“What’s the point?”
Hear it here!
Viewing the final major golf championship of the year brought back memories of our visit to Royal Portrush in Ireland six years ago, the last time until last week the Open was played on that course.
We attended the third round of the tournament as part of a golfing week in both Scotland and Ireland.
The big story at the Open in 2019 was both the sudden and quick collapse country favorite Rory McIlroy, along with the eventual champion, like Rory, a native of Ireland.
McIlroy’s first tee shot on the first day flew out of bounds en route to a horrific 79, eight over par. McIlroy didn’t make the cut and was gone after two rounds.
But Shane Lowry made the fans forget McIlroy’s rapid demise and won his first major.
On a rainy final round Sunday, we had played another Irish course, Portmarnock, and then watched the finish of the Open on television with the other club members in the drier confines of the bar.
To a man, they surprisingly expressed their displeasure with McIlroy because he spurned playing in their own Irish Open and instead played in the Scottish Open to get ready for the final major of the year in their country.
All was forgotten six years later when McIlroy was again a hero to his native folk.
He didn’t win, but he finished in a tie for 7th place and proudly accepted the plaudits from the throng.
That memorable visit to Royal Portrush in 2019 was just one year after Scottie Scheffler turned professional. Now six years having passed, that same Scottie Scheffler conquered the Open. He was never challenged in the final round, winding up 17 under par, capturing his fourth major, second this season, and stamping himself as the world’s best golfer since Tiger Woods. Scheffler joins Woods as the only golfer to win the Open when ranked as the world’s #1.
He is nowhere near Tiger in tournaments and majors won. But no golfer has proven to be as consistent a threat to win any event he enters as anyone else. When he can smell victory, he seizes it. He has won every major when leading after 54 holes. He can bounce back as he did following a 7-shot lead, then following a rare double-bogey on the 8th, responding with a birdie on 9. Game over.
Looking at the big picture, the one downer occurred when he was arrested and jailed outside the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville before the second round of the PGA Championship in May of 2024. He was charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, reckless driving and criminal mischief among others. Strong stuff, but all the charges were later dropped. All he claimed he was doing was attempting to enter the course. Scottie described it as a misunderstanding. How’s that for low key.
Scheffler is not flashy, not charismatic, and not colorful, but he plays with a machine-like steadiness and consistency that translates into success in a sport where highs and lows are the norm.
His answer to a question on media day prior to the start of the championship was to me, as stirring, starkly human, and as meaningful as his performance itself.
He was asked what fulfilled him in golf and Scheffler proceeded to stun all who have heard his reply with a lengthy, heartfelt, and realistic answer that frankly I have never heard from anyone in my decades of covering sports of all kinds.
His basic reply was, “what’s the point?”
He admitted that he was blessed to be able to play golf, work long hours at trying to be the best he could be, competing at the highest level and attempting to win as much as possible. But at the end of the day, he said it was not the most important thing in his life.
His family is his priority, “I love living out my dreams, I love being a father, I love being able to take care of my son. I’d much rather be a great father than I would be a great golfer.”
What Scottie Scheffler was saying that once you accomplish what you set out to do you move on and live your life.
You won’t find him sitting and admiring the Claret Jug he won at the Open and reveling in his success. He wondered out loud why he wanted to win this tournament so bad? He said he didn’t know. “What’s the point?”
He revealed that he wrestled with that question all the time. That if you win it’s awesome, as he put it, for about two minutes. Then the next week the same questions, “why is this one important?” We’re back here again, he says. We work so hard, put in the time for the few minutes and then what? “What’s the point?”
Does it fill the deepest feelings in his heart? Absolutely not, he said.
He added that at the end of the day he was not out to serve as a role model to spur the next generation of golfers or to instill the drive to someone to be the best golfer in the world.
So, if you want to describe Scottie Scheffler you’d have to say that golf is what he does, not who he is.
I applaud him because he had the courage to express what was in his heart, instead of giving mundane answers to the continual queries of athletes as to what a game or a play means to them. We all saw what it was that means to him when he walked with his wife and son and carried his son on one arm and the Claret Jug on the other after his triumph.
Isn’t it refreshing to see a champion of a sport so unassuming and not taken with fame, stardom, and celebrity as Scottie Scheffler is? Think about it. You work extremely hard for something, and you win. What now? “What’s the point?” Do you revel in it and think about how great you are? Or do you get fulfilled by something far more meaningful and rewarding, such as family and faith?
We have a champion in golf now who has his values in the right place.
We can celebrate the man, and at 29 years of age, there’s more to come.
