Scottie Scheffler celebrates after winning the British Open golf championship at the Royal Portrush Golf Club, Northern Ireland, on Sunday.Jon Super/The Associated Press
Twenty-five years ago, Tiger Woods won the British Open by a margin of eight strokes. It’s still a record.
“He is something supernatural,” golf legend Tom Watson said afterward.
Woods was already a very big deal, but something shifted then. He became more than a successful athlete. He become a symbol of irresistibility.
Golf’s been looking for another guy like that ever since. It found him here this week, though he’s not what everyone had hoped.
Scottie Scheffler won the Open on Sunday by four strokes. You can’t sweep a golf tournament, but Scheffler swept this one.
It was so easy that, at points, he looked a bit bored with himself. Just to keep things interesting, he lipped a bunker in the middle of the round, resulting in a double-bogey. It didn’t change a thing. You never had the slightest doubt it was his the whole way.
“It is a pretty special feeling,” Scheffler said afterward. That was by far the most effusive thing he came up with. He liked it so much he repeated it a bunch of times.
Scheffler wasn’t a prodigy like Woods, or a quick starter like Woods, or a driver of content like Woods, but right now, he looks a lot like Woods. He’s won three majors in two years. But for a narrow miss at the 2022 U.S. Open, he’d already have his grand slam.
Last year’s Open winner, Xander Schauffele, called Scheffler the inheritor of Woods’ “throne of dominance.”
“You can’t even say he’s on a run,” Schauffele said. “He’s just been killing it for over two years.”
Scheffler plays a shot from the rough on the 17th hole during the final round of the British Open golf championship. The golfer drew attention ahead of the tournament starting when he said that winning didn't fulfill him.Jon Super/The Associated Press
Scheffler’s performance here will be remembered, but not for its excellence. What people will recall is that before the tournament started, he told the world that victories didn’t “fulfill” him.
Joe Namath said he would win and he did and we’re still talking about it. This guy said he didn’t want to win and did anyway. How is that not a hundred times cooler?
The truly amazing thing is that while under what must have been withering pressure to walk his thoughts back just a little, just to make everyone feel good about themselves, Scheffler refused to break character.
Ahead of the final round, he went one-on-one with one of the true believers at Sky Sports: “What would it mean to win The Open Championship, the most historic of all the championships?”
“It’d be a lot of fun,” said Scheffler, sounding like it would be on the same level of fun as finding a fin in the pocket of his jeans.
At the British Open, establishing linguistic supremacy is the name of the game
Where other top, top pros talk about their jobs like they are endlessly tripping the light fantastic, Scheffler makes it sound like it’s a grind. A good grind, but a grind nonetheless. He just happens to be on TV while he does it.
Immediately after he won, he didn’t pump his fist or jump around. He didn’t look in the least bit excited until he saw his wife. Once she returned backstage, his face went blank again.
His winner’s speech went over like a series of public announcements, which is kind of what it was. Scheffler thanked the crowd, and the turf, and the transportation, and the food and beverage. Then he pulled his phone out of his pocket and muttered, “Sorry, I had to check my notes.”
Check. Check check check.
“It was a tremendous week,” he concluded.
Later, he was only slightly more revealing: “I’m called to compete as best I can … I don’t really think about it much outside of that.”
I defy you to put that on a T-shirt.
When Woods imploded, what golf wanted wasn’t another Woods. It was a more compliant Woods. Same heat, but none of the burn.
It wanted a guy who would take the game into new markets, do more social media, pick a few fights, defend them against Saudi incursions. Someone who would make every interview a must read.
Scheffler looks relaxed on the golf course but seems to have no interest in any of the things that his success brings him off of the course.Andrew Redington/Getty Images
Scheffler doesn’t do any of that stuff. Mostly, he looks like he finds every part of golf that isn’t actual golf excruciating. Though once he’s on the course, no one has ever looked more relaxed.
It was fine as long as the golf world could project excitement onto him, but ahead of Portrush, Scheffler blew that up as well. If he goes on to become the next Jack Nicklaus – and Nicklaus won 10 of his majors after the age of 30 – the thing people will want to know is, ‘Are you fulfilled now?’
You can now tell how uncomfortable Scheffler makes the deep sports types. His apathy offends them. That same Sky Sports crew was perilously close to chiding him for not being more emotional after Sunday’s win. Of course, that’s their way of saying that they would be more emotional.
In the same press room in which he created this problem, Scheffler attempted to soften his stance, calling the reaction to his initial comments “clickbait.”
But he kept talking and finally ended up at, “There’s more to life than golf.” Sitting beside him, the R&A’s chief flack, Mike Woodcock, stared balefully at the back wall.
Scheffler retold a story that may be the key to him. As a little kid growing up in Dallas, he wore pants to the golf course, because he’d seen the best in the world do that.
For Scheffler, this represents his commitment to becoming a professional.
But he also hinted at a different sort of formative symbolism: “It would be 100 degrees out. I’d be way too hot. People would make fun of me. But that’s what I wanted to do.”
This guy isn’t the salesman that golf wished for. He’s a stump. He does what he wants to do, especially if you mock him for it.
For its sins, golf has gotten the one guy in its ranks who refuses to go along to get along. Ask him a question, and he will not tell you the sponsor-approved answer.
Sports has seen every type reach the top over the years. Strivers, saints, kooks, sycophants, blowhards, philosophers, bullies. Some are more than one of those things, and often contradictory ones.
But I can’t think of a real dissenter who has reached the very top and then hung there for a sustained period of time. Someone who rejects the premise that victory is the goal.
In the end, maybe that, and not the winning that gives him so little fulfilment, will be Scheffler’s legacy.