GOLF NEEDS SCHEFFLER DEARLY, EVEN IF YOU MIGHT NOT RECOGNIZE HIM

The world’s best player cares about his wife, his impending baby and all the right things, and receiving a second green jacket from a LIV rival brought necessary magnitude to what the sport deserves

     The beard extends from one earlobe to the other, framing a clean look that makes him look more trustworthy and mature than virile. Consider it among many callouts that separate the world’s best golfer from Tiger Woods. Welcome to the maximum extreme of a sport dominated for so long by outrage and scandal — a 27-year-old far more concerned about the baby his high school sweetheart is about to deliver.

     If Meredith needed him, even as he led the Masters on the back nine Sunday, the jet was waiting for Scottie Scheffler to shred another green jacket and head immediately to Dallas. “I’m ready to go at a moment’s notice. Out of here,” he said. “Pregnancy is weird. It can happen at any time. Yeah, there are open lines of communication, and she can get a hold of me if she needs to.”

     She continues to wait for labor, just as he hugged him two years earlier, when he was crying as he led the Augusta National field on Sunday morning. He is a man of peace who has mastered the game but wasn’t prepared for chaos. “I don’t think I’m ready for this,” Scheffler said. “I’m not ready.”

     “She told me, ‘Who are you to say that you are not ready? Who am I to say that I know what’s best for my life?’ ” he remembers. “And so what we talked about is that God is in control and that the Lord is leading me.”

     No one has struck the ball this well since Woods encountered multiple surgeries, met Rachel Uchitel and almost lost his life on a back road. Scheffler could walk down any main street and likely wouldn’t be recognized, even in his blue pants, peach shirt, white Nike cap and slight belly. That’s what we love about him, post-Tiger, how he proceeded to win the Masters for the second time while crashing the lead in almost every major without pomp and circumstance. Woods sees the sunset in his twilight, recording his worst score in a professional event — 16-over 304 — after making the cut Friday. But if he always thrived on look-at-me gratification, his successor never will alter the way he entered a special zone. He has won 10 times in barely more than two years, with no better pleasure for the PGA Tour vs. LIV Golf bystanders than receiving a jacket from tour rival Jon Rahm, who looked rankled on the air.

     We don’t know where Scottie came from. We’re thrilled he’s here.

     Now he gives us reason to wonder about a Grand Slam, this season and beyond. First, he returns to Texas and takes care of his wife and their first child. Though only Horton Smith in the mid-1930s has won two Masters in fewer starts, don’t dare ask which is a more monumental feat in his world. “The first child wins … over many things in my life,” he said. “I feel like we are a little underprepared. The nursery is not quite ready and we’ve had some issues at our house the last few weeks. I think that’s the exciting part. I think we are definitely underprepared to be parents.

     “The most exciting thing is not winning the Masters.”

     A car seat, maybe.

     “You’re about to make me cry here in Butler Cabin,” said Scheffler, after shouting “Woooooo!” and walking through rows of fans on the course. “It’s a very special time for both of us. I can’t put into words what it means to win this tournament again. I really can’t put into words what it’s going to be like to be a father for the first time. I’m looking forward to getting home and celebrating with Meredith. It’s been a long week without her, but I’m just looking forward to getting home.”

     Unlike Woods, who was handed a driver and irons by his father at birth, Scheffler was not raised a baby basher. “Golf wasn’t really a huge deal in my house. It was just something that I always loved to do,” he said. “I had a very supportive family in doing so. I have three sisters, and I’m sure they went to way more golf tournaments than they would have hoped to when I was growing up. But just had a great support system at home. And I feel like I’ve said it a bunch, golf is not just — it’s something that I do. It’s not my life, you know?”

     We know. He plays pickleball, too, and still can dunk a basketball. When it comes to his craft, don’t think he isn’t scattered when he reaches the top of a leaderboard. He has moments of fear, such as when he pondered a windswept Augusta. “Every hole gets to me here,” he said. But his parents, Scott and Diane, thought of him as a son who enjoyed golf, not as a golfer who will overtake “every other man in history to change the course of humanity,” said Earl Woods, who added of Tiger, “I don't know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One. He'll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power.”

     At the moment, we want Woods to avoid courtroom battles with ex-girlfriends and examine life near 50. Almost half his age, Scheffler said calmly, “My parents pushed more education and being kind to people on me. Sometimes you see a lot of parents who really want their kid to become really, really good at something, and they think that’s what is going to bring them joy. But becoming a really good golfer may bring you a little bit of momentary joy, but it doesn’t sustain it for very long. Winning a tournament makes me happy for about five minutes.”

     A second Masters will wait a day or so. There will be more promotional events as a star and louder receptions at tournaments. He is the prominent name, a PGA mainstay who has ignored Greg Norman’s lame attempts to join LIV. How curious to see Rahm, the 2023 Masters champ, hand Scheffler his jacket with tension in the cabin. All he did was complain about the wind, which didn’t bother the champion, and said, “You can’t let it beat you down too much. Otherwise, it would be a very hard life. A couple of times, I questioned myself why we were out there, especially when I got to 18 and saw the whole front of the green just full of sand.”

     When asked about Scheffler and other PGA people, Rahm mentioned hurt feelings after he signed a $350 million contract. “I expected it. My friends are still my friends. And then someone, with whom I was very cordial and had a positive relationship, hasn’t even looked at me,” he said. “If someone changes their opinion of me, it is more their problem than mine. I am not worried.”

     Rory McIlroy? He failed again to win the final leg of a career Grand Slam, zero for a decade. The PGA Championship is at Valhalla in Louisville, where he won his last major. "It feels like a lifetime ago,” he said. “I am looking forward to going back. Any time you go back to a venue where you have had success, you get some good vibes. I’ve still got a little work to do on my game.”

     Bryson DeChambeau crashed. Brooks Koepka was 9 over. Phil Mickelson barely was seen and didn’t say anything. Norman left. LIV sucked.

     And Woods? He’ll be back for three more majors. “This is a golf course I knew going into it, so I'm going to do my homework going forward at Pinehurst, Valhalla and Troon, but that's kind of the game plan,” he said. “It's always nice coming back here because I know the golf course. I can kind of simulate shots. Granted, it's never quite the same as getting out here and doing it. I heard there's some changes at the next couple sites. So I have to get up there early and check them out.”

     The game belongs to one man. Scottie Scheffler would prefer we not know it. “You’re out there by yourself, and when you’re at the peak of your game, you know, people need stuff a lot of the time, and you have to be selfish with your time,” he said. “And it’s not easy to say no, but you have to learn how. You are here to compete and do your best. You can’t really get caught up in all the stuff that’s going around you.”

     Isn’t he, in essence, exactly what golf needs?

     ###

     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.