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A few seconds after telling a reporter in a press conference on Tuesday at Royal Portrush that he doesn’t read many books beyond the prayer devotional on his iPad, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler spent five minutes and 40 seconds tackling a philosophical question that has plagued the sharpest minds our world has produced, and which can be framed in different ways but ultimately boils down to this:
What is the point of life?
Before we really dig in, be warned that Scheffler, 29, said quite clearly that he doesn’t derive a ton of fulfilment or satisfaction from winning golf tournaments, or at least that the satisfaction the 16-time PGA Tour winner, three major titles included, does derive is fleeting. That’s the headline heading into this Open Championship, and if you only read the headline, you might roll your eyes. The reductive response to this, which you’ll probably see plenty of in all the usual toxic corners, is mock pity: Yes, it must be so sad to be a world-famous multi-millionaire champion golfer. Boohoo, Scottie.
That would be a tremendously bad read of the situation. What we just heard is the kind of thing that should be encouraged, because it reveals a human side we too often don’t get to see in this sport. For those with ears to hear it, there was a deep message at play, and an almost unbearably honest one. The discomfort was palpable—at several points, the gathered journalists laughed at words that weren’t really that funny, and I think it was partly because they didn’t know how to react to the sincerity. Or maybe it was the implication, because if someone like Scheffler, who has been to the mountaintop of his world, finds spiritual emptiness on that summit, what hope do the rest of us have?
But I’m getting ahead of myself. That question that inspired all this came from Doug Ferguson of the Associated Press, who asked:
“What would be the longest you’ve ever celebrated something and what was the most crushing loss?”
Scheffler didn’t answer the question. Or, to put it more precisely, he did answer the question, but not in the way anybody was expecting. The rest of this piece will include a lot of quotations but trust me when I say that if you want to see inside the brain of the World No. 1, it’s worth reading every word.
“ I think it’s kind of funny,” Scheffler began. “I think I said something after the Byron this year [Nelson, which he won in a playoff in May] about it feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling. And to win the Byron Nelson Championship at home, I literally worked my entire life to become good at golf, to have an opportunity to win that tournament. And you win it, you celebrate. You get to hug your family, my sisters there. It’s such an amazing moment. And then it’s like, OK, now what are we going to eat for dinner?
“You know, life goes on. It’s great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf … it brings tears to my eyes just to think about, because I’ve literally worked my entire life. To become good at the sport and to have that kind of sense of accomplishment is a pretty cool feeling. You know, to get to live out your dreams is very special.”
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All of this felt mildly interesting—we’ve heard this theme before, that winning can’t bring happiness—but then things got intense.
“But at the end of the day, it’s like, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers,” Scheffler continued. “I’m not here to inspire somebody else to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”
It was here that the first few ripples of laughter spread through the room, because it goes against pro athlete dogma to say that you don’t care about inspiring the next generation, and for him to follow up that up with an admission that he didn’t see the “point” in reaching the apex of his career was just a little bit shocking … particularly in the context of the boilerplate responses that usually come from questions like these. And if that felt disconcerting, it was about to get worse.
“This is not a fulfilling life,” he said, drawing a few more puzzled laughs and offering his fourth or fifth eye-popping statement of the day. “It’s fulfilling from a sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart. There’s a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life. And then you get there, then all of a sudden you get to number one in the world, and they’re, like, what’s the point? I really do believe that because, you know, what is the point? You are like, what? Why do I want to win this tournament so bad? That’s something that I wrestle with on a daily basis. It’s like showing up at the Masters every year. It’s, like, why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly? Why do I want to win the Open Championship so badly?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “because if I win, it’s going to be awesome for two minutes.”
As if to bring us back to Earth—has a professional golfer in his prime ever spoken this way before?—he clarified that he loves golf, loves working hard, loves practicing, and loves the reward of living out his dreams.
“But at the end of the day,” he said, “sometimes I just don’t understand the point.”
Again, more laughter came from the audience, and again, it clearly wasn’t a joke.
Alex Pantling/R&A
“I don’t know if I’m making any sense or not,” he said, smiling along. “Am I not? It’s just one of those deals. I love the challenge. I love being able to play this game for a living. It’s one of the greatest joys of my life, but does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.”
The follow-up question: What do you find fulfilling, if not this?
The somewhat contradictory answer was that golf does fulfill Scheffler, along with his family, but that if the game ever affected his role as a husband and father he’d quit on the spot. Family matters the most to him, so he ends up asking himself the same question at tournament after tournament:
“That’s why I wrestle with, why is this so important to me?
“Playing professional sports is a really weird thing to do,” he continued. “It really is. Just because we put in so much effort, we work so hard for something that’s so fleeting. It really is. The feeling of winning just doesn’t last that long. When I sit back at the end of the year and try to reflect on things, like having that sense of accomplishment from winning the Masters Tournament, from winning the PGA Championship, I have a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation for it, but it’s just hard to explain how … it just doesn’t satisfy, is how I would describe it. It’s an unsatisfying venture.”
At this point, officials at the edges of the room could be seen gesturing for the moderator to end the interview, but Scheffler had one last thought to summarise his monologue.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is this is not the place to look for your satisfaction,” Scheffler. “This is something where you can have a great appreciation for and a great amount of thankfulness for being able to do this. Like I said, it’s literally one of the most fun things I can do in my entire life. I love being able to come out here and compete. But at the end of the day, it’s not what satisfies me, if that makes sense.”
It does make sense, and, frankly, there’s not a lot here to add beyond what Scheffler articulated so beautifully. This is not a message that will resonate with people who only see the money and trophies that come with a life like his, but it is one that will hit home for anyone who has ever spent an idle moment pondering his or her purpose in this existence. It might even be comforting, in its way, to know that a man who has achieved unbelievable success in life sits with the same thoughts. Scheffler didn’t claim to have any answers, but he was honest in ways we just don’t see from most athletes in presenting the questions that he asks himself in the quiet moments.
As he rose from his chair, leaving a few dropped jaws in his wake, the moderator thanked him.
“That was fascinating,” he said.
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Main Image: Christian Petersen
