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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Scottie Scheffler delivers stunning existential monologue ahead of the Open as world No 1 asks 'what is the point?' and insists his thriving golf career is 'not a fulfilling life'
When Scottie Scheffler walked into the media tent at 11am he was greeted by questions about his suitability for links golf. He left 30 minutes later with an astonishing array of questions of his own about the meaning of life. If there has been a theme throughout the world No 1's dominance of the game, it has been that the excitement stops once his last putt drops. Microphones? They are not his thing. And then there was this, which amounted to a remarkable monologue on his arrival at Portrush, underpinned by one jolting line that he repeated four times: 'What is the point?' The deeper recesses of his mind came pouring out here, including the admission that his haul of three majors, 13 PGA Tour wins and £70million in prize money since February 2022 has left him feeling somewhat hollow. His words: 'This is not a fulfilling life.' Or these: 'This is not the place to look for your satisfaction.' There was more context, naturally, and an assertion that he 'loves' golf. But there was also an echo of sentiments expressed lately by his great rival Rory McIlroy, who scaled his Everest at the Masters and then found himself rather unsatisfied by the relentless demand for great achievements to followed by something better. McIlroy called it the 'hamster wheel' of professional golf on Monday; Scheffler on Tuesday sounded like a man exhausted by the pursuit of new worlds to conquer ahead of the Open. It was both compelling and extremely unusual for a 29-year-old who has only ever conveyed the impression of being the most unflappable swinger on tour. 'I think it's kind of funny,' he said at the beginning of an answer to a query about the longest he had spent celebrating a victory. He ended with a long hard, stare into an existential void. 'I said something after the Byron Nelson this year that it feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament. It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling. Then it's like, okay, what are we going to eat for dinner? Life goes on. '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. But at the end of the day, what's the point?' That was the stage when his answer began to escalate. 'This is not a fulfilling life,' he added. '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 fulfil them in life, and you get there, you get to No 1 in the world, and they're like what's the point? I really do believe that because 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's like showing up at the Masters every year - 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. 'I'm kind of sicko - I love putting in the work. I love getting to live out my dreams. But at the end of the day, sometimes I just don't understand the point.' At that stage, Scheffler stopped himself long enough to say: 'I don't know if I'm making any sense or not.' He went on: 'I love being able to play this game for a living. But does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not. 'I love living out my dreams. I love being a father. I love being able to take care of my son. I love being able to provide for my family out here playing golf. But if my golf ever started affecting the relationship I have with my wife or my son, that's going to be the last day that I play for a living. This is not the be all, end all. 'When I sit back at the end of the year and try to reflect on things, it's just hard to explain how it doesn't satisfy. It's an unsatisfying venture. I guess what I'm trying to say is this is not the place to look for your satisfaction.' Time will tell if these are the early signs of a burnout, or a golfer hosting an intelligent discussion on the grind of expectations, or both. Until now, Scheffler has never seemed troubled by any of it in an acquisition of trophies unseen since the Tiger Woods era. Equally true is that his headlines have rarely strayed away from the fairways, to the extent an iffy putting stroke, since corrected, was often the only talking point we had. Even when that status quo was exploded in the most dramatic of ways, with his arrest over a traffic misunderstanding on his way to the PGA Championship in 2024, he shot a 66 just hours after he was pictured in orange prison scrubs. His longest slump, after he cut his hand on a wine glass at Christmas, lasted barely five months before he won the Byron Nelson and then the PGA Championship a fortnight apart in May. He has appeared a machine, or a 'robot', as he called it earlier on Tuesday, back when we were discussing why he has 'only' managed a best of seventh in the quirks of an Open on links courses. It would surprise no one if he now went and won this tournament, but not as much as it did to hear Scheffler, of all people, sounding like it all weighs too much.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Climate
- Irish Times
Bryson DeChambeau focuses on links test over Rory McIlroy rivalry as he arrives in Portrush
The room expected a more aggressive energy field from Bryson DeChambeau in his first interview after arriving on Irish soil. His rivalry with Rory McIlroy has refused to die and recently he said he'd love nothing more than to beat him 'especially in front of his own crowd'. McIlroy mused this week on creativity versus power as the best way to get the ball around the links course at Royal Portrush, with those looking into McIlroy's mind reading it as DeChambeau's muscular game perhaps relying too heavily on science rather than the more nuanced 'artistry' required to win. While McIlroy won The Open in 2014 at Royal Liverpool, DeChambeau's best effort to win the oldest championship in the world was a T8 in 2022 at St Andrews. READ MORE Either way, for those hoping for a taste of golf as a blood sport two days before the first players tee off, DeChambeau was a let-down with his willing Californian smile and an open, shoot-the-breeze kind of charm. 