Dan Hicks, Kevin Kisner, Brad Faxon, Jim “Bones” Mackay
June 10, 2026
THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon. And thank you for joining today’s NBC Sports U.S. Open conference call. Beginning next Thursday, June 18th, NBC Sports will present 31 hours of live championship coverage from Shinnecock Hills across NBC, Peacock, and NBCSN, as well as featured groups and all access coverage streaming all day each of those four days on Peacock.
U.S. Open Schedule (All Times ET)
| Date | USA Network | Peacock/NBCSN | NBC/Peacock |
| Thursday, June 18 | 6:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. | 5-8 p.m. | |
| Friday, June 19 | 6:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. | 1-7:30 p.m. | |
| Saturday, June 20 | 10 a.m. – Noon | Noon - 8 p.m. | |
| Sunday, June 21 | 9 a.m. – Noon | Noon - 7 p.m. |
Joining us on today’s call: NBC Sports golf voice, Dan Hicks, who works his 27th U.S. Open and 22nd as lead play-by-play announcer. Dan has worked NBC Sports’ coverage of two prior Opens at Shinnecock; in 1995 in the 14th tower and 2004 in the tower on 18.
We have analyst, Kevin Kisner, who played in nine U.S. Opens, including 2018 at Shinnecock.
Analyst, Brad Faxon, which played in the U.S. Open 20 times, including at Shinnecock in 1995 and 2004.
And on course reporter Bones Mackay, who caddied in 26 U.S. Opens, including the past three at Shinnecock.
Each will make an opening comment, and then we’ll take your questions.
DAN HICKS: Every U.S. Open is really, really special, but this one in particular, just from my perspective, is even more special for a number of reasons. This was the very first USGA event, first U.S. Open that I was ever involved with, that NBC was ever involved with back in 1995, and I’ll never forget. It was at Shinnecock and we were all really nervous. It was such a big responsibility to cover the U.S. Open and to kind of prove to not only ourselves, but the rest of the world and the USGA, that we were worthy of a championship because we hadn’t really done a lot of big-time golf at that point.
I got a chance to host from the 18th tower the first and second rounds on Thursday and Friday. And so we were just coming on the air, and I’ll never forget the great Sandy Tatum of the USGA, the legendary USGA executive who put his heart and soul into this championship and really was integral in having us do the championships and awarding us the championship rights, he sat at a chair in the booth basically about 10 feet away from me, and I can still remember those big thick eyebrows of his, and he was just locked in and listening to every word we said to make sure we kind of represented the championship the right way.
So it flashes all the way back to there when I think of the U.S. Open. Of course, Corey Pavin won, and I was out there on the 18th hole with the sun setting over the Peconic Bay. It was just magic.
So fast-forward, we did 2004. We were unable to be a part of the 2018 event because Fox did it. But getting back to Shinnecock, it is without a doubt my favorite golf course in the country, one of my favorite in the world. So it’s a real, real pleasure to get back there. I cannot wait to see how it plays this year. The weather is such a big deal there. It could change in the just the blink of an eye, as we have seen in the past U.S. Opens. But that’s another reason which makes it so special. So cannot wait to get back and do this latest one at Shinnecock.
KEVIN KISNER: I’m going to speak a little bit about the golf course, the changes that we’ve discussed with the USGA, and what we are expecting to see more of in 2026 compared to at least 2018.
We’re going to have much wider fairways, on average 6 yards wider, than we did in 2018. And they want it to play that way because they want all the golf to be around the greens. They want guys to really be thinking, using their 15th club, as they like to say, their mind, around the greens with many different options. They want to test the players.
Hopefully, if the golf course and the weather can all agree, then they can pull it off and have all these balls running off the greens where guys will have many options to get the ball up and down. Obviously, we know that is Shinnecock’s main defense.
So looking forward to testing all the guys around the greens. I love the USGA’s philosophy of trying to get every club in the bag dirty. That is one of the things I think about when I go to a new golf course for the first time is if I hit every golf club. And that’s what they’re trying to accomplish here at Shinnecock by giving guys options around the greens with many different clubs and not just having 6-inch rough right off the edge where everybody’s taking big hacks with lob wedges and hoping they guess correctly on how it comes out.
