The world’s best golfer, Scottie Scheffler, is in the middle of a patch of form so good that to call it a golden run seems an embarrassing understatement.
He’s the best player on the planet and there’s daylight second.
He might be the most dominant player in any individual sport in the world right now – though Iga Swiatek can make a case on the back of her French Open crown last week.
Scheffler last weekend won the Jack Nicklaus Memorial Tournament, his fifth victory of 2024 already. Not since Tom Watson in 1980 has any player won five tournaments before the US Open, which takes place this weekend with Scheffler an almost unbackable favourite.
Scheffler has amassed a staggering pot of prizemoney, more than $24 million ($36 million AUD) heading into the third major of the year.
And the list of events he’s winning is about as prestigious as it gets: the Memorial, Masters, Players Championship and Arnold Palmer Invitational as well as the RBC Heritage. Five big events – and five wins from his last eight tournaments.
The three weeks he didn’t win? He finished runner-up twice and tied for eighth at the PGA Championship.
But that last result – his worst of the season – might end up being the most important of the lot.
Because for all of his brilliance, Scheffler has a problem. Or more accurately, the PGA Tour has a problem with Scheffler.
He’s not the most marketable superstar.
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At a time when golf’s civil war has torn apart the game for two years, the PGA Tour is desperate for a public relations boost. And yet ever since LIV blew up the golfing world in 2022, the best player on the PGA Tour has been a devout Catholic, a quietly-spoken family man who never makes a headline for the wrong reasons.
Sure, he’s fiercely competitive, but he’s unlikely to snap a club after a poor shot (like Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, or Patrick Reed for example). He’s not likely to be repeatedly accused of cheating (Reed, again), destroying a golf course (Sergio Garcia) or even loudly swearing (Tiger Woods, or Jon Rahm at this year’s Masters roaring “Go F*** yourself. Every drive on the back nine to the f***ing right. God damn, f**k”).
Scheffler does none of this. He just turns up to a golf course, and more often than not, he wins.
There’s an increasing sense of inevitability when it comes to Scheffler these days. Even when rivals play well – or better than well – they can’t keep up with him. Scheffler just grinds his way to victory.
It was the same with peak Tiger Woods – only his larger-than-life personality made it must-watch TV. The Tiger Woods phenomenon brought golf to the masses. It’s safe to say that Scheffler lacks much of that cut-through.
It’s a shame, really. Scheffler’s a brilliant player, a supreme competitor, and ¬seemingly a good person to boot. He’s just had his first child – then turned around and won another tournament.
But that sense of inevitability, combined with his no-fuss personality, has led to descriptions of Scheffler as ‘boring’.
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Former American ice hockey star Ryan Whitney said as much last year after Scheffler’s Players’ Championship win.
He tweeted: “Scheffler is a machine. Just an incredible player. Seems to come from a great family. His dad told him ‘be a better person than a golfer’. Awesome stuff”.
That was nice enough. Then he added: “Having said all that, he is so boring. Does nothing for me. If he runs away with the Masters again and ruins Sunday I’ll snap”, he concluded.
Again, this isn’t Scheffler’s fault. He’s openly spoken about golf being just one part of his life. His faith and his family are equally important – and that’s a good thing.
But with LIV doing its best to splinter the golf world, the PGA Tour is desperate for new stars to emerge that have broader cut-through and marketability – and Scheffler just isn’t that.
Or wasn’t, until the most unlikely sports story of the year.
At the PGA Championship last month, Scheffler was arrested attempting to drive into the tournament. He had had a misunderstanding with a police officer amid chaotic traffic outside the gates, after a pedestrian was killed earlier in the morning in a tragic crash.
The world’s best golfer – and the most unassuming – was filmed in handcuffs, being dragged away while calling out to a journalist for help. And this was during one of the four majors!
Thanks to film crews nearby (also caught in the traffic), it hit the news immediately and predictably went gangbusters. His mug shot – orange prison jumpsuit and all – was beamed around the world.
The no-nonsense, calm and humble golfer, tossed in a jail cell. The charges were damning: second-degree assault of a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving, and disregarding signals from an officer. There was even an accusation of “dragging the officer with his car.”
Tee times that day had been delayed by a couple of hours. Scheffler managed to get out in time and raced to Valhalla, where he was greeted like a rock star. ‘Free Scottie’ was emblazoned across hundreds of shirts – some hastily scribbled by hand, others sold by opportunistic peddlers outside the gates. The Scheffler mugshot was just as popular for T-shirt designers – and Scheffler was even photographed high-fiving some fans wearing those shirts. Some reports claimed he cracked a joke or two with fans. Certainly he smiled.