'Great question,' he even quipped to one inquiry. 'Just have fun this week and be strategic. I'm trying to ride the wind,' he said. 'A heavy wind is a great way to describe it. It's thick.' There were no snide remarks or concealed digs, no reprisals or escalation of the rivalry. The drama of Portrush was what grabbed him. The LIV Tour player, one of 19 in The Open field, is not used to playing links golf and has been troubled by trying to develop a game that suits a punishing course where it is expected to blow. [ No flies on us as we look forward to new views of the Open Opens in new window ] Yesterday it was modest at 21km/h, although Met Office warned of potential disruption around the local area between 11am and 5pm. Play was halted twice due to a threat of lightning on Monday. 'You're feeling the wind, how much it's coming into you and if it's off the left or right a lot more than normal,' said DeChambeau. 'Okay, how do I feel? How do I turn this into the wind? If you're going to try to ride the wind one time, how do I control and make sure it doesn't go into a crazy place? Because once the ball goes into that wind, it's sayonara. That thing can go forever offline. It will turn east sometimes. 'You know, it's one of those situations where you're in the environment and you go, all right, this feels like a 15-mile-an-hour wind, and all of a sudden it plays like a 30-mile-an-hour wind, and you're like, what the heck?' Bryson DeChambeau during a press conference ahead of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. He plans to 'have fun this week and be strategic'. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA DeChambeau will open his championship with England's Justin Rose and Scotland's Bob MacIntyre. It is a fact of life on the LIV tour that the players do not have the opportunity to play on links courses and was an issue Joh Rahm brought up last year, bemoaning the fact that without playing on the coastal courses, their chances of winning an Open significantly decline. The 31-year-old also arrived at Portrush with a personality makeover since his last visit in 2019, when he missed the cut. His venture into 'fun' YouTube events and behind-the-scenes footage have softened the image to his 1.5 million subscribers of the beefcake who simply beats the bejaysus out of a golf ball. 'I think people see a different side of me on YouTube, where I can have fun, I can enjoy, I try to relate to others as much as I possibly can has been fun to show,' he said. 'For me, I always go back to what footprint can I leave now? I'm not going to be here forever. I'm not going to win every tournament. 'Yeah, am I going to get frustrated playing bad golf? Yeah. Am I going to want to still sign autographs? Yeah, because I care about the game.' But the golfer, who plays for a LIV team called Crushers, is far from retiring the hot-blooded image. Has no intention of going soft. 'I'll walk through the fire rather than run away from it,' he said. 'I'm still the fiery, want to go, competitive go-getter that I've always been.'
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
‘I just want to have my best result in a Major and go from there': Tom McKibbin on his hopes for the Open
The lad strolled the fairways without a care in the world or so it seemed. Tom McKibbin was in good company, for sure. Darren Clarke, the elder, and Rory McIlroy , the master, completed a threeball that crossed the generation game with stories to tale and yet more to create. For McKibbin, this 153rd Open on the Dunluce championship links at Royal Portrush is yet another opportunity to progress a career that has seen him, even at 22 years of age, win on the DP World Tour before making the move to LIV Golf where he has settled in well, his fourth place finish in Valderrama last weekend following up a fifth-place finish in Dallas to show some good form at just the right time. McKibbin is from Belfast and, like McIlroy, learned his craft at Holywood Golf Club, but has also been a member of Royal Portrush for the past 10 years. Wisely he has tapped into Clarke's knowledge of the links in the build-up. Clarke was the one who suggested playing some practice rounds in advance of The Open. McKibbin did not need to be asked twice. READ MORE 'I work with a coach that coaches Darren as well and we had always been planning to get a little bit of a training camp for a couple of days together. He was at home, I was at home, so it made sense to go come up for a couple days and get out on the course while it was nice and quiet. I got to pick his brains for two days,' McKibbin said. This is only McKibbin's second appearance in The Open – he made the cut last year at Royal Troon – and only a fourth appearance in the Majors (he also made the cut at last year's US Open and this year's US PGA). He has looked at home in this elite company. 'I played three of them before, and I've played nicely. I think if I can just keep getting better at every one of them ... I definitely want to try and finish the highest that I have out of the four. But my game feels good. Hopefully I can continue the nice sort of form that I've had over the last couple of events and wherever that is at the end of the week I know that I'll have given it my best.' Strange as it may seem, given his fine amateur career, McKibbin – for one reason or another – was never around to play in the North of Ireland Championship on the course. His only competitive appearance was in the British Boys. And when the 2019 Open was staged here, McKibbin only watched on television as he was in Ohio competing in the US Junior Championships. Tom McKibbin: 'It's nice to see my game translate into some nice scores.' Photograph: Ben Brady/INPHO 'Once they announced it was going to come back, it was a big, big goal of mine to get back here and get playing in it,' McKibbin said. His route to the here and now has been a quick one after turning professional in 2021 at 18. McKibbin's win in the Porsche European Open in 2023 showcased his talent and he earned his exemption into this Open through his ranking on last season's DP World Tour order of merit, which enabled him to put it in his schedule from the get-go without the need to look at any other qualifying routes. 