No Twitter. No personal Instagram. “Even my Apple News these days, I’m clicking on golf articles and putting ‘Not Interested.’ I don’t want to see any of it. It’s not worth the head space.”
“I don’t think it’s easy to be in the spotlight,” he says. “If people are writing stuff about you, it’s either going to be really good, and I’m gonna get a huge head, or it’s gonna be really bad and I’ll just be thinking about that all the time. I’d rather not know. And I do my best to not know.”
TPC SAWGRASS – 18 GREEN
Still, he couldn’t avoid the incessant talk about his putting struggles in recent months. “The putting one’s tough,” he says. “I know what I need to improve on, and a lot of that’s just being mentally ready to go out and play, and not really worrying about whether or not that’s going to become the story. But it becomes more and more challenging as I go into the interview room and the interesting story is not my ball striking, the interesting story is my putting. Because everyone’s like: ‘Well, you’re good at this, and you suck at this.’”
The focus on his putting had become unavoidable. Even when it’s not the story—like last month when Hideki Matsuyama won the Genesis at Riviera in LA—it somehow becomes a story.
“Even after Riviera, like Hideki Matsuyama wins the tournament and has such an incredible round and I get a notification from ESPN that’s like: ‘Matsuyama wins; Scheffler still struggles with putting.’ And I’m like: Damn… I had one bad week so far this year! And Meredith’s like: Why do you have ESPN on your phone? And I’m like: I need to check scores!”
“You can create whatever story. Because golf is not a perfect sport. I mean, we’re sitting there having breakfast this morning watching ESPN, and Steph Curry is the greatest shooter ever, and they’re showing highlights of every single miss he had last night. And I’m sure if you looked through a game of his from three years ago, he probably missed almost just as many shots. Like he didn’t play perfect every night. It said: ‘Not So Splash Brothers.’ You can’t win!”
It’s the price of being number one, I say.
“That’s exactly right,” he says. “But that’s another reason why I just canceled out all that stuff. That’s why I just try to tune out as much as I can. Like, it’s not gonna satisfy me if I show up at Bay Hill this week and putt great and they’re all like: ‘Scheffler’s putting’s fixed! He’s the best! Yadda-yadda-yadda!’”
Scheffler, it turns out, is a prophet. He showed up at Bay Hill last week—with a new putter in hand, a mallet putter, just like McIlroy suggested—and putted great and they were all like: Scheffler’s puting’s fixed! He’s the best! Yadda-yadda-yadda!
This is what can happen. At Bay Hill, he putted fifth best in the field—instead of 60th or 100th—and won by five. If he has even remotely figured something out, the biggest tournaments this season will be his running away. Scottie learned how to putt. Uh-oh.
