Matt Wallace was in a sombre, pensive mood as he flew to New York for the USPGA Championship at Bethpage last month.
A few hours before boarding the plane, he had missed a 3ft putt at the 17th that had cost him the British Masters title at Hillside.
For a man who had claimed 10 trophies in three years during his spectacular progression on the game's various tours, he was struggling to accept it as one of those things that happen in a game where you lose far more than you win.
Matt Wallace, pictured from inside the cup, wants to continue his stunning rise to the top
The Londoner spoke to exclusively to Sportsmail's Derek Lawrenson about his journey
'Is that miss now going to haunt me?' he openly asked a member of his team. In truth, he was asking the question of himself. He wanted an answer - and he certainly found one at Bethpage Black.
Even during the 29-year-old Londoner's stunning rise from outside the world's top 1,100 golfers to inside the top 30, doing well in a major had proved elusive.
In the Big Apple he managed his first big finish - and the fact he needed to hole another slippery putt of 3ft to make third on the podium made it all the sweeter.
'The fact that I'd never finished better than 19th in a major definitely bugged me, and so it was a huge deal for me to finish third behind Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson,' he said.
'I loved the way I earned it as well, grinding it out over the last four holes, when the course was playing so hard on Sunday. I ended up with a slippery 3ft putt downhill on the 18th.
'The one I'd missed on the 17th at the British Masters really upset me, and it did go through my head as I was standing over the one at Bethpage. I like the fact I confronted those thoughts, and then proceeded to knock it straight in.'
Wallace suffered disappointing when he missed out on the British Masters title on the 17th hole
This is how it's been with Wallace during his exciting, four-year ascent. He wondered whether he could cut it on the Alps Tour and then won six times the following year.
He was intrigued to see how he'd do on the Challenge Tour, but he breezed through that to earn promotion to the European Tour, where he won three events in no time at all.
At the start of this year he sampled America for the first time and, in just his second start, was in contention on the final day at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, eventually finishing sixth.
Now it's on to the US Open at Pebble Beach this week in a rather better frame of mind than the last major. 'I'm buzzing, as you can imagine,' he said.
It's a measure of Wallace's rapid development that he's sampling America's West Coast for the first time,having only ever played Pebble on a PlayStation. 'I've
