Scottie Scheffler, the world’s number one golfer, has found a new use for his famous GMC Yukon XL, the car that has been with him for over a decade. He has put it up for auction and will donate the money raised to charitable causes. And for now, the highest bidder is none other than Jim Nantz, a famous American sports commentator.
The golfer from Ridgewood has driven the car that his father, Scott, bought after their previous vehicle broke down over a decade ago in Augusta, Georgia, during the 2012 Masters, when they needed to return to their home in Dallas. They purchased a Buick GMC on Washington Road, Augusta, near the Augusta National where Scottie has gone on to win not one but two Green Jackets. “It has the Masters GMC logo on the back,” said the golfer.
Scott used the car to take his son to youth tournaments on the Legends Junior Tour in Texas and to AJGA events. They nicknamed it ‘GMC Airlines‘ and travelled coast to coast in it. Scottie’s father gave it to him when he graduated from the University of Texas and he drove it to Monday qualifying tournaments during his single season on the Korn Ferry Tour before making the leap to the PGA Tour. When he last spoke about the car in 2022, he estimated it had about 190,000 miles. His whole family travelled in it to Augusta, including his dog Scout, in 2022, when Scottie won his first Masters.
“I always take it to three places: the golf course, the place where I work out, and a restaurant that’s five minutes from home,” said Scheffler, who despite topping the earnings list on the PGA Tour in recent years and being able to afford any car he wanted, continued to drive his Yukon. “Why should I change it? It’s a reliable car,” he insisted.
Recently, however, he found a good reason to do so. A sponsor gave him a new car and with the birth of his son Bennett, perhaps it was time to opt for a model with better and more modern safety systems. But what to do with a car that had lived through a thousand golf stories? He donated his famous car to Triumph Over Kid Cancer (TOKC), a non-profit organisation that raises funds for childhood cancer research. TOKC was co-founded by James Ragan, a childhood friend of Scottie’s whom he competed against on the Texas Legends Junior Tour and later when James played at Rice, and his older sister, Mecklin.
James was 13 years old when he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare and often deadly form of bone cancer, in 2006, and he battled the disease for 7 and a half years. Scottie and James once won the partner tournament at the Corpus Christi Country Club, and Mecklin noted that partners still joke about how Scottie is the only Masters champion to have won the partner tournament at Corpus Christi.
Nantz recalled meeting James at the MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital during the ‘Lunch with a Legend‘, an event he organised with Jack Nicklaus. “He was a hero to many of us,” he said. “This kid was special. He could have been the President of the United States. He was super smart, incredibly capable and calm, kind, thoughtful and had a great life to live that was taken from him and he really never felt sorry for himself.”
The Schefflers have long supported TOKC and have acted as honorary starters for the annual James A. Ragan Triumph Scramble golf tournament of TOKC in honour of their friend. He also created his own programme called ‘Scottie’s Heroes‘ to provide special golf clubs to young cancer patients. On October 25, Scheffler and Nantz shared the stage for a fireside chat at the Post Oak Hotel in Houston as part of the Gala Teeing Off on Childhood Cancer to raise funds for TOKC and support research initiatives and patients at the MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital at the University of Texas and the Texas Children’s Hospital.
When the auction for Scheffler’s Yukon began at the fundraising dinner, Nantz commented: “It’s quite a collector’s item.” When the bidding went from $10,000 to over $15,000, Scheffler was puzzled to learn why someone would pay such a high price for his old wheels. It was then that Nantz raised his hand to enter the bidding. The auctioneer assumed he was raising the bid to $18,000, the next minimum requirement. Nantz took the bid to another stratosphere.
“Fifty thousand,” he said. “I’ll be more than happy to keep Scottie’s car in my garage,” he concluded. And so Nantz became the highest bidder for Scheffler’s vehicle at the end of the live auction. But that figure simply represents the opening bid when the Heritage auction house resumes the online auction…