So I think Shinnecock is going to shine in 2026, and I’m looking forward to being a part of it with the NBC Sports golf team.
BRAD FAXON: I love Dan and Kisner’s comments, and I’m going to love sitting next to them up there on that 18th tower. And I know Bones is going to add his comments as well having been there a bunch of times.
But I think this has to be the best venue for a U.S. Open for so many different ways. The history of the golf course being one of the top five -- or one of the first five USGA courses. I think it’s the closest the U.S. Open will play links golf to an Open Championship. Because of the sandy soils, there are these wide fairways that Kis mentioned will play narrower than that. There’s a lot of contour on these fairways.
I saw some of Rory’s comments saying how the angles matter. And in today’s game, usually angles don’t matter if the conditions are soft because you can just fire at every flag. He mentioned in particular the 8th hole, a par-4 that might play into the prevailing breeze, especially that second shot, when you get the hole location over the right side, how important to be on the left side of the fairway it is. I think that’s why some of these holes will play narrower than the width of the fairway in order to take advantage.
I love how this course doesn’t favor any one particular player or style. You have to have every club in the bag. Kis mentioned that. You have to have the patience because everybody’s going to get some incredible bounces and bad breaks where you’re going to have to deal with particularly tough lies and up-and-downs. If you think about the past champions there, Raymond Floyd and Goosen who got up-and-down from everywhere, and Corey Pavin, just incredible short games.
I was lucky enough to be on that Fox team in 2018 and see what Koepka did with the narrowed fairways and some of the shots that he hit in that final round. To be able to get up-and-down for a 4 on the 11th hole was one of the great 4s of all times. And I’m sure we’re going to see much more of that this year. Friends of mine that have played there the last few days have said the course is in tremendous shape. If you do miss the fairways, the fescue grasses are high, it’s going to be very, very penal.
So if you get a lot of the crosswinds, and we all know how many different directions these holes go in, you’re going to have some players that are going to have to take some gambles or pitch out sideways, or maybe even have a lost ball. I think it’s going to be so thick. But I think it’s going to be one of the best U.S. Opens we’re ever going to see.
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: I’ll just keep my comments brief. I think that Shinnecock Hills is arguably the finest U.S. Open venue there is on the rotation. I absolutely love everything about it. I was really lucky enough to caddie in ’95 and 2004 for a player that had a great chance to win the event. I’ll never forget standing on 18 tee in the group behind Corey Pavin as he played that second shot into 18 with wood in hand and, of course, we all know what he did there, famously hitting it to 5 or 6 feet there on his way to victory.
Just super, super excited to get there. I’m really interested to see what some of the amateurs may do next week, particularly Jackson Koivun who I think is poised to become a real young star in the game. But beyond that, I just think the golf course will shine next week and we’re due to have one of the great U.S. Opens ever played.
Q. Dan, my question for you, following up on your comments about how special Shinnecock is. It’s kind of funny, I guess it’s not technically one of the three anchor sites for the USGA, but they’re going back there a lot. So from a TV perspective, how helpful is it to be going back to iconic venues like these that the fans know, the players know, the broadcasters know? What does that do for the broadcast and the tournament as a whole?
DAN HICKS: I think it adds to it a lot. I think the more familiar the audience is with a golf course, I think the easier sell it is from a broadcasting perspective. You don’t have to constantly remind people of maybe what this hole does or how this particular hole plays.
Obviously, it’s a far cry from -- everybody’s seen Augusta National every year, but I think that’s one of the true appeals to The Masters is that it’s at the same place every year. I think the more it gets to Shinnecock, the better off we are. I think a great example of that was at the U.S. Women’s Open last week, now, the women played for the very first time at Riviera, but it’s a golf course that everybody was familiar with because it’s on every year for the L.A. Open.
