After an emphatic PGA, Scottie Scheffler told the world his secret

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — You can go ahead and ask him, but Scottie Scheffler won’t tell.

The World No. 1 learned the secret to his greatness a long time ago, and then he threw away the key.

But if you were looking closely on Saturday afternoon at the PGA Championship, you saw it. (Yes, for Mr. Scheffler, third rounds are equally revealing as final rounds, even when those final rounds result in Scheffler winning his third career major championship, as was the case on Sunday.)

It was there, starting on the 16th hole on Saturday, that Scheffler decided to end the golf tournament early. With chasers nearing and pressure mounting, Scheffler plunged a nail into the side wall of the tournament and laughed as the air sucked out. He poured in two birdies and a par on the three hardest holes at Quail Hollow to move from one clear of the field to three, and then, when the final birdie dropped on the 18th hole, he tried something new. As the ball fell into the bottom of the hole, Scheffler stared at it and screamed.

“F*** yeah, baby!!!”

The crowd was too busy wailing (and the chasers were too busy commiserating) to notice what had just happened, but the keen observers knew they’d seen something interesting. Scottie Scheffler had just told us his secret.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, Scottie Scheffler poured in another putt on the 18th at Quail Hollow — this one for bogey — and let out another righteous scream.

“YES!!!! F*** yes!!! That’s what I’m talking about!”

He had just won his third major championship, and first outside of Augusta National. Perhaps most impressive of all, the field seemed surprised it’d taken him this long.

“I’ve got to be more precise and fix what I can fix to make myself more consistent and get up there,” said Bryson DeChambeau (T2). “The likes of what Scottie is doing right now.”

“Again, I was trying to do my own thing,” said Keegan Bradley (T8). “I got off to such a bad start that I really had no chance to catch Scottie.”

Scheffler’s ability is imposing in the literal sense. He will lean and lean and lean until something wilts — be it the golf course or the field or, in this week’s case, the face of his driver. He is a three-time major champion at just 28 years old, bearing the kind of golf game that can travel anywhere in the world and contend. He is the third-fastest player ever to get from one to 15 wins, behind Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus by a matter of days. He is a player without any obvious weakness, someone for whom margins widen and targets shrink.

“I mean, you don’t hit it there intentionally unless you’re Scottie or something,” Max Homa said after hitting a drive to a foot on the 14th hole on Friday for a kick-in eagle.

As if he’d heard Homa’s challenge, Scheffler stepped to the same tee box on Saturday and intentionally hit his tee shot to three feet, pouring in the kick-in for eagle to start his oxygen-removing march down the back nine.

That’s another rare trait about Scottie Scheffler: Once he is in the lead, he does not flinch. He does not give away golf tournaments, and until Sunday, it was hard to recall a time he’d ceded ground of any kind while in the lead late. Eventually, even his wobble on Sunday — three bogeys in his first nine holes to briefly dwindle his advantage to one — will be forgotten. When the scores were counted, he won by five.

These gifts are merely symptoms of the disease Scheffler is afflicted — a malady that has lived inside every great golfer since the beginning of time. Scheffler has it, the thing that separates the good ones from the great ones. It’s been called a passion, a look, or a mindset, but we’ll call it a fire — a white-hot flame that burns hot and bright beneath the surface.

It looks different in Scottie Scheffler than in other great players. He does not ice people out, stare into souls, or attempt to shatter skulls. He chuckles, smiles and extemporaneously quotes The Office. His press conferences occasionally read like the aspirations of a career middle-manager.

Q: Do you have any big career goals?
A: “Not really. I don’t focus on that kind of stuff.”
Q: Do you want to win, or do you want to crush the opponent?
A: “That’s a tough question to answer...”
Q: If you look statistically, you’re actually trending even better [than Tiger Woods], how have you been able to do that?
A: “I don’t know. We put in a lot of work.“

But the truth is impossible to avoid. It arrives in moments big and small on days like Sunday, as Scheffler once again choked out the field like a great snake. He may be a man of great faith and unusual devotion to family — but a man of great faith and unusual devotion can also be a killer.

“He hates to lose. We all do,” said Luke Donald, the Ryder Cup captain responsible for stopping Scheffler in September. “If you don’t have that fire, you’ll never be a great player.”

“He wants to win everything,” said Scheffler’s coach, Randy Smith. “Regardless if it’s golf, pickleball, whatever.” 

We saw Scheffler’s fire boil to the surface in a new way on Sunday, when he clinched the Wanamaker and smashed his Nike hat against the turf with a fury. And we were reminded of his difference from the greats before him when he walked off the 18th green just seconds later to find an adoring family awaiting his embrace. They cried almost casually, like they were used to the routine, before Scheffler walked into scoring to collect the trophy.

As he walked up the galley beyond the 18th hole and into his new life as a three-time major champion, Scheffler propped his year-old son, Bennett, and smiled. Scheffler was in a moment of almost rapturous balance. On one shoulder sat the providence of his competitive fire, the greatest achievement of his recent life; and on the other sat the person who embodied all that Scheffler cared about when the golf ended.

As he walked, the smart audiences knew they were witnessing the secret to Scottie Scheffler’s greatness.

Not the fire or the family, but the ability to hold both on his shoulders at once.

THE TRUTH CAME OUT in the press room almost an hour later.

With the Wanamaker to his right, Scheffler was doing his usual tap dance in front of the cameras. Now that he thought about it, his win had been pretty awesome — and no, his growing proximity to the greatest golfers ever was something he’d never thought about.

But then a reporter pressed a question that Scheffler could not dodge.

Would you say you have competitive fire?

Scheffler paused and flashed a million-watt smile.

“Uhhh … yeah.”

It was a line of utter truth, and everyone knew it, including the Scheffler family, who huddled in the corner of the room to watch Scottie collect his victory.

They laughed as he delivered the line, and Scottie did too.

The flame had flickered back to life, like they all knew it would.