The return to Shinnecock Hills intensifies the urgency. This U.S. Open is no bold, happy experiment, as was the case when the U.S. Open went to Bethpage, a public course, in 2002. It's not an effort to prove that a historic but short course could hold a U.S. Open, a key subtext when it was played at Merion in 2013. Nor is it a populist effort to take a U.S. Open to newish courses and locales, as was the case with Chambers Bay in 2015 and Erin Hills last year. Shinnecock Hills is the real deal, hallowed ground not only to the USGA but students of the game and entities the USGA needs to have in its corner. Not unimportant are the commercial interests, including Fox Sports, now in its fourth year of televising the U.S. Open. The events of a mini-disaster at Shinnecock during its last hosting in 2004 notwithstanding, this is the last place where a serious misstep should elicit from the USGA the light-sounding phrase, "We deserve a bogey on that one."