Rory McIlroy wants Scottie Scheffler to get a private chef. Scottie Scheffler says I’m good man. I’ve got a chef.
“Her name’s Meredith,” Scheffler joked. “She’s pretty cute.”
That’s Meredith Scheffler, for those following along. But why all this talk about private chefs among the PGA Tour’s elite? Because Scheffler was doing some cooking over the holidays and accidentally sent himself to the hospital.
Curious golf fans have been left wondering the last month — as Scheffler has been forced to step away for recovery from the incident — what actually happened? As the reigning champion of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Scheffler gave a virtual press conference last week, explaining that it happened while he was trying to make ravioli.
Ravioli?!?
Yes, ravioli.
“We wanted to make them from scratch, so you’ve got to roll the dough and you’ve got to cut the dough,” Scheffler began. “But we were at a rental house so we didn’t have the right tools and the only thing was a wine glass that we found.”
You may know where this was going. The No. 1 player in the world is not much of a wine drinker, he says, but he was pressing the glass into the rolled-out dough to section out the pieces for ravioli, kinda like you might use a cookie cutter to carve out Christmas-tree cookie shapes.
“[The wine glass] broke and the stem kind of got me in the hand,” Scheffler said. “It’s one of those deals where — I can’t live in a bubble, got to live my life, and accidents happen. You know, it could have been a lot worse.
“I actually talked to somebody who did the exact same thing and the stem went straight through their hand. It’s one of those deals where immediately after it happened I was mad at myself because I was like gosh, that’s so stupid but you just don’t think about it when you’re in the moment.”
According to Scheffler, he’s been inundated with horror stories from friends and acquaintances since who have had similar injuries after doing battle with a wine glass. But none of them are the greatest golfer in the world, who badly needs his hands to ply his trade. Some players use specific hand creme and specific bandages to heal their hands from scrapes. Which partly explains why Scheffler ended up in the hospital over the holidays, because he could tell that something wasn’t totally right with his right hand.
“I have a friend at home who’s a surgeon and he helped us stop the bleeding,” Scheffler said. “Then it really wasn’t like terrible, but I knew I kind of messed something up just because the way my hand wasn’t really moving much — and if I did, it hurt pretty bad. So I kind of knew something was up. We were planning on leaving the next day anyway. Since it didn’t continue bleeding — he stopped the bleeding like pretty quickly — it was maybe 15 minutes or so. Got hold of a guy who helped me with my thumb about 10 years ago, a hand guy at home who works with my friend who’s a hip surgeon. He kind of helped facilitate what to do. He was actually out of town, so I had another guy at home do the surgery that he referred to. And he did a great job, I was able to heal pretty quickly.”
As for any lingering issues with the injury, Scheffler is using a “nude” bandage to protect himself each day. It’s barely permissible. Asked if he’s at all worried about it moving forward, Scheffler was quick with his response.
“No, not at all.”
