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Scottie Scheffler insists completing the career Grand Slam "has never been a motivating factor for me" as he looks to join the exclusive club by winning the US Open.
The World No.1 catapulted himself into the Grand Slam picture by winning the PGA Championship and The Open last year to add to his two Masters titles and move just one win away from joining golf's immortals.
Scheffler is looking to join Rory McIlroy and become the seventh man to win the career Grand Slam but unlike McIlroy he'd like to get the job done at the first attempt at Shinnecock Hills this week.
But he insists that chasing history is not what drives him on, as he tries to ease the pressure on himself.
"For me, would it be a dream to win the US Open? Of course," said Scheffler. "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."
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McIlroy mentioned after he won the Grand Slam about having that feeling of what to do next after climbing his Everest - and that's something Scheffler is acutely aware of, hence why he's trying to not make it his main goal in golf.
"If I win this tournament, that would be amazing, but I think then I show up the next week, and it's like, okay, now Scottie's won the Grand Slam, he's won all these golf tournaments. Now where do we go from here?
"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 US 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."
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Scheffler has always insisted he's not defined by his golfing success, and he again offered an insight into his perspective on his sport - which may explain why he manages to keep such an even keel in the heat of battle.
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"Golf is such a funny game. A good example this week, if I finish second this week, it's almost like, hey, you failed in your first chance to win the career Grand Slam," said Scheffler. "It's kind of, like, is finishing second a failure?
"It can feel that way, but I think sometimes when you look at more of kind of 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.
"So you can feel like a failure in this sport oftentimes just because you're not winning, and I think that's just part of it. That's why I said I try not to focus too much on my successes or my failures, one, because you get beat up an awful lot in this game. It's a tough sport.
"But, two, if I was feeling so good about all my successes, I probably wouldn't be too much fun to be around either."
Scheffler has already come close at the US Open, finishing in the top seven in four of the last five years so he can rightly fancy his chances at Shinnecock - as he expected the Open Championship would've been the hardest Major for him to win.
"I always felt like The Open would be one of the hardest ones for me to win because I didn't have a lot of experience playing over there in the UK," Scheffler explained.
"Growing up, I played a lot of golf here in the States. I didn't really play much internationally at all. For me, not having the experience on links golf, I would have said that would probably be the most difficult for me to win.
"I always had self-belief. I always believed that I could win golf tournaments out here. I always had that belief in myself that I could accomplish some nice things in the game of golf."