SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. – A dozen professional golfers have completed exactly three legs of the modern career Grand Slam.
Half of them have passed away.
Three are retired.
One might’ve already made his final attempt at the slam.
And two are active: Jordan Spieth, who has been chasing the PGA Championship, his missing piece, since 2017, and Scottie Scheffler, who takes his first stab as a three-legger at the U.S. Open this week at Shinnecock Hills.
The 29-year-old Scheffler, the world’s 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 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.
When Rory McIlroy captured that elusive Masters last year, McIlroy’s 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.
When Diamond asked McIlroy if he was going to sign it himself, McIlroy responded, “Absolutely not.” Then he joked, “I just hope I don’t have to get Scottie to sign it next year.”
Odds are he might: Scheffler begins the week on Long Island as the betting favorite at +500.
And that’s with Scheffler being, in his words, “a touch dull.”
Of course, Scheffler’s 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.
But for a generational talent that measures himself on wins, Scheffler hasn’t done so since The American Express in January. He’s not finished worse than T-24 in 11 starts since, a stretch that has also featured three runners-up and three more top-4s.
“I’d say I feel like I’ve been close most of the year,” Scheffler said. “I feel like I just haven’t 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’ve got to just be really, really sharp. I feel like maybe I’ve just been a touch dull, because I think statistically, I’m maybe leading the FedExCup (he’s second behind Matt Fitzpatrick, who owns three wins this season), I think I’m leading the strokes-gained statistics (he is), so by no means is it a bad year.
“Is it up to the play I’ve had the previous couple of years? Probably not, but it’s not far off.”
The prospect of Scheffler checking off the career slam before his 30th birthday was presented twice by reporters during Scheffler’s press conference on Tuesday afternoon – twice more than the number of questions Spieth received at Quail Hollow ahead of the 2017 PGA; Spieth actually brought up the slam himself.
Scheffler’s 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 – or more accurately, the lack thereof.
“It’s kind of a funny thing,” Scheffler said. “It’s like, yeah, 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’s won the grand slam, he’s 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’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 like, 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 I could want to accomplish. But I think the goal posts are always just moved further and further...
“Would 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.
“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, like I said, 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 kind of going back to enjoying the competition versus feeling like you have to win for some reason.”
