Scheffler's press conference answer goes viral and leaves rivals facing deep and difficult questions

The 42

15-07-2025

IT WAS JUST past 11am when we gathered at the feet of Scottie Scheffler for another sermon on the mount.
(The mount in this case being a mounted table in front of rows of seated hacks beneath a canvas roof rippling and wobbling in the wind.)
During the course of a magnetic press conference, Scheffler was asked about the books he read, and revealed he really only leafs through the Bible. That a professional golfer would speak openly about their belief in God is not unusual, but it's still a rarity when compared to the number of golfers who take an interest solely in whether God believes in them.
Scheffler's faith is often cited by pundits trying to explain his astonishing consistency: yes, Scottie has the talent, but his belief imbues him with a serenity that forestalls the kind of mental frazzling that compounds errors and ruins scorecards.
Whatever the truth in that – like all religion-based philosophies, nobody will be around to verify or rebuke it when they find out whether it was true all along – it has given Scheffler an interesting perspective away from the course, which he shared with us in a fascinating, five-minute disquisition in response to a fairly banal question asking him for how long he typically celebrates success.
(Similar questions this week went to Xander Schauffele and Shane Lowry – Xander hinted he didn't drink as much as the Irish would, while Lowry gave the impression of being highly irked by this Stateside stereotyping of him as some kind of pint-swilling, ballad-belting craic merchant.)
Scottie Scheffler just gave one of the best (and deepest) press conference answers ever heard. pic.twitter.com/SUIRKuLwgb — Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) July 15, 2025
Scottie somehow took things in an altogether different direction. First he mentioned the The CJ Cup Byron Nelson title he won in Texas in May, a tournament frankly everyone in the room forgot he had won.
'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', he said. '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.'
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Scottie went on too.
'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.
'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 was a delightful antidote to the LIV Tour defectors who dressed up their greed beneath the thin veneer of horseshit that was their scripted claim that they were motivated to Grow The Game.
But stick with us – we're not even at the best part.
'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.
'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?'
Scheffler went on to say he finds true fulfillment in fatherhood and family, and yet golf still has an oppressive hold on his emotions.
'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 because, if I win, it's going to be awesome for two minutes.'
A few observations. Firstly, Scheffler has been on the island of Samuel Beckett for all of five minutes and already he's wrangling with grand existentialism.
We're not talking about any inward crisis of identity, by the way. Scottie might be aware that golf delivers nothing but a terrifyingly fleeting joy, but the fact he can say this out loud while talking about the importance of family means, really, he has it all sussed.
No, Scheffler's comments implicated and tangled everyone else into these deep and terrifying questions. The sportswriters sitting in front of him, for one, given we spend ing our working days carving great arcs of failure and redemption, adjusting their angles, slopes and contours for whomever is sitting in front of us.
That the world's best golfer would blithely tell us that all the sincere meaning and cheap drama with which we freight his sporting events is illusionary is, of course, deeply, deeply chastening. But a sportswriter having an identity crisis is routine and uninteresting.
What must Scheffler's competitors have made of this?
They do not win as often as Scheffler, and yet they have to work as hard as he does to merely stand still. Scheffler's rivals have to find a reason to work that hard, and so they invest the struggle with a kind of dignity and sanctify their daily grind, telling themselves that one day, all of this hard work will ultimately be worth it.
This is ironically quite a religious angle to take to life, to act in anticipation of a final gratification that may never come. Given the level of absorption necessary for this kind of business, its hard not to allow it seep into all realms of your life.
But Scottie is here to tell them that, at the end of it all, the juice is not really worth the squeeze.
Golf will not save you, gentlemen.
So should you even try?