Scottie Scheffler is +550 to complete the career Grand Slam this week, and I get why half the betting public wants a piece of it.
I don’t.
Shinnecock Hills has only let two champions break par in five tries, and that kind of carnage is exactly where I go hunting for value instead of chalk. I’ve followed betting markets through enough U.S. Opens to know the pattern: two of the last three winners – Wyndham Clark at 100-1 and J.J. Spaun at 150-1 – were nowhere near the favorites list when their tournament started. Here are the five longshot bets I’m backing this week, with the real numbers behind each one.
Quick Answer: My five U.S. Open longshot bets at Shinnecock Hills: Wyndham Clark (+4500), Brooks Koepka (+3600), J.J. Spaun (+5800), Aaron Rai (+10500), and Kristoffer Reitan (+10000). Koepka is the only golfer in the field who’s actually won a U.S. Open on this exact course, and that history is worth more than his odds suggest.
Why Shinnecock Hills Sets Up for an Upset
Shinnecock doesn’t produce chalk winners. Across the four men’s U.S. Opens played here since 1986, only two champions finished under par: Raymond Floyd at 1-under in 1986 and Retief Goosen at 4-under in 2004. Corey Pavin won at even par in 1995, and Brooks Koepka won at 1-over in 2018.
| Year | Champion | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1986 | Raymond Floyd | 279 (-1) |
| 1995 | Corey Pavin | 280 (Even) |
| 2004 | Retief Goosen | 276 (-4) |
| 2018 | Brooks Koepka | 281 (+1) |
That’s a 7,440-yard, par-70 setup with zero trees, eight acres of bunkers, and rough the USGA’s own agronomy team describes as meadow-like rather than manicured. Long-iron approaches from 175 yards or farther decide entire rounds here. Throw in Thursday’s forecast of gusts up to 40 mph for the opening round, and the players who can flight a 3-iron under pressure have a real edge over the players who simply hit it the farthest.
A wide-open, weather-battered U.S. Open doesn’t just allow chaos. It invites it. That’s exactly the case for longshot bets.
Wyndham Clark (+4500)
Clark already knows how to win this exact tournament. He took the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club as a 100-1 longshot, and his recent form is lining up again. Five of his last six opening rounds have gone 68 or better, precisely the kind of fast start a brutal Shinnecock setup tends to reward. A win at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson three starts ago, a third-place finish at the Memorial, and a share of the 54-hole lead at last week’s RBC Canadian Open before fading to T-11 all point the same direction.
My honest opinion: Clark’s power off the tee suits Shinnecock’s widened corridors far better than it suited the tighter, tree-lined U.S. Open setups of a decade ago. The same volatility that makes him a major champion also makes him capable of an out-of-nowhere 76 — there’s no real floor here if the putter goes cold for even one round.
Brooks Koepka (+3600)
One player in this field has actually solved Shinnecock Hills, and it’s Koepka. He won here in 2018 at 1-over, grinding out a final-round 68 to edge Tommy Fleetwood by a single stroke. Course history matters more at Shinnecock than almost anywhere else on the U.S. Open rotation, because so few players have ever cracked it. Koepka has.
The risk is real, though. He withdrew from last week’s RBC Canadian Open with a hand injury, and his grip strength reportedly isn’t all the way back even though he insists he’ll play. If that hand holds up through Sunday, 36-1 is the best number on this entire board — a proven Shinnecock champion that the market is treating like he’s forgotten how to win majors. Lose that hand mid-round, though, and none of the history matters at all.
J.J. Spaun (+5800)
The market keeps fading defending champions, and 22 players somehow sit ahead of Spaun on the odds board despite him winning this exact tournament twelve months ago. He’s not here by accident. A win at the Valero Texas Open in April, four top-15 finishes since, and ball-striking numbers among the best on tour this season all point toward a player still playing well.
Two missed cuts in his first two majors of 2026 are the obvious red flag, and I won’t pretend otherwise — something about major-championship pressure has gotten to his short game in a way regular Tour stops haven’t. But Spaun proved at Oakmont last year that he can find his best golf exactly when it matters most, sinking a 60-foot putt on the 72nd hole to win by two. A defending champion who’s already shown he can get hot under that specific pressure deserves better than 58-1.
