PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — There is an existential question facing Scottie Scheffler.
It arrives with no shortage of seriousness, carries what some might describe as dire consequences, and is usually asked tersely in the following manner:
Black or Pinto?
“There’s two Chipotles that I eat at at home,” said Scheffler on Sunday evening in Northern Ireland, minutes after winning the third leg of golf’s grand slam in a laugher at the Open Championship and seconds before delivering an answer that revealed everything about the golfer resting safely at the helm of the sport.
It was midway through Scheffler’s winner’s press conference at Royal Portrush, the kind of forced-media affair typically reserved for cliches about hard work and the good fortune endowed by one’s creator, not the virtues of a fast casual burrito behemoth. The question was about the burden of fame and Scheffler’s unique adaptation for the limelight after winning his 4th major in just three years, this one a four-shot victory that was never close. The answer was about the insidiousness of fame to living a happy and fulfilling life. The analogy was Chipotle.
“There’s one right where I grew up, kind of near SMU’s campus. If I was to go to that Chipotle and try to eat nowadays, it would be very difficult for me,” Scheffler said. “There’s another one in a different part of town that I’m not going to tell you where it is, but if I go there, nobody recognizes me ever.”
The audience laughed as Scheffler delivered the punchline, perhaps because it was the kind of real-human, no-fluff quip that Scheffler seems to summon with such ease in the moments he holds the golf world in his fingertips. To those who were listening closely, though, Scheffler’s response was much more than funny — it was the answer to a question Scheffler himself had asked just five days earlier.
“What’s the point?”
Scheffler is just the latest great golfer to experience bonafide superstardom — a status that has conferred fame and fortune beyond his wildest imagination. But Scheffler has never seemed particularly interested in fame or fortune, at least not in the same existence-defining sense that created a cult following behind Tiger Woods.
“He doesn’t care to be a superstar,” Jordan Spieth said.
Since the beginning of Scheffler’s historic run, he has understood intuitively that his riches as a golfer are subjective and flimsy. The bedrock of his existence has remained his family, even as the wins have piled up at a historic rate.
Scheffler’s answer about the fleetingness of his own professional success set off no shortage of media firestorm at Portrush and beyond when he first delivered it on Tuesday afternoon. This was deeply ironic in one way, because media firestorms are one of the few things Scheffler views with outward contempt … and this media firestorm was entirely Scheffler’s own doing. But the response to Scheffler’s answer was deeply unfair in another way, because many of those listening didn’t bother to understand what Scheffler really meant.
“This is not a fulfilling life,” he said then. “It’s fulfilling from a 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 then all of a sudden you get to No. 1 in the world, and they’re like, what’s the point?”
At the time, Scheffler intended to suggest that he could not derive fulfillment from golf anymore than he could from a wooden spoon. To Scheffler, the things that really mattered in life were simple: God and family. The rest did not provide Scheffler with purpose because he did not wish for them to provide him purpose. Golf, fame, fortune? It was a fool’s errand to place his life’s purpose in ideals so purposeless.
Still, Scheffler had broken one of the golf internet commenter’s cardinal rules. He had deigned to play golf for a living and express interest in anything other than tournament golf. Given his general disinterest in the kinds of parlor intrigue that define much of the pro golf news cycle, Scheffler had long stayed in this group’s good graces, but his suggestion of disenchantment struck a nerve. In comments sections and emails the world over, some fans criticized Scheffler as unworthy, or worse, ungrateful for the immense fortune he’d been gifted.
After he won the Open on Sunday evening, Scheffler tried to walk back that sentiment gracefully, mentioning several times his lifelong commitment to golf and gratitude to find himself again in the winner’s circle. But it wasn’t until he raised the topic of Chipotle that Scheffler finally told the crowd what he’d been meaning when he first entertained the conversation of purpose and fulfillment five days earlier: That his life wouldn’t be defined by his golf.
“Famous is just one of those things,” Scheffler said. “In some circles, right now I’m the best player in the world. This week I was the best player in the world. I’m sitting here with the trophy. We’re going to start all over in Memphis [for the FedEx Cup Playoffs], back to even par, show goes on.”
Scheffler is right. The scores reset, and that is not just true of golf. The legendary basketball coach Phil Jackson used to remind his players they were only successful in the moment they were “performing a successful act.” After that, they had to earn it.
On Monday morning, Scheffler will have to earn it. He will rise to one group as the Champion Golfer of the Year. He will rise to another as a husband. And another as a father. And as a friend. And as a son. And maybe, if the cards break right, as a stranger in line for a burrito.
The point is not that it means nothing to hold the title of Champion Golfer of the Year. To Scottie, it clearly means very much. The point is that it means nothing if “Champion Golfer of the Year” is the only title he holds.
These might not sound like profound words, but they are the synthesis of a lesson that most people of Scheffler’s fame and fortune spend a lifetime chasing in vain: Life’s most important gifts persist even when fame and fortune do not.
“I would say my greatest priorities are my faith and my family,” Scheffler said Sunday, summarizing it quite simply. “Those come first for me. Golf is third, in that order.”
Much of the golf world spent Sunday afternoon at the Open attempting to make meaning from an event Scheffler rendered meaningless. His margin was five shots after the first hole, and grew to as many as eight. When it was over, he won by four.
There was no meaning to find that you didn’t know already. Scottie Scheffler is a historic golfer who just won a historic Open. He might be on the path to becoming one of the greatest players ever.
But you need not worry about the fame monster, at least not for this man. If things ever get too serious, it won’t be hard for Scottie to find an extra dose of humility.
Even for the greatest golfer of a generation, guac is still extra.
You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com and @jamescolgan26.
