Southampton (United States) (AFP) – Top-ranked Scottie Scheffler can complete a career Grand Slam by winning this week’s US Open, but even a victory at Shinnecock will not satisfy the world number one. The four-time major winner from the United States has Sunday’s final round on his 30th birthday, but his biggest present would be decades more golf challenges to conquer.
“It’s kind of a funny thing,” Scheffler said Tuesday. “If I win this tournament, that would be amazing, but I think then I show up the next week, and it’s like, OK, now Scottie has won the Grand Slam, he has won all these golf tournaments. Now where do we go from here?” No matter what, I think as a player and as a professional athlete, you’re never going to live up to the expectations of people. “I think sometimes that’s a little bit of the fallacy in our sport, like, if I win the US Open, then I’m going to be satisfied. I’ve won all the tournaments, and my career is essentially over, and I’ve accomplished everything I could want to accomplish.
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But I think the goal posts are always just moved further and further. Completing the Slam, Scheffler admitted, has never been a driving force pushing his golf dreams. “For me, would it be a dream to win the US Open? Of course. But at the end of the day, the Grand Slam has never been a motivating factor for me,” Scheffler said. “I always just wanted to be the best version of myself, and that got me this far. So when it comes to this golf tournament, I’m going to step on the first tee and remind myself I’ve done everything I possibly could in order to play well, and now it’s just a matter of going out there and trying to execute and going back to enjoying the competition versus feeling like you have to win for some reason.”
– ‘Tough sport’ – Scheffler knows, however, that he and second-ranked Rory McIlroy, golf’s biggest stars, completing career Slams in consecutive years would be huge for the sport. “It would definitely bring more eyeballs to the sport, which is always a good thing,” Scheffler said. “You learn a lot about yourself. You learn a lot of life lessons through the game of golf.”
Scheffler won his first event of the year, and 20th of his PGA Tour career, at the American Express tournament in January, reeled off runner-up finishes at the Masters, Heritage, and Doral, and was third at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson in May. “If I finish second this week, it’s almost like, hey, you failed in your first chance to win the career Grand Slam. Is finishing second a failure?” Scheffler said. “It can feel that way, but I think sometimes when you look at more of a wider view of the sport and where your game’s at, second is not always that bad, but man, does it frickin’ hurt at the same time.”
Scheffler adopts a mellow attitude, not too high or low, for such situations. “You can feel like a failure in this sport oftentimes just because you’re not winning,” he said. “I try not to focus too much on my successes or my failures, one, because you get beat up an awful lot in this game. It’s a tough sport. But, two, if I was feeling so good about all my successes, I probably wouldn’t be too much fun to be around either.”
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