PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — A 10-year-old Scottie Scheffler ran so hot he’d physically storm away from the scene. The little kid who dressed like an adult in long golf pants challenged every pro at Royal Oaks he could find — chipping battles, putting competitions, bunker shots, nine-hole matches, anything — and he won more often than you’d think. But when he lost? See ya. Sprinting off somewhere private where nobody could see him.
But then …
“You could almost set your clock by it,” his coach, Randy Smith, said. “He’d be back in 15 minutes with a brand-new game to play.”
The No. 1 player in the world was beside himself Friday, fuming, battling from the absolute bottom of the leaderboard at one of golf’s iconic venues. His hat crooked, left ajar on the edge of his head. He dropped his putter behind him. He rarely does this, but after finishing Riviera Country Club’s seventh hole, Scheffler simply went for a walk. A cool-down. Scheffler strolled up the hill to the eighth tee box, leaving his playing partners and caddie Ted Scott behind, and found a chair. The greatest ball striker the game has seen in maybe 20 years sat, staring blankly into the distance, confounded by a game that tends to have that effect on us mortals.
He hit that eighth tee shot so far left that it crossed behind the bleachers of the 14th green. Scheffler dropped his driver in his backswing, picked it up and tossed it in the air like a water bottle. The word “lost” did not feel like an exaggeration.
About 15 minutes later, he was back with a new game to play. And a path to once again making the cut at a golf tournament, something Scheffler has done 68 straight times, dating back to the August 2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship. This one was just going to be more difficult than so many of the rest.
Let us first make clear the anomaly of it all. That a guy who hasn’t finished worse than eighth in his last 19 starts was fighting to play the tournament’s final two rounds. That a golfer who hasn’t missed a cut in nearly four years was tied for 69th out of 72 players with 10 holes to go. That Scottie Scheffler, the most consistent golfer on Earth and one who led the PGA Tour in first-round scoring three years running, found himself with a case of the Thursday struggles for the third week in a row.
Scottie Scheffler had to shoot a 68 on Friday to make the cut on the number. (Mike Mulholland / Getty Images)
He was 11 shots behind the lead in a tournament in which only the top 50 plus those within 10 shots of the lead make the cut. At that moment, he was out.
And then … he was just … back.
A birdie on No. 9 after an approach to 4 feet. A tap-in birdie on No. 10. Another on No. 11. He parred his next four, birdied the 17th to get inside the top 50 and sank a challenging 7-foot par putt on the 18th. It was all enough to squeak inside the cut line and play the weekend.
Scheffler is probably not going to win the Genesis Invitational on Sunday, but you’re not completely confident in that, are you? Are you?
Because this is suddenly a thing — likely a temporary one — but a thing nonetheless. And the rare Scheffler negative is simultaneously one of Scheffler’s most impressive positives. Since winning his season debut at the American Express in January, Scheffler opened the WM Phoenix Open with a round of 73 (tied for 89th) and began the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am with a round of 72 (tied-62). He officially has a first-round problem.
He still finished those two prestigious tournaments tied for third and fourth, respectively.
It goes back to another line from Smith about his most famous pupil.
“He gets rid of it so fast you wouldn’t know he lost,” Smith said. “That’s the sign of somebody who’s got it together. …
“Every loss leaves a scar. It may be a deep scar for him. It’s just he puts stitches and salves on it faster than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
Scheffler has never hidden his emotional explosions. And the outbursts, as long as they remain within reason, are not the story here. The heat that lies within Scheffler is instrumental to his greatness, and golf is fundamentally a game that elicits frustration, to say the least. Whenever a media member asks about one of those aforementioned fits of anger, Scheffler cheekily responds, “You play golf, right?”
He’s competitive in every nook and cranny of his life, challenging friends and family in anything from pickleball to ping-pong and everything in between. But when asked Wednesday whether anything else elicits the deep frustration a poor golf shot does, he quite calmly said no. He thought about it for a moment, but really, no. Scheffler has spoken at length about the balance he seeks in his life, celebrating his countless wins only momentarily before immediately switching to family mode and hiding the trophy in his office.
But golf does this. Of course it does.
“I’ve literally spent my entire life trying to become good at this game, and like the hours and time that we spend practicing and preparing to play, I think when you come out here, you expect a lot out of yourself,” Scheffler said. “When things don’t go as planned, I think it’s healthy to have a level of frustration with that, just because it takes so much work in order to get out here, and especially when you feel like you’re doing something right and doing things the right way and not getting the results. I think it can always be frustrating, but I think that’s part of the game of golf is being able to manage that in order to execute the next shot.”
It’s something sports psychologist Dr. Bhrett McCabe talks about often with his golf clients. He worked with Jon Rahm when rage affected his early career, and the outwardly emotional Billy Horschel has credited McCabe with his own mental development from throwing clubs and shouting to becoming a fan favorite.
McCabe says there are two types of emotions: primary and secondary. The primary emotion is from hitting a bad shot.
“I would hope as a competitor it pisses you off,” McCabe has said. “There is no competitive advantage to my opponent seeing me get angry. There is none. I’m not gonna have an unnecessary roughness penalty.”
But it’s the secondary emotion that can become problematic.
“If I’m angry and I knock you out of your chair, you’d probably be ticked off, right? Would you lay on the ground and think, ‘I am the worst chair-sitter ever and this is what always happens to me’? No. You’d be like, we’re gonna do something about it.”
Scheffler never doubts he’ll recover. He just gets back to work.
Scottie Scheffler has made 68 straight cuts on the PGA Tour. (Mike Mulholland / Getty Images)
Something is up with Scheffler. It’s fair to suggest that. Not because of the final results but simply because Scheffler has never been an erratic golfer during his professional career. Opening 4 over par in his first 10 holes Thursday was Scheffler’s worst start to a PGA Tour event since he was a 17-year-old amateur at the 2014 Byron Nelson. He is paint-by-numbers consistent.
Just last week, Rory McIlroy, the second-best player in the world, talked about his greatest jealousy coming from Scheffler’s ability to make golf seem monotone.
“I’ll never stop singing Scottie’s praises because he’s incredible at what he’s doing and the way he does it,” McIlroy said. “I’ve had nice runs like that, but I’ve always been a little more up and down. I think anyone that wants to catch Scottie or get anywhere close is going to have to consistently bring that sort of game, week in and week out, like he does. He’s really the first one since Tiger that’s doing this.”
For a small three-week sample, Scheffler has not been that guy. Yet somehow, he continues to bounce back enough to stay alive, if not contend on Sunday. That’s just another tribute to his greatness.
So, sure, on Thursday, Scheffler could be so uncontrollably angry after a double bogey on No. 8 that he went into a shouting spree and later slammed a porta-potty door so furiously it could be heard a hole away.
But 24 hours later, there was Scheffler, sinking that curling putt on 18 to stay alive in this tournament. He gave a thumbs-up to his parents as he walked up the steep Riviera hill to the clubhouse. He settled in at the scoring area and went to town on a large breakfast burrito, courtesy of his wife. “Shoutout Meredith,” he joked.
And then Scheffler immediately made his way back down those stairs to the driving range, one of two golfers practicing at 3 p.m. on Friday. He had a lot of work to do.