SOUTHAMPTON, New York — Back in 2018, Scottie Scheffler missed qualifying for the U.S. Open at Shinnecock by nine shots. That same spring, he graduated from the University of Texas and began his professional golf career, putting his finance degree on the backburner.
This week, as the U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock for the first time since 2018, Scheffler is the focus: No. 1 player in the world in his first attempt to become the seventh man to complete the career Grand Slam — on his 30th birthday no less this Sunday.
“If you took my career from where I was as a college player, I would have extremely overachieved to be in this position,” Scheffler said Tuesday. “I wasn’t the best college player. I had a decent college career, but by no means was I a can’t-miss type of prospect. The guys that I turned pro (with) at the time were better than me. You look at Collin Morikawa and (Viktor) Hovland and Matt Wolff, those guys were winning tournaments immediately when they turned pro. I had a little bit of a slower burn in terms of the development of my career.”
Scheffler chuckled when asked when he became a “can’t-miss prospect.”
“Maybe 2022, started winning some golf tournaments finally,” he said.
In 2022, Scheffler won the first four of his now 20 PGA Tour titles — victories that include two Masters (2022, 2024), a PGA Championship (2025) and an Open Championship (2025).
Upon prevailing at Royal Portrush last July, he was asked about moving one U.S. Open shy of the Grand Slam.
“I don’t focus too much on that stuff,” he said then. “When this season ends after the Ryder Cup for me, I’ll get home, and I’ll assess kind of where my game’s at and things I can improve on and then kind of go from there. I don’t think about winning tournaments.”
He echoed that Tuesday.
“The Grand Slam has never been a motivating factor for me,” he said. “I always just wanted to be the best version of myself. That got me this far.”
Though Scheffler is in his 161st consecutive week as world No. 1 — a streak second only to Tiger Woods (streaks of 281 and 264 weeks) — he hasn’t won in his last 11 tournaments since opening his season by claiming the American Express.
That said, he leads the FedEx Cup standings and tops the PGA Tour in strokes gained — (2.162 strokes per round, substantially ahead of second place Ludvig Aberg’s 1.486). He has finished solo runner-up three times since the AmEx.
Scheffler called his play in 2026 “a touch dull” — missing a momentum putt here, committing a sloppy bogey there.
“Is it up to the play that I’ve had the previous couple years?” he said. “Probably not, but it’s not far off.”
He may not be focusing on it this week, but Scheffler can join Rory McIlroy, Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen as Slam winners. And join Woods, Hogan and Sarazen in achieving the feat in their first try.
“It’s kind of a funny thing, if I win this tournament, that would be amazing, but then I show up the next week, and it’s like, OK, now Scottie’s won the Grand Slam, he’s won all these golf tournaments, now where do we go from here?” he said. “And so 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 is that, like oh man, if I win the U.S. 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 that I can want to accomplish. But I think the goal posts are always just moved further and further.”
