The USGA has already mapped 22 future host sites for the U.S. Open and other championships, pushing its schedule all the way to 2051 at Oakland Hills Country Club in Michigan. That means the decisions shaping the U.S. Open 2027 era are being made years, and in some cases decades, before fans arrive.
John Bodenhamer said the shift is stark. The USGA used to think two or three years ahead for a U.S. Open or a U.S Women’s Open. Now, he said, it is looking 10, 15 and 20 years out. The reason is practical as much as strategic: clubs need time to prepare for course work, and the USGA needs time to line up venues that can handle the demands of a major championship.
That long view is already visible across the schedule. In February, the USGA announced that Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, would host the U.S. Open in 2045. Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is set for the 2036 men's and women's U.S. Opens in back-to-back weeks. Merion Golf Club will host the 2030 U.S. Open, while Oakmont Country Club, Pebble Beach Golf Links and Pinehurst No. 2 are scheduled to combine for 20 men's and women's U.S. Opens over the next two-and-a-half decades.
The scale of the planning also explains why the USGA is thinking differently from other championship operators. The PGA Championship is scheduled through 2035, and The Open Championship has host venues booked through 2028 with a current rota of 10 venues. The Open Championship has been played at 14 different courses since 1860, while the U.S. Open has been contested at 52 different venues since 1895. The USGA’s list is longer because its championship pool is broader, and because it uses repeat venues to create continuity from one generation to the next.
That continuity comes with a cost. Private clubs must shut down open play for several months to host a major championship, often during the best playing months of the year, so the USGA cannot simply drop a site into the calendar and hope everything works out. Bodenhamer said every club wants a different cadence. The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., might want a U.S. Open every 15 years, while Pebble Beach is described as having an open every three years between the women and men. “It’s not easy,” he said, because the USGA has to weigh the challenge against what a club can actually absorb.
That is the friction inside the long-range plan: the USGA says it must think decades ahead to make meaningful changes, yet Bodenhamer also said, “We can’t always make it happen.” The next milestone already on the books is 2045 at Inverness Club, and the farther-out dates, from 2030 through 2051, show how the governing body is trying to lock in a championship map before the calendar catches up with it.
