{"id":742027,"date":"2026-06-17T04:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T04:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/742027\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T04:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T04:48:13","slug":"scottie-schefflers-slam-quest-begins-now-but-is-that-the-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/742027\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottie Scheffler’s slam quest begins now, but is that the motivation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. \u2013 A dozen professional golfers have completed exactly three legs of the modern career Grand Slam.<\/p>\n

Half of them have passed away.<\/p>\n

Three are retired.<\/p>\n

One might\u2019ve already made his final attempt at the slam.<\/p>\n

And two are active: Jordan Spieth, who has been chasing the PGA Championship<\/a>, his missing piece, since 2017, and Scottie Scheffler, who takes his first stab as a three-legger at the U.S. Open <\/a>this week at Shinnecock Hills.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old Scheffler, the world\u2019s top-ranked player for the past 161 weeks, always thought the Open Championship would be the toughest for him to capture, mainly due to his lack of experience on links, growing up in Dallas and competing little internationally. But then he lifted the claret jug last summer at Royal Portrush, adding to his 2025 PGA Championship victory<\/a> and pair of green jackets. He still boasts a strong record in U.S. Opens, missing only one cut as a pro and notching four top-10s.<\/p>\n

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Golf Channel brings you the latest news and updates from the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, N.Y.<\/p>\n

When Rory McIlroy captured that elusive Masters last year, McIlroy\u2019s caddie, Harry Diamond, gifted him an Augusta National scorecard signed by the other five players to achieve the career slam: Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.<\/p>\n

When Diamond asked McIlroy if he was going to sign it himself, McIlroy responded, \u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d Then he joked, \u201cI just hope I don\u2019t have to get Scottie to sign it next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Odds are he might: Scheffler begins the week on Long Island as the betting favorite <\/a>at +500.<\/p>\n

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\"scottie-rory-rahm-split\"<\/p>\n

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Scottie Scheffler enters the week with the career Grand Slam in sight. Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm are looking to play spoiler. Here\u2019s a look at their odds at Shinnecock Hills. <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s with Scheffler being, in his words, \u201ca touch dull.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Scheffler\u2019s definition of a slump means performing 0.21 strokes per round below his baseline in his last 20 competitive rounds yet still being over a shot better than anyone else in the world.<\/p>\n

But for a generational talent that measures himself on wins, Scheffler hasn\u2019t done so since The American Express in January. He\u2019s not finished worse than T-24 in 11 starts since, a stretch that has also featured three runners-up and three more top-4s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say I feel like I\u2019ve been close most of the year,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cI feel like I just haven\u2019t been as sharp as I needed to be. I think the margins in this game are so small. For me to be winning a lot of tournaments, you\u2019ve got to just be really, really sharp. I feel like maybe I\u2019ve just been a touch dull, because I think statistically, I\u2019m maybe leading the FedExCup (he\u2019s second behind Matt Fitzpatrick, who owns three wins this season<\/a>), I think I\u2019m leading the strokes-gained statistics (he is), so by no means is it a bad year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it up to the play I\u2019ve had the previous couple of years? Probably not, but it\u2019s not far off.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Scheffler confident after U.S. Open practice round: ‘I like where my game is’<\/p>\n

Scottie Scheffler told his swing coach after playing a practice-round on Monday at Shinnecock that he didn’t need to work on anything else and that he liked where his game was, according to Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis.<\/p>\n

The prospect of Scheffler checking off the career slam before his 30th birthday was presented twice by reporters during Scheffler\u2019s press conference on Tuesday afternoon \u2013 twice more than the number of questions Spieth received at Quail Hollow ahead of the 2017 PGA; Spieth actually brought up the slam himself.<\/p>\n

Scheffler\u2019s response touched on similar points Scheffler discussed during his viral pre-championship interview at Portrush, in which he opined on the fulfillment of winning golf tournaments \u2013 or more accurately, the lack thereof.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a funny thing,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cIt\u2019s like, yeah, if I win this tournament, that would be amazing, but I think then I show up the next week, and it\u2019s like, OK, now Scottie\u2019s won the grand slam, he\u2019s won all these golf tournaments. Now where do we go from here? So, no matter what, I think as a player and as a professional athlete, you\u2019re never going to live up to the expectations of people. I think sometimes that\u2019s a little bit of the fallacy in our sport is like, if I win the U.S. Open, then I\u2019m going to be satisfied; I\u2019ve won all the tournaments, and my career is essentially over, and I\u2019ve accomplished everything I could want to accomplish. But I think the goal posts are always just moved further and further…<\/p>\n

\u201cWould it be a dream to win the U.S. Open? Of course. But at the end of the day, the grand slam has never been a motivating factor for me. <\/p>\n

\u201cI always just wanted to be the best version of myself, and that got me this far. So, when it comes to this golf tournament, like I said, I\u2019m going to step on the first tee and remind myself I\u2019ve done everything I possibly could in order to play well, and now it\u2019s just a matter of going out there and trying to execute and kind of going back to enjoying the competition versus feeling like you have to win for some reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"2026<\/p>\n

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First-round tee times and groupings for the 126th U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. \u2013 A dozen professional golfers have completed exactly three legs of the modern career Grand Slam.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-742027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}