I think that really matched up well with everybody saying to themselves, okay, we’ve seen the short par-4, 10th, we know the holes, we know the iconic 18th up the hill into the amphitheater. So I think anytime you can have the folks familiar with it, it kind of makes our job easier, and they can kind of relate to how hard it is to play.
But let’s be honest too. It’s been since 2018 since it’s been there, so it’s been eight years, and then before that, it was 2004, then ’95, and it was, like, a hundred years before that (laughing). So it hasn’t exactly been on the radar a lot. It’s there, but it’s going to be up to our guys and me to kind of be good tour guides to kind of refresh everybody’s memory about the 11th hole, this little par-3 that Fax talked about, which is referred to as the shortest par-5 in America.
So can’t wait to do that. The holes just come alive on TV. It’s a telegenic golf course, and if you get the sun and the sun setting on that fescue out there, it’s just real magic.
Q. Dan, I was wondering if you could go back to 2004 on Sunday. I was there and I recall that Johnny Miller kind of sniffed out before the telecast began that things were amiss with the course setup, and he was running around trying to get the USGA to water the 7th green, maybe, and there was a lot of tomfoolery going on. What do you remember about sort of the chaos of that day and maybe Johnny’s role in it?
DAN HICKS: Yeah, I remember it very clearly. I was in the tower well before Johnny because I have a lot of rehearsal responsibilities. So I was in there, and I would say about half hour or so before air, maybe 40 minutes, Johnny completed his little trek around the golf course where he’s looking at the hole locations and just checking things out, and he comes up to the tower, and he’s just unusually out of breath and excited as if he just saw something that he can’t believe he saw.
So, I’m like, what’s going on? He says, “you’re not going to believe this…they’re going to have to stop the U.S. Open.” And David Fay was in the tower with us, because at the time he was our rules guy in there with us as the executive director of the USGA, and his radio starts crackling, and it’s all becoming this scene of like, oh, my God, this is crazy. I don’t know if anybody’s ever seen anything like this, heard anything like that.
So, David’s radio is crackling, and he’s going, what’s going on over there at the 7th hole? So, then Johnny proceeds to say, “I watched the first three groups go through and there’s no way they can keep it on the green.” And he was absolutely convinced that they were going to have to stop the U.S. Open. So, you know, they ended up stopping play. They ended up syringing the greens.
I’ll never forget it. Kevin Stadler was one of those players that went through there, and Johnny goes, He hit the most perfect shot and it wouldn’t stay on. So, we come on the air, it was very chaotic because we had to deal with something that was wild. And I remember Roger Maltbie was our guy on the ground, and Walter Driver was the president of the United States Golf Association. So journalistically we were scrambling. We need to handle this.
So, we go down to Roger and he asks Walter Driver, Have you ever seen anything like this happen? And then Walter Driver pauses for about five seconds and just says, I don’t know, in that dry voice of his. So that’s my recollection of what happened. I remember the golf course totally changing colors by the time I got into the tower on Saturday and left on Saturday night and then high winds that night. I remember watching ESPN’s show, and Chris Berman doing the studio show and the wind was whipping his papers off the set of the desk.
So, the perfect storm, so to speak, had arrived and we found out how it affected that golf course. It just absolutely turned on a dime the next day.
Q. As a follow-up, if I may, for Bones, is that the hardest golf course you’ve ever seen as far as championship conditions? And how did it affect your strategy with Phil as far as just navigating this very unusual challenge?
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: Yeah, it was crazy. It was just beyond difficult. The par-3 that Dan referenced that Kevin Stadler hit that shot into, we got there, and I don’t know where we were on the golf course in comparison to Kevin Stadler. I know we weren’t paired with him, I’m pretty sure. But we got to that par-3 and it’s the only time in the 25 years I’ve worked for Phil or in the 30 years I’ve ever caddied where I told Phil, “The only chance you’ve got to make par on this hole is if you intentionally miss this green and hit the ball into the left bunker,” and he hit this unbelievable 8-iron that left never left the bunker, went in the middle of it. I said, great shot. He hit it out to 4 feet and made the putt for 3.
