A rare thing: honesty from a pro athlete

Otago Daily Times

5 days ago

On the eve of the Open golf championship, the favourite, Scottie Scheffler, gave a press conference.
This is a customary thing to do, but what Scheffler said was not customary at all. He chose to tell the truth.
One doesn't expect the truth in sport. In sport there's no Gaza, no unemployment, no Trump.
Sport is a joyous world where everyone is young, at the peak of their powers and capable of wonders. The best sport is beautiful: Will Jordan ghosting into a gap, Jannik Sinner climbing into a forehand, Shubman Gill easing the ball past extra cover. These things are almost as lovely to see as they must be to do.
And sport is played to a set of rules that are enforced by a referee. Unlike the real world, fairness is baked in. Justice is done.
So sport is a happy place for many people, a relief from the mess of reality. It is glorious, beautiful, bloodless war. Millions of youngsters, boys especially, dream of sport.
My game was cricket. At 12 years old I pitied kids brought up in countries that didn't play it.
Without cricket, life was hollow. I longed more than anything to play cricket for a living.
A few of my contemporaries did go on to play the professional game. I caught up with one a few years ago.
He told me that for him the game soon became a job, a routine, a duty, and the glamour slid off it like a nylon night dress.
He quit after a few years in search of something better. Beware the dream come true.
Cue Scheffler, who is the world's best golfer. He is rich. He can earn more in four days than a nurse earns in a lifetime. He is famous.
People nudge each other wherever he goes and say "surely that's Scottie Scheffler" and they ask him for autographs and tell him they admire him.
William Blake wrote of "the lineaments of gratified desire." If anyone should exhibit such lineaments it is Scottie Scheffler. He has done what he set out to do as a lad. He has emulated the great golfers he admired.
Yet here's what he had to say about his success: "It is not a fulfilling life."
Do you hear that, children? That is the world's best golfer speaking about being the world's best golfer.
"I'm not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world," continued Scheffler, "because what's the point?
"Why do I want to win the Open so badly? I don't know, because if I win it's going to be awesome for two minutes . . . Then it's like, 'OK what are we going to get for dinner?' ."
Scheffler is addressing the same existential crisis as faced Macbeth. Macbeth wanted the throne of Scotland above all things, but having murdered his way there, so what? What exactly was he supposed to do with it?
You can see the same truth at the end of any cup final. The final whistle goes, the players sink to the ground with relief, or hug each other, or burst into tears. They've done what they've set out to do. They've reached the throne.
But then what? In very short order the players get up, the hugs end, the tears dry and the crowd starts filing out of the stadium.
Excited media people run on with microphones to ask the players how it feels to have won. And they duly report that it feels awesome, ecstatic, wondrous.
But you can see it on their faces that it doesn't any more. Already it feels ordinary. After climbing Everest all that's left is to come back down.
The trophy is presented to the captain. The team gathers around. On the count of three the fireworks go off and the trophy is raised and the players cheer and dance and bounce up and down.
But the crowd has gone home and the moment is long since over. The players are faking it for the cameras, for the sports pages, where the truth is not allowed to venture.
"After sex every animal is sad," said Galen of Pergamon, and every sporting victor stares into the same void. He has burst into fulfilment's desolate attic, and it took unusual honesty for Scheffler to admit it.
Telling the truth is a rarer feat than winning the Open.
• Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.