‘What’s the point?’ Scottie Scheffler gets existential in fascinating presser

If you think hard about it, being very, very good at any one thing is an inherently strange, singular experience. Scottie Scheffler is very, very good at golf. He’s been thinking hard about it, too. That’s a fascinating combination.

The result of all Scheffler’s winning and thinking is that on Tuesday he gave us the latest entry in a very specific genre: “great athlete wondering what it’s all for.” You may remember a Super Bowl-winning Tom Brady wondering what mountain was left to climb. “There’s got to be more than this…” How about Michael Phelps, gold-medal machine, wondering what comes next? “We dreamed the biggest dream we could possibly dream and we got there. What do we do now?” Even Rory McIlroy, earlier this week, explained battling post-Masters malaise: “I think everyone could see over the last couple of months how I struggled with that — I’ve done something that I’ve told everyone that I wanted to do…” Scheffler certainly isn’t at the level of Michael Jordan playing minor league baseball, nor Tiger Woods training with the Navy Seals. But if every press conference is an effort to better understand what it’s like to be Scottie Scheffler, World No. 1, then Tuesday may have been our most successful attempt yet.

Scheffler’s deep thinking began when he was asked why he’s able to handle life as World No. 1 when others have struggled in the same position. He explained that he’s been able to sustain success because he works to reset every week, a crucial attribute in a sport where both success and failure are remarkably temporary. But the game’s fleeting nature plays tricks on him, too.

“Look at this week, for example,” Scheffler said, referencing the Open. “What’s the best-case scenario? I win this golf tournament, and then I’m going to show up [at his next tournament] in Memphis, and it’s like, ‘Okay, listen, you won two majors this year; what are you going to do this week?’ That’s the question you’re going to get asked.

“If I come in second this week or if I finish dead last, no matter what happens, we’re always on to the next week. That’s one of the beautiful things about golf, and it’s also one of the frustrating things because you can have such great accomplishments, but the show goes on. That’s just how it is.”

The show goes on. That much has always been true on Tour, which plays tournaments most weeks of the year. The tournaments end Sunday, and prep for the next week’s event begins on Monday. Success is fleeting in every sport but especially this one; consider that they don’t play an NFL game for months after the Super Bowl nor a baseball game for months after the World Series but they do play a tournament the week after the Masters, and the next week after that, and the next, and the next, and the next.

Later in the session, another reporter circled back on that theme, and that’s when Scheffler really got existential, using a win at his hometown tournament as an example:

“It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling,” he said. “To win the Byron Nelson Championship at home [in May] — I literally worked my entire life to become good at golf to have an opportunity to win that tournament. You win it, you celebrate, get to hug my family, my sister’s there, it’s such an amazing moment. Then it’s like, ‘okay, what are we going to eat for dinner?’ Life goes on.”

That does not mean that Scheffler dislikes his lifestyle; he went out of his way to emphasize just how much he loves golf, how much he loves competing and how much he loves the process of getting better. But he added a word of warning:

“This is not a fulfilling life. It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and you get there, you get to No. 1 in the world, and they’re like what’s the point? What is the point? Why do I want to win this tournament so bad? That’s something that I wrestle with on a daily basis.”

It feels important to note that Scheffler was cheery and good-natured throughout; this seemed more a point of bemusement and curiosity than any sort of existential spiral. Scheffler seems to realize that he loves golf not because he likes owning trophies, but because he likes the road to get there.

“I’m kind of a sicko; I love putting in the work. I love getting to practice. I love getting to live out my dreams. But at the end of the day, sometimes I just don’t understand the point,” he said.

Then he paused.

“I don’t know if I’m making any sense or not,” he continued. “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.”

Then Scheffler really got to the heart of the matter, which is that becoming the best in the world at anything — particularly when that thing is a game — is a peculiar existence.

“Playing professional sports is a really weird thing to do. It really is. Just because we put in so much effort, we work so hard for something that’s so fleeting,” Scheffler said.

In the end, Scheffler cares very much that he wins — of losing, Scheffler said, “it sucks” and “I hate it” — and he does derive satisfaction from having done so.

“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,” he said. “But I guess what I’m trying to say is this is not the place to look for your satisfaction.

“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.”

And with that, the moderator wrapped the press conference.

“That was fascinating,” he said. He was right. And Scheffler was off to practice.

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