The USGA announced on Monday that the U.S. Open will return to Winged Foot in 2028, filling out the entire slate for the 2020s with a golf course that has been the site of some of the most famous major championships in history. This will be Winged Foot’s seventh U.S. Open with the first coming in 1929 when Bobby Jones took down Al Espinosa in a playoff.

Winged Foot joins a big hitter’s list of golf courses the USGA has lined up over the next seven editions of its most prominent golf tournament. Here’s a look at the venues that will host U.S. Opens for the remainder of the decade. 

• 2023: Los Angeles Country Club
• 2024: Pinehurst No. 2
• 2025: Oakmont Country Club
• 2026: Shinnecock Hills golf Club
• 2027: Pebble Beach Golf Links
• 2028: Winged Foot Golf Club
• 2029: Pinehurst No. 2
• 2030: Merion Golf Club

This is an extraordinary list. All elite golf courses, all worthy major championship venues. If we’re being completely honest, Pebble Beach might actually be the worst course on this list. If Pebble is the worst course in your group of venues, then something has gone very well for your organization. I realize it sounds nuts to disparage one of the most iconic golf courses in the country, but I’m not sure what option I’m left with considering this group of heavy hitters.

Winged Foot has traditionally been one of the most interesting tests in major championship golf. Its crazy slopes, mind-bending greens and crisp edges have provided the best players in the world some of their biggest challenges over the years.

“Winged Foot has provided the backdrop for some of the most dramatic moments in the history of our sport, with many of golf’s legendary champions being crowned on the club’s iconic West Course,” said John Bodenhamer, USGA chief championships officer in a statement. “We strive to provide players with the greatest stages on which to compete for a national championship, and there are few stages as grand as Winged Foot.”

This is certainly true, although Winged Foot — all 7,500 yards of it — isn’t what it once was. Most recently, Bryson DeChambeau torched the course en route to his first major victory in 2020 over Matthew Wolff and Louis Oosthuizen. Much consternation emanated from that major given DeChambeau’s style — hit it as far as humanly possible on a course with few penalty areas, find it and do it again — seemingly did not fit a classic, iconic venue the way many people thought it should.

“I don’t really know what to say because that’s just the complete opposite of what you think a U.S. Open champion does,” said Rory McIlroy at the time of DeChambeau’s victory. “Look, he’s found a way to do it. Whether that’s good or bad for the game, I don’t know, but it’s … not the way I saw this golf course being played or this tournament being played. It’s kind of hard to really wrap my head around it.”

Was Winged Foot, gasp, outdated?

The real answer is that a lack of restriction on equipment is eventually going to make all courses — modern, historic or otherwise — outdated eventually, and it’s going to be fascinating to see where we’re at with the golf ball and golf clubs when this U.S. Open comes around again five years from now. Winged Foot’s big problem is that its footprint can’t really expand any more than it already has.

None of that should matter in 2028, but it certainly will in 2048 or 2068 when golfers are driving the ball 450 yards with ease.

All of that is neither here nor there at the present moment. Winged Foot rocks, and having another U.S. Open there should be a tremendous addition to the major championship schedule for both the USGA and major championships in general.

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The week before the 2022 Masters was not a great one for Rory McIlroy. His iron play at the Texas Open was abysmal, and he missed the cut at 1 over as J.J. Spaun went on to win the event at 13 under. That was his last start before the annual pilgrimage to Augusta National for an attempt at the most elusive championship in his life.

To pile on, after trying and failing to get out of San Antonio on Friday evening after the cut, McIlroy recalled being told room service at his hotel would take 150 minutes.

“I was like, let’s just wake up tomorrow and start again,” he said.

At that point in his season, though Rory was playing quality golf, he had fallen to No. 9 in the world just as Scottie Scheffler was introducing himself to the No. 1 spot in the Official World Golf Rankings. Fast forward six months, and McIlroy — on the back of a truly preposterous run following that missed cut — has now started his ninth distinct reign in the No. 1 position.

“If someone had told me on the Friday night of the Valero Texas Open when I missed the cut that I would be world No. 1 by October, I would have asked them what they were smoking because I would not have believed them,” said McIlroy on Sunday after defending CJ Cup and taking the top spot back from Scheffler after Scottie’s 30-week stint at No. 1.

Since that Friday in San Antonio, McIlroy has played 15 events worldwide and finished in the top five in 10 of them, including three of the four majors (the other major finish was still a top 10). He’s missed one cut in that span of time and has won three tournaments. This will likely end up being the eighth calendar year in which McIlroy won at least as many tournaments as he has missed cuts.

How unusual is it to have nine separate stints as world No. 1? Well, it’s the third most all-time behind Tiger Woods and Greg Norman (11 each) ahead of Dustin Johnson (seven) and Seve Ballesteros (five).

What’s more unusual, though, is how much time has elapsed between when McIlroy first became No. 1 (March 2012) and now (10 years, seven months).

The type of golf that must be played to become No. 1 in the world is fleeting. You have to be outrageously good to rise above all the other top talents in the world, and normally — if OWGR history is any indication — that summit only lasts for (at most) 1-3 years.

A total of 25 golfers have ever been No. 1 in the world, 22 of which did not have more than a four-year gap between their first and last (or most recent) appearance.

Johnson is a good example. He first became No. 1 in February 2017, and his last appearance there was July 2021. And that’s one of the longer runs atop the golf world. Johnson is one of the two best golfers of the last 15 years, and this four-year off-and-on relationship with No. 1 speaks to his sustained greatness over a long period of time.

