Justin Rose believes he can take confidence from his performance at The Open Championship last year as he looks to mount a challenge once more.
Rose finished joint-second at Royal Troon last year, two shots behind the winner Xander Schauffele.
The 44-year-old also came close to winning his second major at the Masters earlier this year, though he lost the play-off to Rory McIlroy.
However, since then, he has failed to make the cut at both the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open.
Rose (2013 U.S. Open) is one of just three Englishmen to win a major since the turn of the century (along with Danny Willett – 2016 Masters, and Matthew Fitzpatrick – 2022 U.S. Open).
He is now looking to be the first Englishman to win The Open since Nick Faldo, who triumphed 33 years ago, in 1992 at Muirfield.
But Rose is confident he can mount a challenge, having been boosted by last year's result.
"If I look back at Troon, I think I played as good a golf as anybody for the whole entire week," he told reporters.
"I think I probably played through some of the tougher conditions. In terms of Saturday afternoon, it was brutal. I got the worst of it there. I really felt I hung in, so it was a good resilience I felt like I showed that week.
"I felt like I went out, and I shot the second-lowest score of the day on Sunday, which, again, if you're in one of the last groups - obviously I got beaten by Xander, who played an amazing round of golf, and we were kind of toe-to-toe right through the round until he had a golden half an hour where he stretched away, and that was it.
"I felt like, again, when you step up as a competitor, you're like, I had everything available to me to win the tournament. That does kind of keep you believing, you know what I mean, and obviously, that gives me a lot of hope coming back into this week and future Opens, as well."
Rose has previously earned three top-10 finishes at The Open, with last year's result matching his previous best finish at the tournament (also tied for second in 2018 when he finished two shots behind Francesco Molinari).
And he has high hopes of earning his first title in order to fulfil a childhood dream.
"Obviously, as a kid, on the putting green, since I've been playing the game since probably age eight, I've been dreaming about winning The Open, of course," he said.
"But it began to feel real from like 1995, and 1998 obviously was a fairy-tale kind of story and ending to my amateur career [finished joint-fourth], and really the next place from there was to go ahead and try to win it.
"I've been close a couple of times, but it's an incredible tournament, like I said. As a British player, it's been the one that I've dreamed about winning and holed the putt many times in my mind."
