Jim Furyk is keen to shoot it out with the young guns

Jim Furyk enjoys the winning feeling at Hilton Head in the RBc heritage Classic.

The recent achievements of Jordan Spieth and Ricky Fowler have led American pundits to pronounce that their ‘Young Guns’ are no longer firing blanks.

However, with the conclusion of the 2015 US Open only 21 days away, ‘old timer’ Jim Furyk, who chalked up his 17th PGA Tour win at the RBC Heritage Classic last month, is keen to show there is more life in the old dog yet.

When Furyk banked his winner’s cheque, it brought his US Tour earnings to almost $65 million.

Only Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh have won more.

And the 45-year-old insists he is not joking when he reveals his secret has been to view himself as the underdog, no matter the situation.

“It doesn’t matter who I am up against coming down the stretch, I always find a way to convince myself I am the underdog. It seems to make me play better.”

Furyk surely must be considered one of the favourites when he tees it up in Washington State next month.

His two runner-up finishes in the event, coupled with other top-five finishes, shows just how much his straight-down-the-middle approach is suited particularly to this one of the four Majors.

“I was four shots ahead going into the last round when I won it in 2003,” he recalls.

“And although the final margin was three, I knew then as I know now that the US Open plays to my strengths.”

But winning at Hilton Head certainly got rid of a lot of negative comment about where his career was heading.

Indeed, the story on Furyk had become that of a barren spell of time without a win.

“Yes, it was a little over four-and-a-half years, to be exact. I was well aware,” he admitted.

“I had to talk about it a lot over those years. And I think that sinking the winning putt and getting excited was a lot of pent-up frustration,” he said referring to a very un-Furyk type of celebration as the ball vanished into the hole.

“I was getting to the point where losing hurts a lot more than winning feels good.

“You have the lead and see someone beat you a bunch of times in a row. I won’t say I got a negative attitude, but I was starting to feel like this game is beating me up.”

Furyk has 174 top-10 finishes on the PGA Tour. He also has 15 top-five finishes at Majors (Tiger has 31, Mickelson has 26.)

He is also alongside Phil Mickelson and Charles Howell III as the only players to have made the top 125 of the PGA Tour money list every year since 2000.

“Just winning golf tournaments is what gets me out of bed in the morning,” he explains.

“It’s why I still want to compete and play, to just wake up on a Sunday with a chance. That’s all any of us really want, isn’t it?”

Maybe Furyk could take an encore in three weeks’ time!