Excellent performances that fell short have defined Scottie Scheffler‘s 2026 season: 2nd at the Masters, T14 at the PGA, T4 at the U.S. Open, and now a T4 at the 154th Open. He finished with a 7-under, three shots off the winner, Ryan Fox. But that’s just the story of the season for the World No. 1. Ahead of the 3M Open, when a journalist asked him to rate these near misses in terms of frustration, Scheffler didn’t hold back.

“All four of them. I don’t really have an answer for that. I think any time you don’t get to where you want to be in golf, which is pretty often, I think there’s always a good amount of frustration with that. I mean, yeah, I have no idea how to rank them in order of frustration.”

But fans may consider the U.S. Open miss more frustrating because the 20-time PGA Tour winner was playing for a career Grand Slam on his 30th birthday.

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However, Scheffler had already said ahead of the event that a career Grand Slam doesn’t mean that much to him. He would be happy to achieve that, of course, but it has never been a motivating factor for him. Instead, he wants to be the best version of himself.

When informed at the presser that he and Sam Burns had the best cumulative score at the majors this season, Scheffler said he has always leaned toward consistency to define his game and not the number of wins.

“Yeah, one of the things I like in this game, one of the things that I’ve always kind of prided myself on is the consistency. That’s something that shows that I’m playing some pretty good golf. It just hasn’t been quite good enough to win some tournaments. Like I said, I still feel like my game’s in a good spot and I’ve played some nice golf. I haven’t played any great golf yet, but I’ve played some nice golf over the course of the season.”

His stats this season support his claim. In 16 starts this season, Scheffler has finished top-25 all but once. The only time he didn’t was at the Genesis Scottish Open, where he missed the cut for the first time in about four years. Besides that, he has four runner-up finishes, two third-place finishes, and ten top-five finishes.

It’s an exceptional season by any standard. Yet Scheffler’s own benchmarks—7 wins in 2024, 6 in 2025—make this feel like underperformance. There’s one simple reason behind it: his putting.

Scheffler’s putting performance had improved by leaps and bounds (SG: Putting is 0.500 compared to last year’s 0.382), but it didn’t reflect during any major: -1.27 (105th) at The Open, 0.48 (35th) at the U.S. Open, -1.662 (72) at the PGA, and +1.61 (22) at the Masters.

On Saturday, when he missed a birdie putt, he sarcastically fist-pumped. As a result, fans were furious at him.

Scheffler knows it was his putting that cost him these near misses. However, he remains confident in his putting and said he won’t change anything about it.