There’s nothing more terrifying than teens. Groups of 10 to 15-year-olds roving the streets, waiting to pounce is true nightmare fuel, and you should stay away if you enjoy your sanity. Comedian John Mulaney put it best when he said, “Eighth graders will make fun of you but in an accurate way. They will get to the thing that you don’t like about you.”
Now, it’s horrifying in general to come face-to-face with a bunch of confident teens just out and about, but they can do even more damage if you encounter them at the driving range, à la Scottie Scheffler.
The World No. 1 and two-time defending champ is ready (once again) for the raucous WM Phoenix Open atmosphere, and he gives a lot of credit to a crew of teens and tweens ridiculing him at the driving range. It just goes to show you that no one’s safe from their evil, even a world-class golfer.
“I’m fairly used to the heckling,” Scheffler said. “Where I practice at home, I’ve got a good group of guys that we play golf with, and I get heckled pretty often. When I’m practicing on the range, there’s usually a group of 10 to 15-year-old kids that are trashing me all the time, so the heckling is something I’m pretty used to.
“It’s not as fun getting booed, but it’s fun getting the loud cheers out there when you do something good, but you pay the price when you hit a bad shot, too. It’s definitely fun being playable to play in front of this many people.”
Eyes on a three-peat.
Top shots from Scottie Scheffler’s back-to-back @WMPhoenixOpen wins ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/XHqcybgbZG
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 6, 2024
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Just minutes into this year’s WM Phoenix Open broadcast, we saw a cluster of fans dressed as Spider-Mans and a bevy of patrons rocking Augusta National caddie get-ups. It’s in the wee hours of the morning there, and the blood alcohol level seems to be rising already.
No matter what … Scheffler’s ready.
“When I go out to the first tee, I just remind myself that I’ve done everything I could to play well,” he said. “What that means is when I’m at home, I practice as hard as I can, I remain focused, and then when I step up on the first tee, it’s all about controlling what I can control.”
To be ready for the par-3 16th is to be ready for anything. Thankfully, for Scheffler, there’s nothing that can match the wickedness and cruelty of a bunch of seventh and eighth-graders named Connor, Tucker, Blaze, Parker, etc. If Scheffler can best the tweens and teens, he can certainly best a “party hole” at TPC Scottsdale.
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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
