America owns the US Open right now. Not metaphorically — literally. Wyndham Clark, Bryson DeChambeau, J. J. Spaun. Three consecutive American champions, each hoisting the trophy with the Star-Spangled Banner sewn onto their chest. And now Scottie Scheffler looks forward to the 2026 showpiece at Shinnecock Hills, needing only this title to complete the career Grand Slam — to join the sport’s most exclusive congregation. The fortress has been built one American winner at a time, and the drawbridge is up.
Can Scheffler Seal the Deal in 2026?
And, perhaps most importantly, online betting sites make the big Texan a clear favorite to finally get the job done. The latest odds from Lucky Rebel Sportsbook currently position Scheffler as the +375 frontrunner to complete the seventh career grand slam in golf history. He’s well clear of a chasing pack headed by back-to-back Masters champion Rory McIlroy at +750, and the recent history books don’t look good for the Northern Irishman if he does wish to upset the odds.
Only two overseas players had jetted in and broken through in the last eleven years. Two. In a field drawn from the entire planet, with the finest international golfers alive, the US Open has become something it perhaps always suspected it was: a home tournament, hostile to outsiders in ways that go beyond rough depths and green speeds. It demands a precision, a composure, and a particular kind of nerve that most players — whatever their passport — simply don’t possess on a Championship Sunday in June.
The last two overseas winners each possessed it. Each found it through entirely different means. Before Scheffler tries to write the next chapter, let’s go back to where the international story ran dry — and understand what it actually cost to keep it alive.
Matt Fitzpatrick, 2022
Stand in the fairway bunker at the 18th hole of The Country Club, Brookline, Massachusetts. It is Championship Sunday, June 2022. In your hands: a nine-iron. The US Open — one shot, one hole, one chance — is right there. And somewhere in the deep memory of this course, on these very greens, the ghost of a teenager who won the US Amateur here in 2013 is watching.
Matt Fitzpatrick had not been the story heading into that final round. Rory McIlroy arrived at +1100 off the back of a Canadian Open win, the clear favorite; Scheffler and defending champion Jon Rahm — more on him shortly — sat at +1400, Justin Thomas at +1200. Fitzpatrick was the respected contender at considerably longer odds — a man many expected to finish inside the top ten, not to win it. He opened 68, kept it tight with a 70, and shared the 54-hole lead at four-under with Will Zalatoris, Scheffler one back, McIlroy breathing down their necks. Wide-open leaderboard. A Sunday for the nerves.
Then he hit 17 of 18 greens in regulation. On a US Open course, on a major Sunday, on the most precision-demanding day in golf — 17 greens. That was already a statement of intent. But when his tee shot found the sand on 18, when the trap jaw loomed, the front bunker yawned, and the title hung in the air, Fitzpatrick played a “squeezy fade” with that nine-iron that started over nothing, cleared everything, and settled 18 feet from the hole.
He made the par putt, sealing a one-shot win over Scheffler and Zalatoris. The first Englishman to win the US Open since Justin Rose nine years prior. The 13th player to win both the US Amateur and US Open — and only the second, after Jack Nicklaus at Pebble Beach, to win both at the same venue. The bunker shot at 72 was not a miracle. It was the product of nine years of professional calibration, arriving at the very moment the sport demanded it most.
Jon Rahm, 2021
Two weeks before Torrey Pines, Jon Rahm led the Memorial Tournament by six shots after 54 holes. He walked off the 18th green — and was told, on live television, in front of the sport’s entire watching audience, that he had tested positive for an illness and was out of the tournament. The lead. The trophy. Gone. The image of Rahm absorbing that news in real time, in public, remains one of the most gut-wrenching moments modern golf has produced.
He cleared the required protocol and then came back. And he came back to a course he knew better than almost anywhere on earth — Torrey Pines, where he had won the Farmers Insurance Open twice — entering as roughly 10/1 favorite, with Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, two masters of this tournament, sharing the market with him. The problem, however, was that no foreign player had won this tournament since Martin Kaymer’s spectacular display in 2014, and that immediately made the two Americans joint-favorites the clear frontrunners in most people’s minds.
Rounds of 69 and 70 placed him comfortably but not commandingly at the halfway mark. A third-round 72 allowed Louis Oosthuizen to surge into pole position with a stunning Saturday 67. The South African led. Rahm followed. The story, given everything, was almost too large to contain.
Final round: 67. And not just any 67. Rahm birdied the 17th hole, then birdied the 18th — closing a major championship birdie-birdie, the first player since Tom Watson at Pebble Beach in 1982 to win the US Open that way. Oosthuizen carded a 71 and finished one back at five-under. Rahm shot six-under 278, becoming the first player from Spain to win any USGA championship, ever, in any category — on a course that had already given him so much, at a major where the sport had briefly stolen everything from him. Redemption doesn’t usually arrive this cleanly. That Sunday at Torrey Pines, it did.
