WHY SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER BELONGED IN HANDCUFFS AND DESERVES NO BREAKS

It’s shocking to see the world’s best golfer driving around police-ordered traffic after a pedestrian fatality — and if he cared about “perspective,” he would have withdrawn from the PGA Championship

     When Scottie Scheffler kept driving with a police officer attached to the side of his car, as flaming emergency lights of red and white and blue signaled in middle America, who possibly can defend him? Ambulances. Buses. Long lines of vehicle traffic in the Kentucky dusk. And yet, he continued another 10 to 15 yards in the chaos over a median strip, toward the entrance of Valhalla Golf Club.

     “Right now he’s going to jail, OK?” an officer told ESPN’s Jeff Darlington at the scene. “He’s going to jail, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. Period.”

     The word Scheffler used later, which generally describes his philosophy toward golf and life, was “perspective.” He lost his Friday morning. He was up early to work out at the club, before trying to win his second major of the season, and it didn’t occur to him that he should remain halted in traffic after a shuttle bus struck and killed a man about an hour earlier. It didn’t matter that he was driving an official PGA Championship vehicle. It didn’t matter that his tee time was still hours away. It didn’t matter that he’d won four of his last five starts. It didn’t matter that he is Scottie Scheffler, who is dominating his sport the way no one has since Tiger Woods.

     He had to put his foot on the brake and stop, like the rest of us on the road. He had to wait. He did not, forcing the vehicle-climbing officer in a “high-visibility yellow reflective rain jacket” to suffer “pain, swelling and abrasions” in his left wrist and knee, said the Louisville Metro Police Department.

     So Scheffler was arrested. He was booked for a felony in a second-degree assault of a police officer, along with misdemeanors of third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding the traffic signals of an officer. He was allowed to play in the second round, thanks to Rule 5.3A (exception 3) in the PGA handbook, and he somehow remains in contention while wearing a white shirt and cap in the rain. But this isn’t about someone overcoming the law and attempting to keep winning tournaments.

     This is about someone who should have known better and did not. We’ve praised Scheffler for his family values, including a threat to return home if his wife went into labor at the Masters before she delivered a boy last week. We’re stunned by how he leads the majors in scoring, ball-striking and hitting greens in regulation since the start of 2022. “If he putts decent, he’s going to win. If he putts great, he blows away fields,” said Woods, before the arrest. “He's just that good of a ball-striker. You just stand back and you just watch ball flight, there's something different about his. It's so consistent.” Already, with three legs to go, Scheffler is 40-1 to win the Grand Slam.

     But stories have been published recently about his intense competitive nature. He looks so cool against Collin Morikawa, Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele, but he’s a pickleball loon when playing older members at his Dallas country club. He trash-talks furiously when taking their basketball money. He must win, at all times. “I wish I didn’t want to win as badly as I did or as badly as I do,” Scheffler told his partners.

     Was this the flaw that led him away in handcuffs to detainment for 20 minutes, before he was taken to a police department for his mug shot in an orange shirt? Did it occur to him to blow off the event and return home to Meredith and his new son? Did he sense he lapsed in not realizing a pedestrian was killed? Did he not realize a police report, quoting Bryan Gillis, said the detective suffered injuries as Scheffler’s vehicle dragged the officer “to the ground” while it “accelerated forward” in the confusion? Did he actually ask Darlington for immediate help?

     Nah. He was right back at Valhalla, teeing off at 10:08 a.m. before shooting 66 and entering Saturday at 9 under par. His arraignment is Tuesday morning. A Class C felony, in Kentucky, can be punishable for five and 10 years in prison.

     “This morning, I was proceeding as directed by police officers,” Scheffler said in a statement, not alluding to the officer attached to his PGA vehicle. “It was a very chaotic situation, understandably so considering the tragic accident that had occurred earlier, and there was a big misunderstanding of what I thought I was being asked to do.

     “I never intended to disregard any of the instructions. I’m hopeful to put this to the side and focus on golf today. Of course, all of us involved in the tournament express our deepest sympathies to the family of the man who passed away in the earlier accident this morning. It truly puts everything in perspective.”

     After the round, Scheffler said it was “a big misunderstanding,” adding, “My situation will get handled. It was a chaotic situation.” He had nothing to say about Gillis, who was treated in a hospital as his uniform pants were “damaged beyond repair.”

     Suddenly, a grand performer had given golf another bad story. After years of Tiger’s scandals, crashes and injuries, now we have Scheffler’s mess. Wasn’t Woods driving carelessly and much too fast when he nearly died? Not if Scheffler doesn’t realize how he erred. “The main thing is, he was proceeding exactly as he was directed in a marked vehicle with credentials. He didn’t do anything intentionally wrong,” his attorney, Steve Romines, told the Associated Press. Later, Romines told ESPN: “He was going to Valhalla to work out. He was getting ready for his tee time. They were directing traffic. He held his credential out and was going in like they'd been instructed to. Apparently, there had been a traffic accident, maybe even a fatality, down the road, and that had changed the traffic patterns, and he was unaware of that.”

     Unaware? Enough to pull around the massive crash scene onto a median? Unaware, really? “They are allowed to go through, that's why they have the credential and the wave-through,” Romines said. “He was unaware there had been a wreck, and he proceeded like they'd been instructed to. He did exactly as he was instructed to enter the premises.”

     Again, until he saw the officer on the side of his car, screaming at him to stop. At some point, Scheffler told Darlington he wasn’t aware the man was a police officer. If true, wouldn’t he stop the damned car? “We’ll deal with it as it progresses,” the attorney said. There is no conspiracy here to nail a disruptive golfer, though Scheffler’s defenders will bring up a police phone remark as he was arrested: “You’re getting one, right?”

     What they did was catch a drifter, a golfer immersed in winning his third major, not alert enough to obey the petrifying lights. The days will carry on for Scottie Scheffler. Perhaps this will be his only defect in a magnificent career.

     But let this be his lesson from Louisville: When a policeman becomes a frightening sideways passenger, realize something is more important than your drive at No. 1.

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     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.