of my best golf ever.”.

With Shinnecock looming, the shared theme is plain: each of these stars is standing at a familiar crossroads—the kind that turns into either momentum or doubt once the first ball is struck. Next week’s U.S. Open won’t reward hope. It will reward proof.

U.S. Open Shinnecock Hills Rory McIlroy Scottie Scheffler Bryson DeChambeau Memorial Tournament Muirfield Village CJ Cup Byron Nelson Masters PGA Championship LIV Golf Brooks Koepka Retief Goosen Phil Mickelson