Say you meet a girl at a run club (daytime approach, not night game). Would you recommend after some small chat back and forth of getting to know a girl just directly stating interest like "your hair is very pretty", or something like "you make me feel nervous" , just to directly state interest?

Primarily targetting 21-26 year old women.

I ask because I am fine having conversation and making women laugh but after a while I feel like she just views me as a friend and then another guy comes and just asks for her number and walks away with her. It's happened many times.

I never ask a girl for their number the first time we meet because I come off as easy or desperate, I like planting a seed. I usually like meeting her once, and then the second time if we talk again and the convo goes well I ask her out which allows me to segway into grabbing her number.

Any advice or feedback for my approach?