SOUTHPORT, England — There’s a funny contrast between the image of Scottie Scheffler—an image that is largely true, I think—of an athlete uniquely focused on the present, totally undistracted by the baubles of fame, and obsessively competitive in a way that seems to be motivated by the joys of competition rather than its rewards, and the reality of the man who finds his way into deep and often fatalistic conversations at press conferences, especially at the Open Championship.
MORE: Your vibes-only guide to the Open Championship
You’ll remember last year, when he spoke about the fleeting nature of victory and all its joy, making the point that you better not be gearing your life around that temporary satisfaction, or you’ll be disappointed. It was all tremendous, even if the odd moron tried to reframe it as “Scottie doesn’t like golf! Boo hoo, multimillionaire!” It didn’t mean he’d lost the love for the game, or the desire to win, just that at age 29, he already had an incredibly healthy sense of where long-lasting satisfaction can be found, and where it cannot. None of this immunized him from emotional reactions on the course, as we’ve seen in the past year; it’s just that he gets the big picture.
I actually thought the conversation that came out of his quotes was mostly productive, but I also thought he would avoid anything similar this year. Boy was I wrong!
On Tuesday at Royal Birkdale, the reigning Open champion from Portrush last year took his place on the podium before a crowded room of reporters, he lulled us into a sense of normalcy for a few minutes, speaking about the novelty of missing a cut for the first time in four years, course conditions at Birkdale, and the difficulty of the par 3s. Even after someone directly brought up his remarks from a year ago at Portrush, he just joked about it, saying it should be taken in context of the entire quote, but that, “I don’t even feel like I recommend anyone doing that.”
He did give a small hint of what was to come, though, with a quick thought on his sense of purpose, and how it isn’t always clear.
“Why do I choose to play this sport for a living?” he asked rhetorically. “Like, always figuring out your why. I think when I have a really good understanding of what my why is when I’m playing, I think that’s when I’m always at peace the most.”
A few more questions passed, and then a reporter asked him how much certain stats matter to him—the kind of stats that say, “you’re the first person to do this, or the seventh person to do that.”
And philosophical Scottie made his first true entrance.
“I don’t really play for a place in history,” he said. “I’m not playing for anything like that because—this is going to sound a little morbid—at the end of the day, I’m going to live my life, and it’s going to end. When it ends, I’m going somewhere else, and I’m not going to be here anymore.”
In some ways, this is a pretty ordinary and reasonable thought—some people care about how history will view them after they’re gone, and some people take the position that it doesn’t matter, because you’ll no longer be there to care.
But as Scottie well knew, he’d just written a dozen or more headlines for the writers in the room.
“Is that going to be a quote after last year’s “what’s the point”?” he joked. “This year, we’re all going to die.”
That got the requisite laughs, but in fact, once again, the stuff he was saying went beyond what 99 percnt of athletes ever deliver, and we’ve now had it two years in a row.
“I think sometimes I get really soaked into the competition,” he said, on the concept of his “why,” his reason for playing. “I get really into like the heat of the moment, and I think that’s sometimes why you’ll see me get frustrated. That’s why I kind of posed the question, ‘why do I want to win this tournament so badly?’ … it would almost be easier if I didn’t want to win this badly.”
“If losing didn’t hurt so much,” he continued, “it might be easier to come out and play. But then again, when I retire and I sit back, I’m going to miss the feeling of waking up in the morning and not being able to eat breakfast because your stomach hurts because you’re anticipating the day. Those feelings are hard to replicate, and it’s a hard thing to describe until you’re in the moment, but when you’re able to succeed and have some success in the game, those are very great gifts that I’m extremely thankful for.”
For someone who spares very little thought for questions about his previous shortcomings, or about what he might accomplish in a period of years—in other words, about his past and future—he was surprisingly thoughtful about his 2026 so far, which contains far fewer wins (one, at the season-opening American Express) and more second places (four) than we’ve come to expect. He made the analogy to an NFL team, and how it’s very rare for a team that wins the Super Bowl to sustain that high level the next year. In golf, the mechanisms are slightly different, but the results are not.
“Mentally, especially in this day and age, there’s just a lot of noise all the time at golf tournaments,” he said. “I think golf is unique in a sense, too, with the mental grind the sport entails. There’s just a lot more stuff that’s going on at tournaments. For instance, this week, I show up on Sunday thinking there’s not going to be any fans out there. We get out there on the first hole, and there’s fans out there. I love being able to play in front of fans; that’s a tremendous amount of fun. But I get to the bunker on the first hole, and I turn around, and within six feet of me there’s literally two cameras right in my face. I kind of turn around and look at the guys, like ‘Hey, y’all, are you going to be this close all day, or could we get a little bit of room?'”
The spotlight, he said, comes with a burden, and being constantly recorded can make it feel like “walking on eggshells.” And thus a player can become enervated, and psychologically depleted, even as his game seems to remain in solid form.
He is keenly aware of his need for a reset, not just now but in general. What he’s not keenly aware of, though, is history, and he made that clear in no uncertain terms.
“At the end of the day, I have never once thought about how I’m going to be remembered,” he said. “I’d much rather be remembered for doing things the right way than the guy that won all the tournaments.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