As he walked to the practice range just before his round, one fan yelled out that Scheffler’s mug shot was “better than Tiger (Woods)’”.
“Bankrupt the city,” yelled another. “Make the city pay!” was a third cry from a fan, according to The Guardian.
Golf’s sedate superstar was suddenly at the centre of a festival atmosphere, far removed from the usual stately scenes in the US Open galleries. Fans roared as one as he teed off – it might just have been the loudest ovation he’s ever received.
Then, almost beyond comprehension, Scheffler fired a five-under par 66. And he still wasn’t done.
“After starting the day by being arrested, then firing a 66 in the second round of the PGA Championship, Scottie Scheffler went to the practice green for more work. Then signed autographs and took selfies all the way up the hill to the clubhouse before he left,” ESPN’s Marty Smith said.
Not that Scheffler was too happy with it all, just stoic.
“I feel like my head is still spinning,” he said. “I did spend some time stretching in a jail cell. That was the start of my warm-up. If anything summed up the utterly bizarre day perfectly, it was that.
“I was pretty rattled to say the least,” Scheffler added. “I was never angry. Just in shock. I was shaking.”
The weight of the situation sunk in after that day, Scheffler said later. He slipped to a two-over 73 in the third round, but rebounded to finish the tournament with a 65.
Scheffler had been arrested, watched replays of his own arrest on television in a jail cell, and still ended the tournament 13-under overall and in a tie for eighth.
As world number three Rory McIlroy joked overnight: “The only thing that took him from winning a golf tournament was going into a jail cell for an hour.
“I describe it as is ‘relentless.’ It seems like every time he shows up, he’s the guy to beat, and deservedly so.
“Undoubtedly the best player in the world at the minute by a long way. It’s up to us to try to get to his level.”
In the weeks after that incident, all the charges against Scheffler were dropped, prosecutors and police agreeing with the star’s claim that the incident was all a “big misunderstanding”.
His spotless record is restored. But the public perception of the American has well and truly changed – and his human, raw reaction to the surreal incident has cut through the shroud that defined him as ‘boring’.
McIlroy hasn’t been alone in poking fun at Scheffler. And just like he did at the PGA Championship when fans cheekily sported his mug shot, Scheffler has smiled back.
Early this week, a golfer at an event at Wildwood Country Club in Louisville arrived at that tournament day driving a black van (like Scheffler’s) with a mannequin dressed as a police officer attached to it, dragging along the ground. Loudly blaring through the van’s speakers was the song “Bad Boys”.
Like videos of Scheffler’s arrest, that parody went viral too.
And Scheffler heard all about it, including from world number two Xander who won that PGA Championship.
“It’s kind of hard not to laugh about the guy who did that,” Scheffler said. “Xander did tell me about it yesterday. He got a pretty good kick out of it.”
Scheffler might be getting sick of talking about his arrest, but he can’t stop his good friends from joking about it.
“Like I said, I don’t love reliving it, but sometimes being able to laugh about it is a good skill, too,” Scheffler said.
“When they make jokes, it’s definitely hard not to laugh, especially with some of my good buddies, they’re pretty funny with it.”
“That’s part of just having good friends,” he added. “If all they did was make fun of me, it would be different. It wouldn’t be as fun.
“But they’re great guys, and they’re great friends. So you’ve got to be able to look in the mirror and laugh at yourself, too.”
And that’s the thing about Scheffler. In the space of a few weeks, he’s become a first-time father, got arrested, won another big tournament – and went from being boring to being loved.
As the Irish Times wrote: “You’ve got to hand it to Scheffler, he’s doing his best to shed the boring tag. He clearly took all those jibes about him being dull to heart. His new son is only a few days old and what’s his reaction been? Hop on a plane, go play golf, get arrested. That’s some 1970s s*** right there. The bad boys over on LIV can only dream of being that kind of rebel.”
Or ask his rival, Max Homa, what he thinks about Scheffler.
“I saw somebody on the internet say he’s boring,” Homa said.
“I would imagine that’s what you would dream of, to become the best player in the world and someone who is going to set records and win a bunch of majors. You want to play as boring of golf as you can, you want it to be as even-keeled as you can. You’d think that’s what you would build in a lab.”
Boring on the course? Maybe. But for Scheffler, boring means winning.
And thanks to one unfortunate, surprising misunderstanding, you can’t argue that he’s boring off the course.
It might have been just what he – and the PGA Tour – needed.