Aaron Rai (+10500)
Rai won the PGA Championship at Aronimink last month as a 230-1 underdog, becoming one of the longest-priced major champions in modern betting history. A month later, the market has shipped him back out to 105-1 for the U.S. Open, as if a player can simply forget how to play golf at the highest level. I don’t buy it.
His approach play backs up the trophy, not just the storyline: only one player in that entire PGA Championship field gained more strokes on approach than Rai did. That kind of form travels well to Shinnecock, where 175-yard-plus approaches into firm, elevated greens decide who’s still standing on Sunday. Most of the betting public hasn’t caught up to that yet. I have.
Kristoffer Reitan (+10000)
Nobody is talking about Reitan this week, and that’s exactly the point. He won the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow this season, beating a signature-event field that included several players currently priced ahead of him here. His number moved from 120-1 to 100-1 in the days leading into Thursday — a small shift, but a real one, and that kind of movement usually means sharp bettors found him before the public did.
I’ll admit this is the speculative pick of the five. Reitan doesn’t carry a deep U.S. Open résumé, and majors have humbled plenty of hot Tour winners before him. But a Quail Hollow champion at 100-1, in a major with this much weather chaos baked into the forecast, is exactly the kind of number worth a small swing.
How to Actually Stake a Longshot Bet This Week
A $100 bet on Koepka at +3600 returns $3,600 in profit if he wins, plus your original stake back. That’s the appeal and the trap, in one sentence: outright longshot bets in a 156-man field hit a small fraction of the time, even when the reasoning behind them is sound.
I treat longshot outright bets as lottery tickets with better-than-lottery math — not as the centerpiece of a U.S. Open weekend. A simple structure works well: keep each individual longshot bet to 1-2% of your total golf betting budget, spread that across two or three names instead of one, and pair it with a top-20 or top-10 finish bet on the same golfer at shorter odds. Finish-position markets pay out far more often than outright bets, which means you can profit from a strong week even when your pick doesn’t actually win.
Clark and Spaun both carry realistic top-10 paths given their season-long ball-striking numbers. Koepka makes more sense as a pure outright play — if his hand holds up, the course history makes him dangerous, and if it doesn’t, no finish-position bet saves that ticket either.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most bettors treat anything 30-1 or longer as a true longshot in outright golf markets. At this week’s U.S. Open, that cutoff covers more than 140 of the 156 players in the field — Scottie Scheffler’s +550 favorite price is the exception in this sport, not the rule.
Scottie Scheffler tops the board at roughly +550, chasing the career Grand Slam. Rory McIlroy (+1200) and Jon Rahm (+1500) round out the top tier, with Tommy Fleetwood, Matt Fitzpatrick, and Cameron Young next in the 18-1 to 20-1 range.
Not yet at Shinnecock specifically, but the broader U.S. Open has produced two longshot champions in the last three years: Wyndham Clark at 100-1 in 2023 and J.J. Spaun at 150-1 in 2025. Both return to this week’s field at considerably shorter prices.
The first round tees off Thursday, June 18, at 6:35 a.m. ET from Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, New York. The tournament runs through Sunday, June 21.
Most bankroll-conscious bettors cap any single outright longshot bet at 1-2% of their total golf betting budget for the week, since even well-researched longshots lose far more often than they win.
The Bottom Line
Shinnecock Hills doesn’t reward the safe play, and that’s what makes this the best U.S. Open in years to find longshot value underneath Scheffler, McIlroy, and Rahm. Clark and Spaun have both already won majors under this exact kind of pressure. Koepka has already won on this exact course. Rai and Reitan are simply the two prices on this board I think the market hasn’t caught up to yet.
For a deeper look at what makes this golf course so unpredictable in the first place, read our full breakdown of Shinnecock Hills’ course history and design, or see our favorites and top picks for this week’s U.S. Open if you’d rather back the chalk.
Odds referenced are from DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars, and ESPN Bet as of Thursday morning and are subject to change. Must be 21+ and located in a state where sports betting is legal. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) or visit ncpgambling.org.