It is that time again - time to see if Luke Donald and Lee Westwood, numbers one and three in the world, can finally open their major accounts.
For Donald, who has won six times in the last 16 months, this week's US Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco is his 36th attempt.
For Westwood, at 39 the older by five years, it is a 57th. He has had six victories in the past 14 months, so the signs are promising for both.
For one thing the last eight majors - right back to Graeme McDowell's victory in this event at Pebble Beach two years ago - have all been won by somebody breaking their duck.
But there's more. Westwood won in Sweden by five shots on Saturday and returns with bags of confidence now to a course on which he finished joint seventh back in 1998.
Donald, meanwhile, won a second successive BMW PGA Championship only three weeks ago over a Wentworth lay-out that resembles a major test more than ever.
They know they have the games, but that has been said for a long while and it has not happened for them yet.
Donald and Westwood are paired in the first two rounds with defending champion Rory McIlroy, who after three successive missed cuts restored some of his self-belief with a seventh-placed finish in Memphis this weekend, although it came after he was tied for the lead on the final tee and double-bogeyed.
Despite his mild and quiet character nobody should doubt how much Donald wants to take the next logical step in his career.
The change in the last two years has come after taking on Dave Alred - previously best known as Jonny Wilkinson's kicking coach -
to help him with the mental side and a switch from brother Christian as his caddie to John McLaren.
Donald has said: "I lacked a little ruthlessness. That was my nature coming from England.
"Dave wants me to be the hunter, not the fisherman. A fisherman throws it out and hopes to get a fish. A hunter aims straight between the eyes.
"He wants me to be an assassin - and I'm trying hard for him."
On taking the job McLaren soon noticed "how tough he is. Luke is fiercely competitive.
"He hides it well by being very English, but the fire burns. He just doesn't let on."
Westwood is the one who has been dubbed the "nearly man" of majors in recent years.
In two of his first four US Opens he was seventh and fifth and there was also a sixth-placed finish in The Masters in between and then a fourth place in The Open at Troon in 2004.
But starting with his third place at Torrey Pines in 2008 - he was a shot away from the play-off in which Tiger Woods claimed his 14th and still most recent major title - Westwood has been in the frame as often as not.
The following season he had two thirds, in 2010 he was runner-up to Phil Mickelson at Augusta and Louis Oosthuizen at St Andrews, then last year he was third again in the US Open, albeit a league away from runaway winner McIlroy.
"The majors should be a thorough test of golf and I like to think I've shown my game does rise to the task of being thoroughly tested," he said.
"What is my record - seven top threes in the last 15 majors I've played? I'm amazed that some people can class that as a failure.
"In this period I've finished top three in each of the majors. So my game is suited to all four of them."
