History is in reach for Scottie Scheffler, who will play for a career Grand Slam at the 2026 U.S. Open, and he could accomplish the feat on his 30th birthday. On paper, the World No. 1 is the man to beat. He has finished inside the top 25 in every start this season. To add to that, he has four top 10 finishes in his last five US Open events. While both his stats and results are exceptional, he has built a habit this season that makes his chances slim at Shinnecock Hills. According to golf analyst Trey Wingo, it’s the same problem Rory McIlroy once had.
“It’s kind of funny because that was Rory’s problem when he wasn’t winning majors for that stretch after winning the PGA at Valhalla in 2014,” Trey Wingo said in a conversation with Justin Leonard on his show, Trey Wingo Golf. “He would shoot himself out in Thursdays, and he played great Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but it wasn’t enough. And now it feels like Scottie’s going through the same thing.”
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Looking back, Rory McIlroy’s 2014 PGA Championship win at Valhalla marked the last major title of his career for nearly a decade. From 2015 through 2021, he opened majors at a combined 35 over par, repeatedly forcing himself into recovery mode before the tournament had fully settled. That pattern turned Thursdays into a persistent problem he could not outrun. The trend showed up in key moments. At the 2016 U.S. Open, he shot 77 with eight bogeys in the first round, but even when his play improved across the weekend, the damage was already done.
On the other hand, when asked where he sees Scottie Scheffler’s game heading into the US Open 2026, Leonard highlighted how he usually starts on the wrong foot.
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“It seems like, for a while, he was struggling a bit in the first rounds,” Justin Leonard answered. “He’d go out and shoot, maybe he was even a couple over par or something, but he wasn’t like clicking on all cylinders on Thursday and then by the time he was able to play his way through Friday and Saturday and get himself in contention, but I think he’d handicapped himself by playing uh you know, mediocre in the first round.”
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The issue is clearly visible when you look at his numbers. Since his win at the American Express, he has been in the top 15 after the opening round only twice in 11 starts so far. In fact, his first-round scoring average is 69.92, which is two strokes more than his final-round scoring average of 67.50.
Just to give an example, the 29-year-old carded an opening round of 2-over 73 at the WM Phoenix Open. He was T49th after Round 1, but he finished the event T3. Similarly, he was T60 after Round 1 at the Genesis Invitational and finished at T12.
The 29-year-old himself acknowledged this ahead of the third major of the season.
“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.”
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He said that he would need to be sharper to win more tournaments, which is exactly what Rory McIlroy did when he was struggling with the same issues.
As Trey Wingo highlighted, the Northern Irishman was also making this mistake, and it was costing him major championships. For instance, his first and last-round scoring averages were:
As the table shows, he was playing way better in the final round than in the first round from 2015 to 2017. Then, he started to improve on that and get things under control from the opening round, which eventually helped him win majors again.
If Scottie Scheffler wants to complete his Grand Slam, the first round will be very important at the US Open 2026. And while he wants to achieve that milestone, he also said that “Grand Slam has never been a motivating factor” for him.
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Regardless of whether he thinks of a career Grand Slam as a must for him or not, he and his coach will be working on narrowing that difference between the scoring averages of Round 1 and Round 4.
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