US Open 2024: Rory McIlroy must become green machine to best sublime Scottie Scheffler at Pinehurst

How to solve the puzzle of Pinehurst? Martin Kaymer, a winner at the course in 2014, said the trick lay in sinking putts from 10ft, while Rory McIlroy believes the secret is to “embrace the boring”.

Defending champion Wyndham Clark warned the greens were “borderline” in terms of being too rapid to putt on, while Tiger Woods predicted the next four days of golf would be a “war of attrition”.

Not many have put a positive spin on how this US Open will play out, bar perhaps Scottie Scheffler, whose take ahead of teeing off later today was simply: “It’ll be a fun test.”

It is perhaps easy for him to say that, with five wins from his last eight starts. Bar a Louisville cop, who took umbrage with Scheffler’s over-zealous driving at the last Major, very little has been able to derail him, not even parenthood.

He still finished eighth at the US PGA after that run-in with the law before ending up runner-up at Colonial a week later and then winning Memorial by a single stroke from Collin Morikawa on Sunday.

As McIlroy put it: “Scottie is the best in the world by a long way. He is relentless.”

And having rectified his previous Achilles heel, those 10ft putts that Kaymer said would be so essential, he tees off as favourite — as he does every week. The comparisons to Woods continue unabated, which Scheffler does his best to swat away.

Using the analogy, another former US Open champion, Webb Simpson, said of Scheffler’s propensity for winning: “It’s probably what happened in the early days with Tiger. You kind of get used to it, so it becomes less of a big deal. It’s almost an afterthought: Scottie won again this week.”

Scheffler has looked incredibly relaxed again in the build-up, admitting that Xander Schauffele, the US PGA winner, had been ribbing him about a viral clip of a fan driving into a Louisville golf club dragging along a fake policeman on his car.

Of his own incident, Scheffler said: “I don’t love reliving it, but sometimes laughing about it is a good skill, too.”

McIlroy has been like a man reborn this week. At the US PGA, he had just filed divorce papers to his wife, Erica; now seemingly they have reconciled.

As the Northern Irishman put it: “There have been rumours about my personal life recently, which is unfortunate.

“Responding to each rumour is a fool’s game. Erica and I have realised our best future was as a family together. We look forward to a new beginning.”

And what McIlroy would give for a new beginning at the Majors. It has been 10 years since his last Major win, but he has been one of the world’s most consistent golfers in the intervening decade.

Asked to dissect that particular drought, he said of his Majors tally: “Whatever the total adds up to, I’ll feel like I’ve done pretty well for a little boy from Northern Ireland who dreamed of playing golf for a living one day.”

As for what lies ahead at Pinehurst, in the eyes of Woods, simply carnage. “I foresee watching some of the guys ping-pong back and forth,” he said.

“I’ve been as guilty as the rest of the guys I’ve played with in practice — we’ve putted off a lot of greens. We were only half-joking that, by the end of the week, the greens get so slick you bend down to read a putt and your putter slips.”