Scottie Scheffler has made his schedule for the coming months crystal clear during the press conference he gave as the winner of the Travelers Championship. The main novelty is that, it seems, he is not going to play the Scottish Open, a tournament he did play in 2022 and 2023. Thus, as he said, he has six more dates ahead: he will play the Open, the Olympic Games, the three tournaments of the Fedex Cup play offs and then the Presidents Cup at the end of September. From that point on, he will take a prolonged break. The world’s Number One did not miss a certain jest when referring precisely to the Presidents Cup: “I think I should be on the team…”, he said smiling. As if he shouldn’t be, with six victories under his belt in the last four months.
Scheffler prefers not to dwell too much on the fact of continuing to break records. Simply, and he repeats it over and over again, almost at every public appearance, all this that is happening to him in 2024 seems fun to him. “I go week by week and there is not really much time to sit down and reflect. I was able to win the Memorial, but I couldn’t celebrate it for long because we had the U.S. Open the following week. I try not to look too far back or look too far into the future. I’ve been lucky enough to get some wins this year and it’s been fun”. He could describe such a season as epic or exciting… But for him it’s simply fun.
Nor, of course, does he feel that he needs a victory in the Open, the last Major of the year, to round off this fantastic year. “I don’t define myself by my victories or my defeats, I just do what I can to compete and have the right attitude. Going to the Open Championship I don’t need to feel any kind of validation or anything like that. It’s been a tremendous year and I’m grateful to have some victories. Now I’m just looking forward to going out and competing in the Open, the Olympic Games, and then in the playoffs too”.
About the outcome of the Travelers, Scheffler had some nice words for his main rival, Tom Kim. “It’s fun to compete against your friends, but at the same time it’s tough. There’s a part of you that wants a putt not to go in, but there’s another part that sees the friend and wishes him the best… And when you see him making a bogey on the playoff hole, it hurts and it’s not the best feeling. But he should remember the birdie putt he made on hole 72 because it was very special, he has the habit of converting these putts in decisive moments. He’s a great champion and has the right attitude to be around for a long time… And he’s only 22 years old”.
Finally, the Texan referred to the incident that occurred during the resolution of the tournament on hole 72, when a group of activists jumped onto the 18th green and threw red and white paint on the grass before being arrested by the police. “It was definitely a bit weird. I saw a person out of the corner of my eye, and then I saw about five police officers running. When something like this happens, you don’t really know what’s going on, you don’t know if the people who jumped are peaceful, you don’t know what they’re doing, so it can be a bit stressful. Akshay, Tom and I were talking, basically trying to calm down. It can be a stressful situation and you would hate for the tournament to end with something weird. What I felt is that Tom and I tried to calm each other down to give our best on the 18th”.
