Browsing: Schefflerâs

October is Scottie Scheffler’s downtime, as the world No. 1 takes an annual break from competitive golf. It also happens to be, in some ways, the time of year we learn things about Scheffler we never knew.

Take October 2022, when Scheffler and Jordan Spieth starred in a pickleball pro-am event in Dallas, and Scheffler showed just how damn good he is at that sport. Or take this week, when on Tuesday it became clear that Scheffler has at least a buyer’s passion in professional fishing.

You read that correctly — Scottie Scheffler is the sole owner of Texas Lone Stars Angling Club, one of 14 five-man teams in the Sport Fishing Championship, an upstart saltwater fishing league. The league is expanding to 16 teams next season.

Scheffler got in early, becoming the sole Lone Stars owner 13 months ago, in a move that didn’t get widely covered. He was joined by a handful of other well-known athletes, like Randy Moss and Alvin Kamara, who also bought ownership stakes in angling clubs. Then there’s LIV golfer Talor Gooch, who used part of his immense LIV earnings to buy the Mississippi Blues Angling Club.

Most of that group is jealous this week as Scheffler’s Lone Stars won the season-ending championship, the Zane Grey Championship Playoffs, which wrapped up Monday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Scheffler posted about it on his Instagram, saying, “Congratulations to @lonestarsac – thanks for having me out.” On the SFC website, Scheffler is listed as a member of the team’s front office alongside the general manager, Justin Lamonica.

Ownership stakes in pro sports have exploded in recent years as more niche sports have increased popularity, earned TV rights deals and created greater platforms for engagement. Scheffler himself bought in to the Texas Ranchers, one of the leading clubs in Major League Pickleball. Gooch spent even more money on a Pro Bull Riding franchise in Oklahoma. Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth were part of the consortium that bought into Leeds United Football Club two summers ago.

As for the Sport Fishing Championship, its organizers seem keen to mention Scheffler as much as possible. The Lone Stars were one of four teams competing in the two-day finals competition, and when they were introduced for the first time, lead analyst Robbie Floyd announced, “Their team owner, Scottie Scheffler, he’s watching.”

Whether or not Scheffler actually was watching, the competition employs a handful of golfy elements, with a shotgun start announcing when lines could be cast, as well as a rules official regularly joining the broadcast to explain that the size of the dorsal fin helps determine if a fish is a striped, black or blue marlin. (If you think the Rules of Golf are complex, tune in to the SFC, where teammates can help adjust a catcher’s seat, but cannot touch the rod, reel or line.)

In short: certain fish are worth more points than others, which we learned with about 90 minutes left as Scheffler’s squad caught a rare blue marlin. We’ll call that the equivalent of making eagle on the 72nd hole to post the clubhouse lead. Moments after time expired, Floyd brought it back to Scheffler:

“Scottie Scheffler, congratulations — you’ve got another title in 2025,” which prompted color commentator Peter Miller to jump in with an esoteric question: “I wonder if Scottie Scheffler has ever kissed the crystal? I know he’s kissed a lot of cups, but maybe not the crystal?’’

Miller was referring to the dolphin-shaped crystal trophy awarded to the Lone Stars. Seconds later, an AI-generated image of Scheffler holding the angling trophy flashed on the screen. If that wasn’t enough of the broadcast getting out a bit over its skis, Floyd added: “Man, I’m a golfer. I live in the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex. I’d love for him to take me out someday.”

That’s a Hail Mary cast, mate. It’s unclear if Scheffler is a “fish-head,” as the angling-obsessed are called, or if this is a more passive ownership stake. But the team hopes to get Scheffler out for a fishing day this fall, once scheduling allows for it.

Scottie Scheffler went to the 1st tee on Saturday afternoon backed by the theatrics of a prize-fighter making his ringwalk. He crossed the bridge from the practice green to the grandstand alongside Bryson DeChambeau, the thumping bassline and clavinet riff of Sirius by the Alan Parsons Project rattling the aluminum beneath their feet: the same track that once summoned Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls thundered from the speakers, the closest US analogue to the All Blacks’ haka for spine-tingling pregame stagecraft. The scene was set for the world’s best golfer to spark a comeback, to pull the United States back from the edge of humiliation at Bethpage Black.

Instead, it became the overture to a historic dud.

Europe had surged to an 8½–3½ lead after the morning foursomes, becoming the first side in the 98-year history of the competition to sweep the opening three sessions on foreign soil. The mathematics offered a sliver of hope. The psychology offered none. And at the heart of it was Scheffler, presumptive spearhead of an American fightback, becoming an emblem of its futility.

Scottie Scheffler tried to get things going but failed. Photograph: Jared C Tilton/Getty Images

No world No 1 had ever started a Ryder Cup by losing three straight matches. No player in the modern era had begun 0–3 and been sent back out for a fourth try. Scheffler managed both. On Friday, he and Russell Henley had been flattened by Viktor Hovland and Ludvig Åberg, before falling 3&2 with JJ Spaun to Jon Rahm and Sepp Straka. On Saturday morning, paired with Russell Henley, he lost the anchor match to Hovland and Robert MacIntyre after he was left standing on the 18th tee with a chance to salvage a half, only to shove a wedge from 104 yards into ignominy. It was a shot that told the story of his week: the swing unbroken, the outcome betraying him.

