For 27 years, 10 months, and 26 days the most interesting thing about Scottie Scheffler was his golf. And given that’s what he’s paid for, you might think it ought to be enough. But the truth is that ever since Scheffler rose to the top of the world rankings in March 2022 the game has wanted more from him. Trouble is, besides his faith, his family, and his attachment to a beaten-up old 2012 GMC Yukon, he does not have much else to give. Whisper it, but the truth is that a lot of people in the game worry that Scheffler, who many reckon is the best player of his generation, is just a little bit too boring to carry the sport.
And then he decided to take a detour into the westbound lane on his way through the gates to Valhalla on Friday morning. Last month Scheffler explained that he believed his victory at the Masters was meant to be because God had laid out “today’s plans many years ago, and I could do nothing to mess them up”. Well, either the Lord also takes his marching orders from Kentucky traffic cops, or this is more proof, if we needed it, that he moves in mysterious ways.
You’ll find Scheffler at the top of just about every list the PGA Tour keeps, from scoring average, strokes gained and greens in regulation, to top-12 finishes and money earned, but you would have to go a long, long, long way down the field before you picked him as the man most likely to end up being carted off in handcuffs to have his mugshot taken. There are all sorts of characters on the Tour, with all the usual human vices, but Scheffler is not one of them. The man is as square as a bogey on the scorecard, and straighter than Zach Johnson off the tee.
Scheffler’s secret has always seemed to be that he’s so sorted. Golf drives everyone a little crazy in the end, but his attitude towards the game is about as healthy as it gets. He says it’s what he does, not who he is, and that it’s only third in the list of things that matter to him. First is his wife, Meredith, whom he met at high school and married after college, and second is his religion. It has just been bumped down again because he became a dad last week. “My priorities will change here very soon,” he said at Augusta National. “My son or daughter will now be the main priority, along with my wife, so golf will be probably fourth in line.”
Scheffler actually promised to drop out of the tournament if his wife went into labour while he was playing, and those who know him say he would have been as good as his word. He is nothing if not consistent. He has had the same coach since he was a little kid, the same girl since he was a bigger one. Until 2023 he was still driving the same car his dad gave him in college. He once described his perfect day as a slow morning with his wife, a game of pickleball in the afternoon and dinner with friends in the evening. The menu, he said, would probably be the same as always because “I could eat the same meals every day of my life”.
It has left the rest of us scrabbling around for an angle on the man. His father was a stay-at-home dad, his mother worked in a law firm, he graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in finance. He has a quirky swing, he once muttered “you can’t keep your mouth shut for 30 seconds?” under his breath when a spectator shouted at him during his backswing (and promptly resolved never to backchat the gallery again) and he broke down crying when he got drubbed in the foursomes at the Ryder Cup. There’s not a whole lot of story for the commercial team to work with.
Which matters more than it ought to. ESPN’s ratings for the first round of this year’s Masters were the highest in a decade while the CBS ratings for the final round were the third-lowest in history. It would be a bit stiff to say that it was Scheffler’s fault, but his victory, which felt inevitable by the time he reached the back nine, was a hard sell to a broader audience.
The shame of it is that his golf is utterly irresistible. The man hasn’t shot a single round over par all year. He has only just won the Masters, and people are already talking about whether or not he has a real shot at winning the calendar grand slam.
He’s been playing so well that people are even comparing him to Tiger Woods, although their game is about the only thing they have in common. Or it was, anyway. Because Woods, of course, has been involved in a couple of traffic incidents himself in his time, most memorably when his ex-wife chased him out of the house and smashed the back window of his SUV with a golf club before he totalled it by crashing into a tree.
At the time of writing, while one of the charges was noted as a felony, the fallout from Scheffler’s set-to with the police according to the official report seems to be that he has done irreparable damage to the $80 trousers worn by the officer who was trying to stop him from making the turn. Which speaks to the difference between them.