Ernie Els is a better example of the norm. Els is probably one of the 20 best players ever, and he was first No. 1 in June 1997 and last No. 1 in June 1998. One year.

The three outliers are of course Woods (who had multiple stints of at least 250 consecutive weeks at No. 1), Norman and McIlroy. Woods went 17 years between his first and most recent (likely last) appearance. Norman went over 11 years. McIlroy could eclipse that depending how long he keeps the top spot this time around.

Perhaps even more remarkably for McIlroy is that he has not been ranked worse than 16th in the world since November 2009. At no time over the last 13 years have there been more than 15 golfers on the planet that were considered better than him. To illustrate how outrageous it is to perform at that level, take a look at who was in the top 10 in the world when McIlroy entered.

So few golfers stay in the top 10 or top 15 for that long, and certainly fewer return to No. 1 so many times over the course of that many years. Even though he never dropped out of the top 16 in the world, McIlroy said returning to No. 1 felt pretty far away even as recently as a year ago.

“Far away? Yeah, it did,” McIlroy said. “Jordan Spieth got to world No. 1 at Whistling Straits in 2015 when Jason Day won, and I didn’t get back to world No. 1 until 2020. It was just five years of top five, top 10, but it’s important, right? It took me five years to get back in 2020. Then COVID hit; I struggled through COVID. Coming out the back of COVID, sort of struggled a little bit, too. It’s been a couple years since I’ve been world No. 1.

“Yeah, it felt far away, and I am surprised that over the last six months I’ve played as well as I have to get back to this spot.”

Despite the longevity — and despite having accomplished the feat so many different times — McIlroy was emotional after his win on Sunday. He said that was because of who has been there alongside him for the return to the top.

“I think [what brought about that emotion was] just the steady climb back up to the summit of world golf and what it takes,” he said. “It’s not just me; it’s everyone that’s a part of my team. It’s not a solo effort. I just think about everyone that’s made a difference in my life obviously not over the last 12 months but ever. Just thinking over that last 12 months, there’s a lot of people that deserve a lot of the plaudits, and I’m the one that sits up here and takes them, but there’s a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that people don’t know about. All of that stuff combined is just as important as what I do out there trying to get these wins.

“It’s a team effort, and I think whenever I think about that, that’s what gets me a little bit choked up and emotional because it’s really cool to be on this journey with other people that you want to be on the journey with. That’s a really cool part of it.”

Ultimately, a level of sustained greatness like this is only achieved by a sociopathic competitor or one so deeply enamored with the game that he’s internally motivated to conquer it, no matter how long it takes. All the talent in the world won’t matter unless you have one (or both) of those attributes. While one can be dubious about McIlroy when it comes to the former, it’s impossible to doubt the latter.

“I feel like I’m enjoying the game as much as I ever have,” he said on Sunday. “I absolutely love the game of golf. I think when I go out there and play with that joy, it’s definitely showed over these last 12 months.”

McIlroy added: “The journey of trying to get the best out of myself [is what I enjoy]. That’s the satisfying thing. I never feel like I’ve figured this game out, I don’t think I ever will figure it out, but every day I wake up trying to get closer.”

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There’s a new No. 1 golfer in the world who doubles as an old No. 1 golfer in the world. With his victory at the 2022 CJ Cup on Sunday afternoon, Rory McIlroy returned to the top spot in the Official World Golf Rankings for the first time since July 2020 and ninth time in his career.

In taking down Kurt Kitayama and K.H. Lee, it was McIlroy who overtook Scottie Scheffler, ending the 2022 Masters champion’s 30-week run at No. 1.

Even more remarkable than McIlroy regaining the No. 1 ranking is that he has sustained a level of greatness over the last decade. This marks McIlroy’s ninth different stint at No. 1 just over 10 years after his debut in March 2012 shortly after he became a professional.

A lot has happened over the last decade, but McIlroy has not fallen out of the top 15 in the world in that time. He’s one of just three golfers who have a 10-year gap between their first appearance as world No. 1 and their most recent. The other two are Tiger Woods (17 years) and Greg Norman (11.5). Nobody else more than a 3.5-year gap between appearances.

“I guess that’s where I say like the cool thing about it is you get to No. 1, and it feels great in the moment,” said McIlroy earlier this week. “The bad thing is you almost [have] to … maybe work harder to stay there. I think, when you’re striving toward something, not that it’s easier to get there, but like once you get there, it’s great. But I think the hard work is actually staying there.

“I think if I get back to No. 1 this week, it’s like my ninth time getting back. It sort of illustrates you can have your runs and you can stay there, but I think the cool part is the journey and the journey getting back there. It’s sort of like a heavyweight boxer losing a world title and it’s a journey to get that title back. I feel like that’s the cool part of it and that’s the journey that I’ve sort of been through over the past 12 months.”

McIlroy has indeed been playing some of the best golf of his career over the last year. In his last 15 starts worldwide, he has 12 top 10s, 10 top fives, three wins and just one missed cut. Since the start of 2022, he’s been far and away the best statistical player in the world at over 2.7 strokes gained per round. The next closest coming into this week at the CJ Cup was Scheffler (2.5).

In a year in which McIlroy disappointingly did not win a major championship — though he finished in the top 10 in all four — it’s a bit of a reprieve that he essentially accomplished everything else: a FedEx Cup victory, three wins on the PGA Tour, close to $30 million in on-course earnings (including FedEx Cup bonus money) and a return trip to the top of the OWGR table. It’s been a remarkable showing.

Here’s a look at all nine times McIlroy has been the No. 1 player in the world.

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