It wasn’t that Scheffler completely unravelled. Europe simply played sublime golf, all but devoid of mistakes. But by nightfall Scheffler had become the first American ever to lose in each of the first four sessions of a Ryder Cup, joining only two Europeans – Peter Alliss in 1967 and Peter Townsend in 1971 – in that unwanted company.

There was no respite for Scheffler on Saturday afternoon as the agony piled on. Rising tensions and temperatures on either side of the ropes prompted spectator etiquette warnings that flashed across the grounds, drawing lusty boos from eight-deep galleries packed with mostly American fans. When Justin Rose holed from seven feet to close out a 3&2 win on 16, the broader US defeat was in effect sealed and thousands in red, white and blue made a mass exodus to the gates with two matches still on the course. Europe had not reached the 14-point threshold to retain the trophy formally, but the 11½-4½ scoreline when the dust settled made it clear we wouldn’t need Sunday to determine the winner.

It was a bleak punctuation to what had been two years of near-unbroken supremacy for Scheffler. For much of that span it seemed only the Louisville police could slow his roll. The 29-year-old has won six times this year, with two majors, on top of seven titles and a second Masters crown in 2024. It’s the kind of all-time heater that has drawn straight-faced comparisons to Tiger Woods. But those comparisons cut both ways. Woods never imposed himself on the Ryder Cup, never looked quite the same in the fourball and foursomes crucible. Scheffler is tracing the same line, his authority dissolving the moment he is asked to blend his game with another’s.

And it’s here where the flaws in his own game, papered over by the relentless volume of birdies in stroke-play golf, have been ruthlessly exposed. His ball-striking remains magnificent, the thing that separates him from everyone else. But the putting can be uneven, sometimes merely streaky, sometimes worse. At Bethpage it has looked fragile, a weakness that seeps into the rest of his rhythm, tightening the shoulders, clouding the judgment.

He has tried to present an even keel. “We battled hard out there,†he said after Saturday morning’s loss. But his face told a different story: the blank stare later that afternoon following his approach on the 9th, which struck the flagstick and bounded into the rough; the sag of his shoulders as another par putt slid past the edge. For a player who has made a career of managing his emotions, of walking slowly, speaking softly, never flinching, the Ryder Cup has laid bare a rare unraveling.

That detachment was something he spoke about openly three months ago, on the eve of the Open at Troon (which he went on to win). He expounded thoughtfully for five minutes on how he does not invest his ego in his golf. But after watching the camaraderie, respect and passion of the Europeans’ display this week, it gives rise to questions over whether his mindset is an asset or a liability in a team event.

‘Keegan Bradley [left] had little choice but to keep calling Scottie Scheffler’s number.’ Photograph: David Davies/PA

Nothing in his scintillating form augured the results of the past 48 hours. He has been the best golfer in the world by a distance, at times so far clear in the rankings it invited statistical comparisons with peak Woods. Yet golf is cruelly specific about where it chooses to test you. A Ryder Cup is not a 72-hole marathon, it is five violent sprints. It does not reward the steady accumulation of small advantages and dumbfounding consistency that has become his signature, but demands the nerve to hole a five-footer at the exact moment everything depends on it. That is where Scheffler has been found wanting.

The USA captain, Keegan Bradley, had little choice but to keep calling his number. On paper he was always America’s best chance, the player most likely to conjure something from nothing in a competition where it got late early. And so Scheffler kept marching back to the tee, head down, music blaring, sent out to turn back a tide that had already swept the United States away. In Sunday’s singles, he will go out with Rory McIlroy in a showdown of the world’s top two, even if only one has looked the part this week.

Quick GuideRyder Cup singles pairings and timingsShow

12.02 EDT/17.02 BST Cameron Young v Justin Rose
12.13 EDT/17.13 BST Justin Thomas v Tommy Fleetwood
12.24 EDT/17.24 BST Bryson DeChambeau v Matt Fitzpatrick
12.35 EDT/17.35 BST Scottie Scheffler v Rory McIlroy
12.46 EDT/17.46 BST Patrick Cantlay v Ludvig Ã…berg
12.57 EDT/17.57 BST Xander Schauffele v Jon Rahm
13.08 EDT/18.08 BST JJ Spaun v Sepp Straka
13.19 EDT/18.19 BST Russell Henley v Shane Lowry
13.30 EDT/18.30 BST Ben Griffin v Rasmus Højgaard
13.41 EDT/18.41 BST Collin Morikawa v Tyrrell Hatton
13.52 EDT/18.52 BST Sam Burns v Robert MacIntyre
14.03 EDT/19.03 BST Harris English v Viktor Hovland

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There will be time to pick apart what this defeat means for the United States as a whole. The inquest will not be quick. For now it is Scheffler who embodies the horror of it, the champion who came in gilded and will leave diminished, the world No 1 who discovered that in the Ryder Cup, numbers don’t count, rankings don’t matter, reputation is immaterial. Only the shots you hit in the moment. And for Scheffler, too many of them have missed the mark.