'My game feels good. It was very nice at the start of the year, and then towards the middle things just weren't going my way. I felt like I was playing quite nicely, but I couldn't really get the score together. The last couple of weeks have been nice. I finished fifth in Dallas and then fourth last week on two very challenging golf courses, so it's nice to see my game, how it felt like it was playing, translate into some nice scores and post a couple of nice finishes.' Of the challenge ahead on a course he knows well, McKibbin said: 'It's a very good golf course, very demanding off the tee. It's quite strategic. There's bunkers in play no matter what club you decide to take off the tee. The greens are very slopey for links golf, especially with how slow they are [running at 10 on the stimp]. It's hard to see the breaks. I think very demanding. 'I mean, we played early today, and I'm not sure if this is normally the wind at this time or that time of the morning, because it seemed to be the opposite direction that I've normally used to play it in. I'm not sure if that's just a freak day or that changes sort of morning, day, afternoon, but that made it, the first five or six holes, definitely a little bit trickier. I think it's going to be a great test. As I said, there's bunkers everywhere, some patchy rough that can be quite challenging, just off the fairway.' No doubt there will be a sense of expectation once he heads to the first tee given the welcome that he can expect from the galleries. The support shown in the practice days has given a hint of what is yet to come his way. What of his own expectations? 'It's something that's so hard to say. I mean, with the weather and conditions links golf can bring, it's very hard to set expectations or whatever. You sort of have to just go with the flow really, take what you're given and go out there and try and handle that the best you can. I just want to have my best result in a Major and go from there.'
Belfast Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Belfast Telegraph
Rory McIlroy presented with drawing of himself by young fan at the Open
Rory McIlroy was presented with a drawing of himself from a young fan at the Open in Portrush today. Teenager Lucia Heaney gave McIlroy a copy of her drawing before the golfer signed a portrait for Lucia to keep for herself. The 15-year-old from Magherafelt won Tourism Northern Ireland's art competition with her portrait of the Grand Slam winner. Lucia's winning design featuring the Harland and Wolff Cranes and the Giant's Causeway. Holywood star McIlroy, who sealed the career Grand Slam when he won the Masters in April, is one of the big draws at this week's Open. Speaking on Monday, McIlroy admitted he would take a different approach at Royal Portrush after the disappointment of missing the cut at The Open there in 2019. "I spoke at the Masters, the battle was with myself. Whenever you get put in environments like that, it's you trying to overcome your mind and give yourself that clarity to put together a really good performance," he said. Who is Rory McIlroy and what is golf's Career Grand Slam? "In 2019 I probably tried to isolate and it's better for everyone if I embrace it. It's better for me because it's nice to be able to accept adulation, even though I struggle to accept it sometimes, but it's also nicer for the person because it's a nicer interaction. "I'm going to embrace everything that comes my way this week and not try to hide away from it and that will make it a better experience for everyone involved."
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Reuters
Harrington to hit first shot at Open before the McIlroy show
PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland, July 15 (Reuters) - Two-time major winner Padraig Harrington will have the honour of striking the first tee shot when the 153rd Open Championship returns to Royal Portrush on Thursday, launching golf's oldest major back onto Northern Ireland's dramatic County Antrim coastline. The Irishman, who captured back-to-back Opens in 2007 and 2008, will begin the action at 06:35 local time alongside Denmark's Nicolai Hojgaard and Northern Ireland's own Tom McKibbin. McKibbin hails from Hollywood, 60 miles south of Portrush, but will not attract the same fanfare as the town's most celebrated son Rory McIlroy, who will be the favourite for the majority of the 270,000 fans expected throughout the week. For five-time major winner McIlroy, it will be a homecoming after he completed his career grand slam with this year's Masters triumph. He will tee off at 3:10pm alongside American two-time major winner Justin Thomas and Tommy Fleetwood, who is bidding to become the first English player to hoist the Claret Jug since Nick Faldo in 1992. American Xander Schauffele begins his title defence at 09:58 in a powerful group featuring Spain's Jon Rahm and this year's surprise U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun. World number one Scottie Scheffler is in the next group alongside fellow American, 2021 champion Collin Morikawa, and Ireland's Shane Lowry, who romped to an emotional victory on this very Dunluce course six years ago. McIlroy, 36, will be desperate to banish the ghosts of 2019, when his dream turned into a nightmare with a quadruple-bogey eight at the par-four opening hole after going out of bounds en route to a tournament-wrecking 79. "It's lovely to be coming in here already with a major and everything else that's happened this year," McIlroy, whose maiden Open title came at Royal Liverpool in 2014, said. "I'm excited with where my game is. I feel like I'm in a good spot." The recent scorching weather across Britain has left the scenic par-71 layout firm and fast, but thunderstorms have already disrupted practice rounds. With heavy rain showers forecast for Thursday and the breeze expected to strengthen for the later starters, all 156 competitors will be keeping one eye on the fickle Causeway Coast weather as they chase golf's most coveted prize.
