Hi,
Given the 2021 at Torrey, the "rumor" of LACC in 2023, and the general bounce of the thing, I'd have to say my top contenders are:
1. Oakland Hills - (26 years since an Open...Am in 2016...will have been five years since Midwest will have had one)
2. The Country Club (longest time since - 34 years... Am two years ago...fits the sandwich between West coast venues...intrigues rumored since Merion selection)
3. Medinah 3 (long time since, 32 years...Ryder 2 years ago...will have been five years since Midwest will have had one)
4. Hazeltine (repeat...31 years..Ryder in 2016...repeat on Midwest)
5. Atlanta Athletic club
Nothing amazing there, I suppose - the bigger surprise will be if one of those five doesn't get it. I wish that would happen and that instead some unexpected wildcard like Newport got it...or wouldn't be amazing if an East Coast site like a Mac-Raynor...Fishers, Yale, NGLA. I would be glued to the screen when I wasn't there myself. I know those courses probably aren't the full championship test for today's elite, but to have a major championship on one of those would be a fun, "dream come true" - each for different reasons.
I'll say now that I hope the 2023 turns out to be Riviera, it's just about my favorite course to watch a tournament.
I'm amused at how our (mine too) appetite is so rapacious for such speculation...seven years in the future!
I think I genuinely understand about how the USGA (and any elite tournament body using a remote facility) must forward plan, and how big an enterprise it has become, commercially speaking. Still despite my own participation, there is a snapshot in there that is very ambiguous for me about whether this is all (the exacting preparations) a good thing or a worse thing in the main. It's as if the conduct of the tournament itself is no longer enough, no longer primary. This inchoate notion is present for me, even before the "Openizing" debate over possible architectural impact upon the course chosen to host.
Winged Foot was still just emerging from stakes, and mules, and explosions of rock seven years prior to hosting its' first US Open.
Golf and golf architecture and tournament exploitation were so much different then, I know it doesn't translate... but its seems to me whatever has been gained--commercially, publicly, industrially -- by the engineered spectacle has been balanced by losses in our sense of mystery and reverence about the conduct of the play itself. I'm subject to it too.
cheers
vk