Darlington, though, wasn’t the only eyewitness. His four commuting mates had also been at the scene, watching on from the interior of the SUV. On Saturday, Wischusen, who has not yet publicly shared his version of what led to the arrest, spoke to GOLF.com about what he saw and heard. His account corroborates Darlington’s, but Wischusen also provided some new details.
As Scheffler pulled up to the left of ESPN’s vehicle, Wischusen said he and his ESPN colleagues could not see who was at the wheel. Moments later, a police officer “kind of jumped in front” of what the ESPN crew would later learn was a Lexus driven by Scheffler. “He was pretty, you know, enthusiastic, let’s say,” Wischusen said of Officer Gillis. Wischusen said Gillis beamed his flashlight up and down Scheffler’s car and yelled at him with words to the effect of: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, who are you? Where are you going? Get back in line. You’re not allowed to come through here.”
Wischusen said he couldn’t hear any of what Scheffler said to Gillis but that Gillis was “scolding” Scheffler for passing the ESPN vehicle on the left. Wischusen said because Gillis and his fellow officers were in yellow reflective jackets, it was unclear to Wischusen and his colleagues whether they were police or tournament security.
After Scheffler and the officer’s interaction, Wischusen said Scheffler began to pull away. As Darlington described it, at this point Gillis “attached himself” to the car. As Gillis, whose body camera was not activated during the incident, described it, he was “dragged” to the ground by Scheffler’s car, which led to “pain, swelling and abrasions to left wrist and knee” and damaging his pants “beyond repair.”
Here’s how Wischusen recalls that moment: “When [Scheffler] drove past him, the cop got very angry pursuing the car. … My impression was he was kind of running alongside chasing the car, and maybe he tripped and fell. I mean, there was kind of an outcropping or median, you know, by the front gate. And keep in mind, it was raining. It was 6 o’clock in the morning. It was dark.”
Asked about Darlington’s characterization of the officer “attaching” himself to the car, Wischusen said, “I could see him stumble, but I did not have a very clear view of exactly how you want to categorize his contact with the car.”
Wischusen said Scheffler was moving at a relatively slow speed — “the speed that you would drive a car if you were pulling up to the front gate of a place,” he said — and before pulling over had driven approximately the 10 or so yards that Darlington had estimated.
When Scheffler stopped the car, Wischusen said Gillis was visibly upset. “He runs up to the driver’s side, and with the butt end of his flashlight starts screaming, you know, ‘Get out of the car, get out of the car’ — banging on the window — ‘shut the engine off, get out of the car. I’m a police officer.’”
The driver “peacefully” exited the car, Wischusen said, at which point the officer “put him up against the car and put him in handcuffs.” Said Wischusen: “That was when we realized — you know, all the way up until then we’re like, oh my God, whoever is in this car, there’s about to be an arrest of some sort. And then it was, ‘Oh my God, it’s Scottie Scheffler.”
Recognizing the gravity and magnitude of the moment, Darlington immediately switched into reporter mode and exited the SUV to document what was happening. Wischusen, Ogilvy, Fleming and their driver hung back in the vehicle. “I’m not an investigative reporter, right?” Wischusen said. “I thought the exact right thing to do is just stay in the car, let Jeff go out and ask questions and let the situation play out, and certainly not insert ourselves or all of a sudden try to, you know, to have any role to play.”
The mood in the back of the SUV as the passengers watched this unfathomable scene playing out in front of them? Shock, Wischusen said. “Exactly what you would imagine,” he said. “The number one player in the world just got arrested trying to go into the gate at the golf course. I mean, you know, like, what just happened? Did we really just see what we just saw?”
Darlington did not return to the SUV. He wanted to document as much of the scene as he could, Wischusen said, so the others went through the gate and to the TV compound without him. By the time they arrived, the ESPN production team was aware of what had happened and already thinking about how to cover arguably the wildest story in major-championship history. With tee times pushed back on account of the traffic delays, ESPN’s producers had a bit of time to play with before players descended on the course to complete their first rounds — but not much time. The most pressing matter, though, was getting clarity on Scheffler’s status.
“In a very fast transition, we went from an operation of people there to call a sporting event to a news gathering, a news reporting operation,” Wischusen said. “And then at one point we became both. A half-hour after we were on site, we still didn’t know when Scottie Scheffler was going to be processed, bailed out. Was he going to withdraw? Was he going to be sitting in jail? Would he miss his tee time? Oh, wait a minute — we found out he’s coming back. So, we were basically wearing both hats at the same time. How can we be the news reporting organization that covers the Scottie Scheffler story while at the same time documenting the golf tournament that’s now underway, where there are a dozen groups out on the golf course playing golf? It’s still kind of our job to tell people and show what’s going on in the PGA. And for about 14 consecutive hours we wore both hats.”