But the greens were just absolutely crazy, crazy difficult. It was so hard to make it from 5 or 6 feet. So for Retief Goosen to have the putting day that he ultimately did in terms of winning the tournament there in 2004 was just incredible. I got in my car -- Phil had obviously won The Masters earlier that year. You could make the argument that that was the best U.S. Open he ever played there in 2004, you know, a few weeks after Augusta, and the first message I had on my phone was from Joe LaCava who had watched the golf on TV that afternoon, and he said, “Whatever you do don’t ever watch a replay of the golf. It will make you sick when you see what kind of putts Goosen made out there today on his way to victory considering that other people were having trouble making it from 5 feet.”
So, I never did, but it was one heck of an afternoon out there.
Q. For Kis, Fax, and Bones, week-in, week-out, for the most part, you guys are focused on birdies and now we’re trying to focus on, hey, par could be a really good score. For Kis and Fax, as a player, is this a mindset change? And for Bones, do you change anything in how you caddie or does it just come naturally when you see the golf course?
KEVIN KISNER: Obviously I think everybody has it ingrained in their brains that when they show up to a U.S. Open that par’s a great score. From a player, caddie, broadcaster, it doesn’t matter, we all understand the difficulty that the USGA continues to set up for the players.
I think Shinnecock’s a great test of that. I think about the 10th hole all the time. The 10th hole you hit a hybrid or a 3-wood off the tee and it all funnels down to the bottom and you have 90 yards to the hole. I was there a few weeks ago still wondering -- it was playing straight downwind, how was I going to keep this lob wedge on the green with the elevated green blowing straight downwind.
I just think that’s a testament to design and the golf course, standing here with a 90-yard shot wondering how I’m going to make a par. And that just shows you that the mindset does change. Any other regular Tour event we’re making birdie 70 percent of the time there from 90 yards. And I think guys will be having a different view of that. You walk right over after you finish that hole and go to the 11th tee with just maybe a 7-iron into a par-3, and it looks like there’s nowhere to hit it.
I just love that design and that setup, that it doesn’t have to be 250 yards or the 500-yard par-4 to make it difficult. And these guys will be truly tested at Shinnecock to make pars. There’s just not a lot of birdies out there. Maybe the first par-5, I think, at 6 is -- or 5 is probably the easiest birdie hole on the front. And there’s just not a whole lot of birdie opportunities on the back nine.
So, guys will be thinking pars are great, and you got to really have some self-restraint on certain shots, like that shot at the 10th hole that knowing hitting a lob wedge to 30 feet is okay and making a 4 there is a great score.
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: Just in terms of the question about the adjustments that the caddies make, I think that there are a few golf courses out there, St. Andrews being one of them, that when you’re about to caddie on them in high winds, it’s really a great help for the caddies to go out onto the golf course and walk the 18 holes before they ultimately go to work and see their players warm up and ultimately play their round.
So I think that it’s one of the few golf courses anywhere in the world where if I was caddying next week, I would be out there for a couple of hours walking around watching the golf that was being played before we ultimately teed off and just take it all in, see where balls were releasing to, see the firmness of the greens, find places where you ultimately feel like you can get the ball up-and-down as opposed to the places where you can’t. And I think we’ll see a number of great caddies out there next week doing just that.
BRAD FAXON: I would say one of the many special things about Shinnecock is they don’t have to do a lot to the golf course to make it U.S. Open ready. Where so many venues in the past have had to narrow fairways, thicken rough, firm up greens, I think the conditions out on Long Island -- and like I said before, the soils there are so -- the sandy soils allow for the firmness of fairways and greens, and that wind can do four different things in the same day.
And like Bones said, you can have a game plan, and players potentially could see the golf course play only one way for two or three days and then all of a sudden a front comes in, the wind changes, and that game plan goes out the window. So, course knowledge there is invaluable with all the different conditions that you can have. That’s what really makes Shinnecock great. There’s nobody in that field that’s going to leave there and say Shinnecock isn’t a great golf course.
