Newton Square, Pa. – Scottie Scheffler doesn’t like to talk about himself or his accomplishments. He talks about his faith and his family and how he always dreamed of competing on the PGA Tour and winning majors. But even after his great triumphs, Scheffler rarely reveals his secrets.
You can analyze his Chipotle order OR his existential dissertation before last year’s Open Championship about the “shortcut” nature of success, but you’ll be doing most of the work. As Jordan Spieth would say, Scottie Scheffler is great because his focus is only on golf, his family and his faith. He is not interested in everything else that comes with being the best player in the world. It is more likely that there is no big secret that Scheffler is holding back.
Scheffler’s peers understand his greatness. It would be impossible not to. But getting to know someone is great, and understanding how they got to be who they are – what makes them tick – is different.
Tuesday night at Aronimink Golf Clubfew of Scottie Scheffler’s contemporaries gained a deeper understanding of how he became golf’s dominant force. It was there that Scheffler, who won the Wanamaker Trophy last year at Quail Hollowhosted the PGA Champions Dinner. of Aronimink Executive chef John Ferguson created a menu with chicken parm and three flavors of gelato. There was also steak, which 2016 champion Jimmy Walker called “outstanding.” Xander Schauffele, who won the 2024 PGA at Valhalla, tried everything. “It was all really, really good. The steak, the steak, the house-made ajella was … I have to get more,” Schauffele told GOLF. Stewart Cink, who won the Senior PGA this year, called the menu “perfect. They couldn’t go wrong,” Cink told GOLF.
But the food was secondary to the evening’s main event: two speeches — one by 1996 PGA Championship winner Mark Brooks and one by Scheffler.
Scheffler talked about his deep ties to the PGA of America and his coach, Randy Smith, as Brooks chronicled Scheffler’s journey from a kid asking questions at the Royal Oaks to a dominant junior career. As Scheffler and Brooks spoke, everyone listened and got a better view of the guy at the top of the golf world.
“It’s nice to be in a room full of very successful people in our profession,” 2015 champion Jason Day told GOLF. “It’s so great to hear Scottie talk about his career and his accomplishments, and how humbled he is about how much he’s accomplished in this game in such a short period of time. Then Mark Brooks came out and talked about Scottie’s accomplishments. Then you can really understand how much he’s accomplished and how Scottie never will.”
As Brooks went over Scheffler’s rise, including a dominant junior career that saw him win 90 of 136 tournaments on the Texas PGA Junior circuit, Day and others understood how Scottie Scheffler became Scottie Scheffler.
“The level of competition and the nature of what he had around him — he talked about getting paid to go and play in these PGA mini-tours and how meaningful that was to him,” Day said. “From his early days, he was taught to be very competitive, and that’s why he is the way he is today. You get a window into how he became the guy he is.”
Schauffele feels like he knows Scheffler very well. The two have been on Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup teams together, are good friends and have been two of the best players in the world for most of this decade.
But Schauffele also learned a few things about the man he will try to beat this week in Aronimink.
“It’s definitely more process-oriented with Scottie,” Schauffele told GOLF. “It’s really about the love of the game. I think that’s true for someone like Scott, and most of the guys here, but not all of them. You really see that when he talks about his association with the PGA and playing those junior tournaments and how they helped him. The competitive side is something I always get from Scott, but you see where he’s coming from and how he got there.”
A year ago at Quail Hollow, Scheffler sat next to the Wanamaker Trophy and questioned its greatness, how it has brought the golf world to its knees. As Schauffele noted, if you want to understand Scottie Scheffler, you have to start with the process, not the man.
“I like the pursuit of trying to figure something out,” Scheffler said that day in Charlotte. “That’s what I love about the game. I feel like you’re always fighting yourself and you’re always trying to figure things out. And you’re never going to perfect it. I can be a crazy person sometimes when it comes to making up my mind about something. In golf, there’s always something you can figure out, there’s always something you can do better.”
He has done almost everything better than anyone in the last four years. On Tuesday night outside Philadelphia, Schauffele, Day and others whose names are inscribed next to Scheffler’s got a look at another process: the one that shaped Scottie Scheffler into the man everyone is following.
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