Scheffler is One Step Closer to Golf Immortality

PARIS—On a wild final day at the Olympic golf competition, as a United Nation of players raced up the leaderboard and future Hall of Famers crumbled and all of France seemed to be carrying along their favorite son, as songs were sung and flags fluttered, as the entire giddy, thrilling Sunday teetered on the edge of anarchy, it was left to Scottie Scheffler to restore order. He may be only 28 but the balding Scheffler radiated dad vibes long before he and wife Meredith welcomed a baby boy this summer. While Rory McIlroy forfeited his medal chances with typical heedlessness and a glowering Jon Rahm kicked away a four-stroke lead, Scheffler ho-hummed his way around a booby-trapped Le Golf National. He was utterly unbothered by Rahm’s front-nine 31 or the wall of sound that followed France’s Victor Perez as he came home in 29. Scheffler just picked apart the golf course and snatched the gold medal with his unflappable excellence, along the way breaking hearts of Great Britain and Japan, as Tommy Fleetwood had to settle for silver and Hideki Matsuyama for bronze.

Tommy Fleetwood (left) earned a silver medal while Hideki Matsuyama earned bronze. (GETTY IMAGES/David Cannon)

Scheffler’s glittering triumph puts an exclamation point on an all-time great year, as a gold necklace looks great with green formalwear. Along with the Masters he has taken five big-time PGA Tour events: the Players, Bay Hill, Memorial, Hilton Head and Hartford. Yet the Olympics will be remembered as his defining performance. Four strokes behind 54-hole co-leaders Rahm and Xander Schauffele at the outset of the round, Scheffler announced his attentions with birdies on the first three holes thanks to laser approach shots. But six straight pars followed while Rahm made birdie on six of his first 10 holes. Scheffler was six strokes back and at best fighting for the bronze. At least, that’s how it felt to everyone but the only person who matters. For all of his spectacular ballstriking and deft chipping, Scheffler’s secret weapons are his unshakable belief in himself and ability to tune out all the noise. Arriving on the 10th tee he hadn’t made a birdie in an hour and a half and Le National was on tilt but Scheffler simply put his head down and went to work. “I felt like at the time it was definitely slipping away,” he says. “[Caddie Ted Scott] always does a really good job of keeping me in the right head space and making sure I was staying committed to what we’re doing and not focusing on the results.” 

And just like that the results came, as he stuck a wedge to 12 feet on the 10th hole and finally made a putt, and then Scheffler did it again on the 12th. After a sweet two-putt birdie on the par-5 14th he nearly jarred his approach on 15. Across the grounds at Le National and Golf Twitter a familiar refrain could be felt: Scottie’s coming. His aw-shucks demeanor is not fooling anyone; he has become the game’s most feared closer, his very presence on the leaderboard tightening the collars of his competitors. “He’s got such a complete game, he’s really hard to play against because you know that he’s never going to make a mistake,” says Jason Day, who finished tied for 9th. “But that’s something that we have to elevate our games to.”

Yet the biggest names on the leaderboard were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the moment. Rahm bogeyed 11 and 12 and then took five strokes to get down from 170 yards on 14. Rory McIlroy found himself one shot off the lead but made a shocking (yet somehow unsurprising) mistake by coming up short of the 15th green with a wedge, ending his medal bid in the moat protecting the putting surface. Schauffele bogeyed 12 and 13 and doubled 15. Scheffler suddenly had the air of a cat cleaning canary feathers from his whiskers. Perez, who played the round of his life (63) but finished one shot from bronze, said, “I don’t think there are many birdie chances on the final four holes.” No one told Scheffler. He flagged his tee shot on the 16th hole for a third straight birdie and then at 17 produced the shot of the tournament. An errant drive left his ball ensnared in the tangly rough. From 157 yards, Scheffler opened the face of his 8-iron and sent his ball to the moon. It landed 17 feet from the hole. On Twitter, Smylie Kaufman enthused, “His clubface control even through the rough is just a joke.” Scheffler gutted the putt to finally claim a share of the lead. When Fleetwood played 17 he faced a similar shot but his ball skittered over the green, leading to a bogey that gave Scheffler the outright lead.

On 18, what Matthieu Pavon calls “maybe the toughest hole I’ve played,” Scheffler made a stress-free par for a back-nine 29 and a 62 that tied the course record. “I mean, 9-under is a joke of a round out here,” Rahm said after his 70, not trying to hide the pain he felt for, in his telling, letting down all of Spain. When Fleetwood’s final desperation chip missed the hole at 18 the gold medal belonged to Scheffler.

As expected, he bawled during the medal ceremony as the Star-Spangled Banner rang out across Le National. He’s as American as a burger and fries or a bolt of denim or a gas-guzzling SUV. (Even after winning his first Masters, in 2022, the down-home Scheffler still drove a 2012 Tahoe with 200,000 miles on it.) Afterward, this descendent of German and Italian immigrants whose grandfather fought in the Korean War talked movingly about the pride he felt to represent the USA. 

Scottie Scheffler showed his emotions after winning the gold medal. (GETTY IMAGES/Andrew Redington)

Scheffler may have shared the podium with Fleetwood and Matsuyama but he clearly stands alone at golf’s summit. “The level of golf he’s playing is incredible,” says Nicolai Højgaard, who finished 7th. “It’s inspiring to watch and very motivating. To see what he’s doing over and over on the biggest stages, it’s the benchmark of professional golf right now. It’s good to have a guy like Scottie, it makes me work harder every day.”

In the post-Tiger epoch, a handful of players have enjoyed transcendent stretches of golf: McIlroy (August 2012-August 2014), Jordan Spieth (April 2014-July 2017), Day (July 2015-May 2016), Brooks Koepka (June 2017-July 2019), Justin Thomas (August 2017-January 2020). These peaks tend to last a couple of years and then the player inexorably loses his edge. (Dustin Johnson enjoyed the longest run, from June 2016 to November 2020). Scheffler’s current blitz dates to February 2022. If history is a guide he should be nearing an invisible wall but the guy shows absolutely no signs of letting anything slow him down. Scheffler does not crave the spotlight (or have an Instagramming wife who does), nor does he waste his energy on social media or chase dollars around the world. Scheffler has found a simple approach to stardom that pairs perfectly with his unfussy, instinctive style of play. “I know what he’s going through,” Day says wistfully. “It just feels like you can’t do anything wrong. Like you’re in just such control. At this level, confidence is the biggest thing because everyone is good… It’s impressive to watch how balanced he is as an individual. He’s on top of the world right now. He’s got a really solid game. Good balance on course and off course. He’s got everything perfect right now. So we’ll see how things progress during his career.  Maybe he’ll kick it on for the next 10, 12 years or or maybe it will be a short term. Who knows?”

Scheffler may have less braggadocio than any other superstar athlete on the planet. During an emo moment in his pre-tournament press conference he mused, “Ultimately, we’ll be forgotten.” But that’s not really true. We still talk about Bobby Jones’ Grand Slam and Ben Hogan’s 1-iron and Arnie Palmer driving the first green at Cherry Hills. Some golfers, and some moments, live on forever. With a golden performance that elevated himself and these Games, Scheffler is now one step closer to golf immortality.

Top Photo Caption: Scottie Scheffler made an epic Sunday charge to win the gold medal in Paris. (GETTY IMAGES/Keyur Khamar)

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