{"id":11603,"date":"2025-07-20T23:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T23:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/11603\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T23:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T23:37:07","slug":"scottie-schefflers-revealing-and-relieving-open-championship-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/11603\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottie Scheffler\u2019s Revealing\u2014and Relieving\u2014Open Championship Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Golf<\/a>Golf<\/a>Scheffler\u2019s week started with a press conference where he questioned his level of fulfillment in golf, and it ended with his fourth major victory\"\"Getty Images\/Ringer illustration\"\"<\/a>By Elizabeth Nelson<\/a>July 20, 10:58 pm UTC \u2022 7 min<\/p>\n

Watch enough golf, and you\u2019ll start to feel like you\u2019ve seen everything. Say, a man wading knee-deep into a water hazard with his pants rolled up<\/a>, or another man chasing after a missed putt and then whacking it again while the ball is still moving<\/a>, or Jon Daly doing anything. But I\u2019m not sure there\u2019s ever been a golf week like this. Lord knows, at this point, we\u2019ve experienced plenty of Scottie Scheffler in the winner\u2019s circle. Coming into the Open Championship at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, the 29-year-old Texan and world no. 1 had won three times this season, including the PGA Championship in May. He hadn\u2019t finished outside of the top 10 in a tournament since March. And this came after a monstrous nine-win season in 2024, which included his second Masters victory and an Olympic gold medal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since emerging as a generational talent in 2022, Scheffler has been both spectacular and spectacularly consistent. On the course, he projects a placid, even slightly hangdog demeanor, loping along while offhandedly executing one brilliant shot after the next. Off the course, he has tended to come across as soft-spoken and affable, God-fearing and family-oriented, likable but not exactly knowable. Those of us who cover pro golf acknowledge a dichotomy: With some players, it feels like they are truly dimensional\u2014with interests and pursuits and opinions and emotions that supersede their performances between the ropes\u2014while with others, it can feel like their public personalities revolve almost entirely around launch angles and swing speed metrics. Until this week, it wasn\u2019t entirely clear which side of that divide Scheffler fell on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That changed, and then some, on Tuesday when Scheffler took the occasion of a routine pretournament press conference to go into a startlingly and even uncomfortably honest monologue about \u2026 the meaning of life? Or at least the meaning of golf, which is a somewhat interchangeable concept for a shoo-in future Hall of Famer who\u2019s in the early bloom of a seemingly limitless athletic prime. Here\u2019s a sample of his sentiments from that day:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world because what\u2019s the point? This is not a fulfilling life. It\u2019s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it\u2019s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and you get there, you get to no. 1 in the world, and they\u2019re like, What\u2019s the point? I really do believe that because\u2014what is the point? Why do I want to win this tournament so bad?\u201d<\/p>\n

Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like showing up at the Masters every year; it\u2019s like, why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly? Why do I want to win the Open Championship so badly? I don\u2019t know, because if I win, it\u2019s going to be awesome for two minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying professional sports is a really weird thing to do. It really is. Just because we put in so much effort, we work so hard for something that\u2019s so fleeting. It really is. The feeling of winning just doesn\u2019t last that long. When I sit back at the end of the year and try to reflect on things, like having that sense of accomplishment from winning the Masters Tournament, from winning the PGA Championship, I have a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation for it, but it\u2019s just hard to explain how it doesn\u2019t\u2014it just doesn\u2019t satisfy, is how I would describe it. It\u2019s an unsatisfying venture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whoa! What was happening here? This was heady stuff, reminiscent of Bill Parcells\u2019s troubled maxim: \u201cThere is winning, and there is misery.\u201d Was Scheffler burned out? Had he tired of his own dominance? Had he been brushing up on his Samuel Beckett? Public intrigue around those comments quickly built to a fever pitch in the days leading up to Thursday\u2019s opening round. What happens when the heavy favorite to win the year\u2019s final major says, essentially, that it won\u2019t be all that fulfilling if he does?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, we have our answer. Scheffler positively bulldozed a stacked field this week, carding an opening-round 68, seizing control of the tournament with a brilliant 64 on Friday, building his lead to four through a bogey-free Saturday, and coasting home with a drama-light 68 on a Sunday in which he never seemed to be in jeopardy\u2014even as he was being chased by multiple-major winners Xander Schauffele and Bryson DeChambeau and returning national hero Rory McIlroy. Each of those guys played well, and even brilliantly at times, over the course of the Open\u2014including DeChambeau\u2019s sparkling Sunday 64 and Rory\u2019s electric 66 on moving day. It didn\u2019t matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scheffler seemed to be playing the last several holes on autopilot on Sunday, and that gear was still better than his opponents\u2019 grinding. Not since the heyday of Tiger Woods did an ending to a major seem so thoroughly predetermined. \u201cNone of us could hang with Scottie this week,\u201d a resigned McIlroy said after the tournament. \u201cHe is the bar we are all trying to get to. In a historical context, you could argue there are maybe two or three players in the history of the game that have been on a run like the one Scottie\u2019s been on here for the last 24 to 36 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