Q. Are we going to see another career Grand Slam next week?
DAN HICKS: I wouldn’t be surprised at all. And…no, I don’t have a call already. Obviously, I’m a big believer in just waiting for those things to come to you. But I think every big major -- I don’t care what kind of golf course it is, and you’re going to see a few different ones. Obviously, The Masters is The Masters and the PGA was at Aronomink and now we’ve got Shinnecock, and we’ve got Birkdale later on. I think it starts with Scheffler. I don’t know how the rest of the guys feel, but I just think he’s still the guy that is the favorite going in. I think he’s got all the shots. I think you need all the shots, as Kis was talking about, that the USGA would love to see. He’s got ‘em all. It’s just a matter of how the putter is working in particular that week.
But if it is working, I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see him on his 30th birthday get it done at Shinnecock, which would be an unbelievable Father’s Day, Scheffler, career Grand Slam, 30th birthday. Doesn’t get much more magical than that. So that’s going to be a great story line to follow, and I think that Scheffler will be a part of it in the end. I really do.
Q. Do you guys think that this course particularly benefits any golfers that are going to be on the course next week?
BRAD FAXON: I would just say that of all the golf courses you could play, it’s hard to pick, like I said earlier, one style that works here. I mean, obviously, length is always an advantage if you’re in the fairway, and here at Shinnecock there’s going to be a chance to hit some long tee shots on some of the holes. But, remember, the side of the fairway you’re in are really going to be important.
But some of these greens are extremely large and some are very small. I think about the par-3s, and we all know what 7 and 11 can feel like, and from 250 yards -- Kis and I played a month ago and that second hole has a pretty big green, but a small area to land the ball in front of the green. I think you’re going to have to have imagination, you’re going to have to be able to work the ball in both directions. You’re going to have to be able to hit some shots high [with] spin and some shots you’re going to have to keep down into the wind.
I think it’s really hard to say one style of play has a big advantage here. We know how treacherous the greens can get, particularly if it’s windy, and how important short game’s going to be and putting. But I think one of the reasons we all think, and Dan said it, why Scheffler would be a favorite or the favorite is he’s just so mentally tough. But we’ve also seen Scheffler this year getting a little bit more annoyed than usual at certain situations. But he always seems to rise the more important the tournament is.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he were able to complete the career Grand Slam. But it’s very hard just to say that he’s the sole favorite here. I think about the European Ryder Cup team spent the week before last year’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage in the Hamptons, and I know Rory and Rahm and Fleetwood, all those guys were out there, and they got to play all the good courses and got to see Shinnecock in the fall. I think things like that are a huge advantage to those players that know the golf course.
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: I was just wanted to add that I think it’s going to be very important at times next week to successfully flight your golf ball, and I think that some players do that better than others. And then just beyond that, as Brad mentioned, the short game’s going to be absolutely at a premium. Being able to pick the ball nicely off those incredibly tight lies around those greens is, again, a skill that some guys have more so in their back pocket than others. So, flighting the ball and short game I think is going to be absolutely huge.
KEVIN KISNER: The only thing I would add is it will be so much weather dependent. If we get traditional wind that happens on Long Island, especially in the afternoons, and these things get dried out, there’s going to be so much imagination on where to miss the golf ball. Like Bones talked about with caddying with Phil, a good shot is not always just hitting the green. You hit it on the right side of the 7th green, it may not work out great for you. And there’s various holes throughout Shinnecock that missing the green could ultimately be better than putting. So, there’s just so much around the greens that will prove to guys, depending upon the weather, on where to miss the golf ball. I think the smartest players and the best short games will really come to the top by the end of the week.
BRAD FAXON: I would want to throw something else on top of that. I love that though. When players go to The Masters, again, wider fairways, not as wide as they used to be, but wider. But in order to shoot a great round at Augusta National, you have to be exact and precise. There’s a lot of precision required to play from the correct side of the fairway, depending upon where the hole locations are. I think that same philosophy is at Shinnecock. The chances, the few holes that you have chances to make birdies, you have to hit great shots. And I think that’s what’s going to make this such a supreme test for these players is how exacting the shots are.
