In sports, finishing second always hurts more than finishing third. And that is because every player who has finished as runner-up knows that they were extremely close to snatching a top spot. But small mistakes compound into something big. For Scottie Scheffler, this has been the case many times at the U.S. Open. While he has said before that winning is not always the first thing in his mind, the four-time major winner admitted near-misses sting him no less than other players.

“Every time you don’t win a tournament, you always have those feelings,” the World No. 1 said in response to a question about his multiple near misses at the U.S. Open. “If I finish second this week, it’s almost like, ‘Hey, you failed in your first chance to win the career grand slam.’ [But] is finishing second a failure? Yeah, it can feel that way, but I think sometimes when you look at 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.”

Scottie Scheffler has four top-seven finishes in his last five starts at the U.S. Open. For long, like Nelly Korda, the national championship has been his stumbling block. However, the LPGA World No. 1 won the U.S. Women’s Open earlier this month, which has put renewed focus on Scheffler as well. On top of that, a victory at Shinnecock Hills will make him just the seventh golfer in history to complete a career grand slam. Scheffler’s confession comes amid a season marked by close calls, and his next comments suggested those near misses have nettled him as well.

“I feel like I just haven’t been as sharp as I needed to be. 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’m either not making the momentum putt, or I make a sloppy bogey somewhere, or I hit an iron shot a touch thin instead of really solid, and all of a sudden it ends up in the bunker,” Scheffler told the media at Shinnecock Hills.

The four-time major winner has said multiple times that finishing second can feel like failure when expectations are high. At the same time, he also believes that looking at the bigger picture makes runner-up finishes a bit more palatable than they feel in the moment. Regardless, the frustration in his game comes from how close he has been in most PGA Tour events, and his frustration has gotten the better of him as well.

Scheffler hit a tee shot into the water and vented frustration to his caddie, Ted Scott, for failing to judge the wind. At Bay Hill, he tossed the ball into the water after making a bogey. These odd moments reflect the expectation he has of himself. And why not? Just look at the numbers, and you will see why Scheffler is still the bettor’s favorite heading to the U.S. Open.

According to ESPN, this will be the 13th consecutive major where Scheffler enters as the world’s best. As you might have guessed, he only trails Tiger Woods by eight in this regard. Woods played 20 consecutive majors as the world’s best between 2000 and 2004 and once again played 21 majors as the World No. 1 between 2005 and 2010. But a U.S. Open triumph for Scottie Scheffler will carry more weight than simply inching closer to another of Woods’s records.

A victory here would also shift Scheffler’s repeated close calls into a defining breakthrough on one of golf’s biggest stages. Quite naturally, for the 29-year-old, this week is less about outside pressure and more about finally closing the gap he has left for years.

According to Forbes, Scheffler has been the World No. 1 for 161 consecutive weeks. He also leads the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Total. He is 4th in SG: Off the Tee, 16th in SG: Approach to Green, and 19th in SG: Putting. Not bad by any measure, but it’s also not enough to win two majors like he did last year.

A win here would also turn his 2022 runner-up finish into a full-circle moment. Moreover, he will join World No. 2 Rory McIlroy among the golfers who have won all four majors at least once. And there are instances of pros who completed three legs but failed to capture the last one.

Scheffler’s fellow Dallas resident Jordan Spieth hasn’t won the PGA Championship, while Phil Mickelson has six majors but never could win the U.S. Open. In fact, Mickelson’s six runner-ups at the national championship are a symbol of the U.S. Open’s ruthlessness.

The gap between dominance and disappointment in golf can often be measured in a few shots on Sundays. That, in turn, explains why Scottie Scheffler has recorded three consecutive runner-up finishes this year but hasn’t won since the American Express. These near misses have built a pattern where contention is constant, but victories have not always followed.

This week at Shinnecock Hills becomes another chance to turn that repeated pattern into a breakthrough result. He will tee off with Mason Howell and defending champion J.J. Spaun from the first tee at 8:14 a.m. ET.