Every so often, someone comes along who’s capable of taming the beastliest, most excruciating game that man has inflicted on itself with little more than a smirk and a shrug.
What Scottie Scheffler is doing to golf isn’t easy. It dang sure isn’t normal.
But see, he acts like it’s both.
The bad doesn’t fluster him. The good doesn’t seem to enthuse him. No cursing. No celebrating. Just the next shot. It’s remarkable, Scheffler’s untouched demeanor. You could call it a gift. Or robotic. Or mentally tough.
You could also, of course, call it boring.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In sports, the inevitable usually is boring.
On Sunday, that’s what Scheffler was: Inevitable. He didn’t just win the Masters for the second time in three years. He won after four days of, “Yup, there’s Scheffler.” The guy was widely expected to win it at the start – and then at the end, with most viewers rooting against him so the final round would be more competitive, he played even better while others faltered, turning it into a back-nine rout.
In a field with 89 of the world’s best golfers, including the PGA Tour’s briefly reunited LIV defectors, no one finished within four shots of Scheffler’s 11-under-par. Only hotshot rookie Ludwig Aberg (7 under) was within seven strokes. Then Scheffler smiled and put on another green jacket and went home to his wife and continued preparing to be a father, which was clearly his priority all along during this tournament.
He’s just so normal, right? To be this good at golf?
On Thursday, during the first round of the RBC Heritage, Scheffler mucked up the third hole, taking a double bogey. The rest of the day, however, he made very few mistakes en route to a 69 that put him, you guessed it, well within striking distance of the leaders. Slow and steady.
Scottie Scheffler makes it look easy. pic.twitter.com/duozgE9Xhy
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) April 18, 2024
Only the all-time greats win this way, but with Scheffler, his budding greatness gets understated. Because his personality doesn’t lend itself to fame – or appear to have any interest in it.
In a sport known for greed and selfishness, two things embodied by the LIV players’ cash grabs, and in a sport where golfers are more increasingly becoming fine-tuned athletes, muscles bulging from under shirts, there’s beauty in the fact that Scheffler doesn’t come off like any of that.
He’s 27, but he looks – and carries himself – closer…
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