DGS49
Diamond Member
Scheffler's reality: Winning 'is not a fulfilling life'
World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler said he doesn't find true fulfillment in winning: "You work your whole life to celebrate ... a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes."
Scotty Scheffler is on everyone's list as the best golfer in the world right now, and recognizing that nobody wins every tournament, his recent performance reinforces that belief.
Golf has a history of anointing the Next Big Thing every few years, then watching as he slowly fades into "pretty damn good" territory, with Jordan Spieth being a major example of recent vintage. With Spieth, however, he lost his MoJo in public with the whole world watching, as he blew a big lead at Augusta National while he was on top of the world, and he never actually recovered.
All professional golfers practice neurotically "until their fingers bleed," so to speak, but most of them actually deteriorate somewhat with age, which is what makes Niklaus, Woods, McIlroy and a few others stand out.
What gives them the drive to stay on top? After a few years they have more money than God, and they have a revenue stream of tens of millions of dollars a year in endorsements, even if they never win another tournament. Why not just back off and be satisfied with "pretty damn good"?
I often wondered about Pete Sampras when he was on top of the tennis world, year after year, knowing that he had a big target on his back and fighting to remain on top. That takes character. Or something. With Serena, she had the advantage of being bigger and stronger than her opponents, but she still took extraordinary effort to remain on top for a long, long time.
We cynics conclude that you have to be a little bit crazy to devote that much mental, physical, and emotional effort to a sport. Better to just suck at everything you do, and learn to be content with that. The key to success for me is, low aspirations. Hence, I almost always succeed.