This win marked Scheffler\u2019s fourth triumph in a major, but it\u2019s his first not to come at either Augusta National or its down-market knockoff, Quail Hollow. We suspected he could dominate on a links course at the Open Championship; now we know he can. Earlier this year, McIlroy became the sixth man to complete the career Grand Slam, and Scheffler now owns three legs of that table. At this point, the bigger surprise would be if he didn\u2019t eventually bag a U.S. Open or two to complete the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet, for all of the awesome prowess he displayed this week, I think my principal takeaway will remain Scheffler\u2019s ambivalence. After he holed his final putt on the 18th on Sunday, Scheffler ginned up some celebratory gestures. He raised his arms in the air. He threw his hat on the ground. He hugged his family and his caddie. He held and kissed his wife. These were, presumably, the two minutes of exhilaration he described earlier in the week. At the trophy presentation, he was unfailingly gracious toward a collected gallery that was obviously disappointed to have seen him best their countryman, McIlroy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what to say,\u201d Scheffler began, though of course he did. He fulsomely thanked the staff and crew at Royal Portrush, his parents, and his team. He said a couple of times that it had been \u201ca fun week,\u201d sounding not particularly persuasive. He apologized for not seeing more of the town. He was asked if he would remedy that on Sunday night \u00e0 la Shane Lowry in 2019<\/a>, and he said he\u2019d be heading home. The vibe could scarcely be more different from McIlroy\u2019s cathartic celebration at the Masters in April. It\u2019s almost hard to believe it was the same sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NBC\u2019s Mike Tirico attempted to orient Scheffler to the magnitude of his achievement in a post-round interview, citing a few of the famous names engraved on the Claret Jug and emphasizing the long and storied history of which Scheffler was now a part. Scheffler said, of the Jug, something like: Yeah. I\u2019ll take it home with me. It was all very nice, though in my mind, the exchange was soundtracked by Peggy Lee\u2019s \u201cIs That All There Is?\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Is this mentality Scheffler\u2019s Achilles\u2019 heel or his superpower? He has clearly established himself as the greatest American golfer since Woods but is also something like his dispositional inverse. If you asked Woods what \u201cthe meaning\u201d was of his eight wins at Bay Hill, for example, I don\u2019t think he\u2019d even understand the question. He\u2019d probably say something to the effect of, \u201cThe goal is to win every week,\u201d like Nigel Tufnel repeatedly explaining that his amp goes to 11.<\/a> It\u2019s unlikely that anyone will ever match what Woods accomplished on the golf course, but the very nature of his all-gas, no-brakes approach to winning at least resembled the template set by previous pathological overachievers like Michael Jordan and Jack Nicklaus. Scheffler resembles something else. What that is is only slowly coming into view.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perhaps the one moment of unmitigated joy in the aftermath of Scheffler\u2019s triumph Sunday was the truly adorable image of him standing next to his 1-year-old son, Bennett, watching the toddler grasp at the Claret Jug on the 18th green, the trophy and child standing at roughly the same height. One other sentiment from Scheffler\u2019s deeply revealing Tuesday press conference was this: \u201cIf my golf ever started affecting my home life or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife or my son, that\u2019s going to be the last day that I play out here for a living.\u201d I suspect that was truly the point.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Nelson<\/p>\n

<\/a>Elizabeth Nelson is a Washington, D.C.\u2013based journalist, television writer, and singer-songwriter in the garage-punk band the Paranoid Style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GolfGolfScheffler\u2019s week started with a press conference where he questioned his level of fulfillment in golf, and it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-11603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}