British Open 2025: Scottie Scheffler reckons with the psychological cost of victory
Now comes Scottie Scheffler, who's very much like Tiger in the record books but so very different from him in terms of psychological makeup. Where Woods would have shoved aside his own mother to win another tournament, Scheffler has a more balanced — and, let's be honest, healthy — view on life, golf and winning.
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'It feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for like a few minutes,' Scheffler said Tuesday morning prior to The Open Championship, which begins Thursday at Royal Portrush. 'It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling.'
He pinpointed his victory at the Byron Nelson earlier this year as an example: '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. 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.'
Scheffler nailed the essence and the conflict at the heart of golf, or sports in general: there's a huge difference between winning, and fulfillment. 'Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about because I've literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,' he said. 'To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I'm not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I'm not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world because what's the point? 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.'
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And then we get to the Tiger-Kobe-MJ conundrum: What happens when you've achieved everything in your life that you want, and it's not enough. 'There's a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life,' Scheffler said, 'and you get there, you get to No. 1 in the world, and they're like, 'What's the point?'' (For what it's worth, this appears to be what's troubling Rory McIlroy right now in the wake of his epic, career-capping Masters victory.)
Scheffler, to his credit, appears to have made peace with the fact that he simultaneously wants to win and knows it won't satisfy him: 'That's something that I wrestle with on a daily basis,' he said. '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 because, if I win, it's going to be awesome for two minutes. Then we're going to get to the next week: 'Hey, you won two majors this year; how important is it for you to win the FedExCup playoffs?' And we're back here again.'
What's salvaged Scheffler? According to him, family. 'I'm blessed to be able to come out here and play golf, but if my golf ever started affecting my home life or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife or my son, that's going to be the last day that I play out here for a living,' he said. 'This is not the be all, end all. This is not the most important thing in my life. That's why I wrestle with, why is this so important to me? Because I'd much rather be a great father than I would be a great golfer. At the end of the day, that's what's more important to me.'
Can you even imagine prime Tiger or prime Kobe saying that? Both seemed to work their way around to that philosophy once their most competitive playing days were done, but not while they were in the heart of their careers.
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Scheffler's entire answer is well worth watching in full:
'Playing professional sports is a really weird thing to do,' he said. '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.'
Fortunately for Scheffler, he gets more opportunities than most to enjoy those fleeting moments of victory.
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