U.S. Open 2026: What to know from the final round at Shinnecock Hills

Wyndham Clark took the outright lead at the U.S. Open shortly after 7 p.m. local time Thursday. For the next 71 1/2 hours, he never let go of that lead, no matter how much New York golf fans wanted to will it out of his grasp.

Clark’s six-shot advantage was perilously close to evaporating at several points Sunday. In the end, his 72nd hole was eerily similar to the one that closed out his U.S. Open win at the Los Angeles Country Club three summers ago: A drive down the right side, an approach from a little over 190 yards, and a brilliantly executed lag putt from 50-plus feet to tap-in range and a one-shot win.

These are the top numbers and notes from the final round of the 126th U.S. Open.

1. Call it marked resilience or teetering on the edge of destruction. Either way, Clark took a difficult road on the way to his second U.S. Open victory. He holed nine par putts ranging from 4 to 14 feet over the final two rounds.

WIRE-TO-WIRE FOR WYNDHAM! 🏆 🏆 pic.twitter.com/k7kvzfXzTS

— U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 21, 2026

His strokes gained tee to green dipped each round, from a field-best 5.3 in Round 1 to a minus-1.5 on Sunday. Clark hit just 20 of 36 greens in regulation over the final two rounds, the fewest by a U.S. Open champion since Martin Kaymer (19 of 36) at Pinehurst in 2014.

2. But like Kaymer, Clark is a wire-to-wire U.S. Open champion, becoming the eighth player (and ninth instance — Tiger Woods did it twice) to achieve the feat. Clark’s round of 73 was 1.6 strokes worse than the field scoring average Sunday. He is the first player to win the U.S. Open while losing strokes to the field in the final round since Woods in 2008 (minus-0.13). Those numbers provide interesting context in the tournament’s immediate aftermath, but they’re likely to be lost to history and the enduring glow of a U.S. Open victory.

WYNDHAM GOES WIRE TO WIRE 🏆 pic.twitter.com/Pv1FtA5JOM

— U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 21, 2026

3. Clark is just the fifth man since 2000 to win twice within a span of four U.S. Opens or fewer. The last two to do it, Retief Goosen and Brooks Koepka, got their second titles at Shinnecock Hills, as well.

Clark becomes just the third player to win a U.S. Open in California and New York, joining Woods and Billy Casper. Casper won the 1959 Open at Winged Foot, then won at the Olympic Club seven years later. Tiger ran away from the field at Pebble Beach in 2000, then won wire-to-wire for a second time at Bethpage in 2002 (he also added a win in 2008 at Torrey Pines).

This is Clark’s fifth PGA Tour victory. Since the week of his first win, the 2023 Wells Fargo Championship, only Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler have more PGA Tour titles.

4. Alone in second place is Sam Burns, who endured U.S. Open heartbreak for the second consecutive year. At Oakmont last summer, Burns held the outright 54-hole lead, but an unfavorable ruling regarding a lie and standing water spiraled into a final-round 78. Sunday, he had consecutive birdie putt opportunities on his 71st and 72nd holes of the week, from 9 and 16 feet, respectively. Both missed.

Burns began the day seven shots behind Clark, looking to equal the largest final-round comeback in U.S. Open history, achieved by Arnold Palmer at Cherry Hills in 1960. The 29-year-old American nearly forced the playoff, with his round of 67 just one stroke off the low round of the day.

Burns has finished ninth or better in each of the last three U.S. Opens. He is the only player to finish in the top 10 in all three of those championships.

5. Tom Kim rounded out the trio of players to finish the week under par with a brilliant performance in his first major championship appearance of 2026. Kim’s solo third-place finish is his best result in an official worldwide event since December 2024. There have been six top-three finishes by golfers from South Korea in men’s major championship history; Kim, who turned 24 Sunday, has two of them (he tied for second place at the 2023 Open).

Kim has played in five U.S. Opens in his career, finishing in the top 35 in each appearance. Since 2022, he has made 75 birdies or better in this championship, the most of any player in that span.

6. The week Keith Mitchell orchestrated at Shinnecock Hills was a true U.S. Open statistical unicorn. Thursday, he shot the only round in U.S. Open history in which a player shot 40 or worse on one nine and 29 or lower on the other, a most chaotic route to a round of even par.

Couple that with what he achieved Sunday: Becoming the first player in U.S. Open history to shoot even par in all four rounds. There have been 7,713 instances of a player completing four rounds in a U.S. Open. Mitchell is the only one with four even-par scores on the ledger.

Mitchell’s week was not merely a numerical oddity, though. He is the only player ever to play all four rounds in a U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills and not record a score over par. His tie for fourth place is also his best career finish in a major championship.

7. Paired with Clark, Scheffler garnered heavy favor from the galleries Sunday, with fans cheering on the game’s top-ranked player to complete the career grand slam. Scheffler bettered his playing partner by two, but it wasn’t nearly enough, as he finished in a three-way tie for fourth place.

Scheffler was the first reigning world No. 1 to play in the final pairing Sunday at the U.S. Open since Woods at Torrey Pines in 2008. Of the six men to complete the modern career grand slam, three did so in their first start at the last major needed to finish the job. The other three needed more than two tries: Gary Player (1965 U.S. Open, third try), Jack Nicklaus (1966 Open, third try) and McIlroy (2025 Masters, 11th try).

Scheffler has now finished fourth or better in 10 of the last 19 majors contested. He is a combined 123 strokes under par in major championships since the beginning of the 2020 season, 48 shots better than any other player in that span.

8. Friday, Joaquín Niemann became the first player in known Tour history (as far back as the records are reliable) to make any cut despite carding a score of 11 or worse on a single hole. Sunday, he secured a tie for seventh, his best career finish in a major championship. Replace that 11 on the sixth hole of Round 1 with a par, and Niemann finishes the week at 6 under.

9. It seems inevitable that Xander Schauffele will win a U.S. Open at some point. He finished in a tie for 11th place this week, making him 10-for-10 in his career when it comes to top-15 results at this championship. Since World War II, the only player to finish in the U.S. Open top 15 more consecutive years than Schauffele is Nicklaus, who did it for 12 straight years, from 1971 through 1982.

10. Jackson Koivun and Ryder Cowan tied for low amateur at 5 over par, the first time the honor has been shared since 2018 — the last time the championship was held at Shinnecock. Koivun, the No. 1 player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, birdied three of his first five holes Sunday, signing for a round of 68. It was the lowest final-round score by an amateur at the U.S. Open since Viktor Hovland shot 67 in the final round seven years ago at Pebble Beach.

No amateur has finished in the top 10 at the U.S. Open since Jim Simons in 1971.

11. The field scoring average for the final round was 71.79, the second lowest for any U.S. Open round contested at Shinnecock. In 1986, Round 3 produced an average of 71.70.

Clark, ranked 34th in the Official World Golf Ranking entering the week, makes it five straight U.S. Open champions who were outside the top 15. That is the longest such streak for any men’s major since the OWGR was introduced in 1986.

The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale begins July 12.