You think about the par-5 5th hole, another angled hole, banked fairway. When you’re going into that green, if you miss slightly -- and if you’re hitting a 220-yard shot downhill, downwind, and you miss that green, it can go anywhere. And getting up-and-down, like Bones said, these tight fairways, these greens are mostly elevated, you just have to be so, so precise.
Q. I was curious, the par-3s at Shinnecock, maybe the best set, collection of par-3s I can think of at any golf course. How would you guys rank ‘em, what do you love about ‘em? I know you talked a little bit already on 11, but if you could elaborate, and maybe start with Bones.
JIM “BONES” MACKAY: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with your assessment there. I think they’re arguably the finest set of par-3s that you’re ever going to find. Certainly, when we were at Riviera last week for the U.S. Women’s Open we saw an amazing set there. But it’s about as good as it gets. And I’ll just echo what I said earlier on, I just think that if it came down to a vote and the U.S. Open was only going to be played at one golf course anywhere in this country for the remainder of time, Shinnecock Hills would get my vote. I just think it’s that good.
KEVIN KISNER: I can follow Bones on that. The thing I love about the four par-3s at Shinnecock is when you walk on the tee, it’s not -- the first thing I think of is it’s not your traditional par-3s. They don’t look like the traditional par-3s. They’re not big, giant, big bunkered, they have so many undulations around the green. The 11th hole you can’t even see where your ball finishes. 7 is almost impossible to hit with a short iron if the conditions are correct. 2, I think is just an underrated hole, where guys are always -- for some reason that hole, when I walk on it just feels like everyone is going to miss it right, because you see the big hill to the left. And then you get to 17 and it’s a great hole where if you hit a beautiful iron shot you will have a look at a birdie. But you miss that iron shot just barely and you’re really grinding for par. And ultimately, I think that’s what the USGA is trying to accomplish at a U.S. Open and I think Shinnecock Hills show cases their strategy to the ultimate goal.
Q. When Mike Davis was setting up the courses for the USGA, I think it was not a very well-kept secret that he wanted to keep those scores as close to par as possible. Not a very hard thing to do at Shinnecock. I wonder if you guys had any conversations with John Bodenhamer or anybody else at the USGA, and see if they have the same goals for a winning score, what they consider to be an acceptable score for the U.S. Open, or are we likely to get something higher than typical, lower than typical, what’s been the word on that sort of thing?
KEVIN KISNER: Dan and I spent a significant amount of time with John on the phone a few weeks ago and we didn’t mention a score one time, he didn’t mention a score one time. What he wants to do, and I think the USGA’s kind of changed their tune to, we want to go to the best golf courses in the world and play there, and we will understand if it tests the best players in the world to the ultimate test by their getting every club in the bag dirty. And I think that’s a great strategy, as long as we don’t get the golf course to a point that it can’t be playable. So Shinnecock is a great test all the way around and has all the different variables that you want to have to test the players. And I think they’re going to let Shinnecock Hills be Shinnecock Hills and not let agronomy get in the way and not let a target score get in the way.
DAN HICKS: Just to follow-up on what Kis said. I think they’re drifting away from maybe the old philosophy. Still, make no bones about it, they want a tough golf course and Shinnecock will be tough if they, in the words of John Bodenhamer -- they want to let Shinnecock be Shinnecock. They want to take less of a role in dictating maybe what the scores should be. And I think, honestly, I think they took a look back at what’s happened at Shinnecock in the years past and they don’t want that bad history to repeat itself. So, they’re telling us that this is the very first time that Shinnecock will be presented at a U.S. Open on the original William Flynn designed width of the fairways that he came up with in 1931, which is really the course you see today. So, I think it’s a refreshing kind of, you know, philosophy by them, and I think we’re going to see it on the full staying at Shinnecock. Just let Shinnecock be Shinnecock and not worry about, oh, you know, we can’t get under par here. I don’t think they will get under par if they let Shinnecock be Shinnecock. So, I think they’re just going to let things happen naturally. Mother Nature do her thing.
