In his pre-tourney press conference before The Open Championship, Scottie Scheffler admitted to sometimes being overwhelmed by media and well-meaning fans. He cited an example from the Sunday before the British Open.
Scheffler had missed his first cut in about four years at the Scottish Open, and he wasn’t sure what to do with the extra two days. So, he decided to go to Royal Birkdale and get familiar with the course.
“I show up on Sunday thinking there's not going to be any fans out there. We get out there on the 1st hole, and there's fans out there,” he explained. “I get to the bunker on the 1st hole, and I turn around, and within six feet of me, there's literally like two cameras right in my face.”
Scheffler says that, as much as he says he likes playing in front of fans, he had to ask if they could give him a little more room.
As we all know, it’s the TikTok/YouTube age. Everybody with a camera wants to use it to document the activities in daily life.
Learning to deal with this is not easy for most people. But the fix for it may be slightly reminiscent of a story about Paul Marchand, who, at one time, was the golf professional at Houston CC. He’s now at Ladera in Thermal, CA, a new Gil Hans course south of PGA West.
President George W. Bush was a member at Houston CC, and he had a great way of engaging with people, including total strangers.
Marchand and his wife had been invited to go to the Bush Kennebunkport vacation compound in Maine to play golf and a visit with the Bushes, and he was allowed to invite two more couples. Marchand invited Fred Couples and his girlfriend at the time and Jim Nantz and his wife at the time.
After a busy day, including golf, everyone was hungry, and Bush liked to go across the water for take-out pizza. Now, Couples is as shy a person as you can find, but even he offered to go get pizza for the. The Secret Service detail told him, “No, you don’t understand.” They explained to Couples and Marchand that the president LIKED to go.
Not only did President Bush like to go, when he got to the pizza place, he shook hands and said hello to everyone in the restaurant, picked up the pizzas and left. He worked the entire room! Marchand said he and Couples stood there and watched in amazement. Marchand called it a real lesson.
Now this is obviously impractical at a golf tournament where there can be anywhere from two to 200,000 people or more. But making some new friends on the range before warming up might be a way to ease into it. Takes an extra 10 minutes, and then it’s, “I’d love to stay and talk, but I have to go to work.”
What Scheffler didn’t say is that this camera kind of thing tends to slip into private life, too. After he won The Masters, he wouldn’t say where his Chipotle was located because if he did, he wouldn’t be able to go there anymore.
"Just being in the spotlight all the time puts a burden on a player in this day and age. Everything is being recorded,” he noted. “Sometimes, you can be like you're walking on eggshells a little bit, and that can drain people.”
By people, he meant himself for sure. Maybe it has affected his wife, his parents, and so on. We have no way of knowing. For Scheffler, trying to learn to manage stardom has apparently not been easy. It’s not easy for most golf pros because to get good at golf they have spent hours and hours by themselves on ranges and courses. They have become loners, and then with success, they are expected to become Kevin Hart or Nate Bargatze. And they aren't.
The massive attention gets to many golfers sooner or later, and perhaps it’s finally gotten to Scottie Scheffler. It’s tougher to conquer than the Church Pews at Oakmont, the Road Hole at St. Andrews, or the island green at TPC Sawgrass on a windy day.
He said it’s one reason he doesn’t play many tournaments in a row. There's got to be stress in being recorded every moment, feeling you are a star in a movie role you didn’t sign up to play.
“I'm very far from a perfect person, and you know -- I'm trying to find the right words, but I think just sometimes it can be hard when you're being recorded all the time,” he said.
The rule for everybody, whether it be a golf star, PTA president, or just mom or dad, is that every camera is rolling and every microphone is live. Or don’t do anything in public that would upset your mother.
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