SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – The humble, unassuming Scottie Scheffler is more emotional than you might think. Did you know he also cried when he won the Masters?
She took a “bathroom break” in Augusta to have some alone time, and she admitted: “I had a good cry.
She said she got emotional earlier this week, too, from the stands as she watched the U.S. women’s gymnastics team accept their gold medals. So the importance of what Scheffler achieved Sunday at Le Golf National was not lost on him, before or after he had the gold medal around his neck. That reality was demonstrated by the incomparable sight of the world’s No. 1 golfer crying and wiping his face on the podium as he wore the gold medal and heard “The Star-Spangled Banner” blaring around. 18th green.
Scheffler said: “I’m very proud to come here and represent my country. . . . It was very emotional to be on that stage when the flag was being raised, singing the national anthem.”
This is not a golfing moment. It was an Olympic moment on the golf course.
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This game is not used to them. We can’t think of Scheffler as an Olympic hero for the United States, because we already know him as a great golfer.
What Scheffler did on Sunday, however, was the feat of an Olympian. To be standing on top of the podium on Sunday felt impossible all afternoon. He finished four shots behind the leaders. He needed to get off to an early start, and he did, with three birdies. It seemed like everyone on the leaderboard, though, was making it on the front nine.
Then two things happened. Scheffler started to play better, and everyone competing for the award started to play better. Scheffler shot a 6-under-par 29 on the back nine, making birdies on four consecutive holes.
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However, about five more things had to happen in addition to Scheffler’s course-record 62 to win the gold medal at 19 under.
And they all did.
Spain’s Jon Rahm, who held the four-shot lead at one point, made a splash, finishing 4 on the back nine and 15 under. Ireland’s Rory McIlroy had to rest and make a few critical mistakes, and he did. Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama bogeyed the final six holes, keeping him at 17 under.
Scheffler’s American teammate, Xander Schauffele, also had to not do the things Xander has been doing lately in this final. Unusually, Schauffele fell to the finals and out of contention. Then, in the end, Tommy Fleetwood of Great Britain had to chip a chip shot at No. 17, birdied a hole that dropped him to 18 under and provided the difference between gold and silver at the Paris Games as Scheffler drove.
That’s the Olympics. The pressure of this final round was palpable among the fairways and greens and the galleries crowded the course. Scheffler won because he rose to the occasion when others shrunk.
It doesn’t get much more Olympic than that, does it?
It’s similar to Scheffler’s surprise after watching the US women’s gymnastics team.
“They compete for years and years and years,” he said earlier this week. “For some of them, that might be their only time on the Olympic team. It’s hard for one competition to have that much pressure every four years. If it’s I had a bad week this week, I can take a week and still have another good chance to prove to myself that I can do it in the big lights.”
Golf is in the category of Olympic sports like basketball or tennis, where success in this stage can increase the level of athletes. But normally, that profile is already built somewhere else.
You wouldn’t think of Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or LeBron James or Andy Murray or even Schauffele as Olympic heroes, even though they all have been. It’s different from the games that wouldn’t get their due. Every four years, we’ll celebrate Mark Spitz or Mary Lou Retton or Carl Lewis or Michael Phelps or Simone Biles or Katie Ledecky and do it again four years later. Those are the heroes we meet at the Olympics in our country.
And it won’t be the golfers we see on television every weekend.
However, the Olympics are good for golf. I’m not sure how much attention was paid to the traveling pro golf circus until this week. The Rio competition in 2016 was very new. The Tokyo tournament was during the COVID season.
This week, however, hit the sweet spot. It was in a desirable location – Paris, am i right – and on the venerable course that recently hosted the Ryder Cup. There is no good excuse for the best players not to be there, and a star-studded field of players was lined up in front of a packed, enthusiastic, amazing crowd waving flags and singing and cheering. four days.
“If you’re not going to enjoy those moments, then you’re not going to get a lot of fun out of golf,” Fleetwood said.
“You don’t get anything this week,” said Australia’s Jason Day, who played in his first Olympics here. “You get an award. I think that brings up something serious. … That it means more than a day’s money for us. It really opened my eyes. I’m very happy to represent something bigger than me.”
Scheffler did too. His performance on Sunday reflected that. His tears showed that.
Reach Gentry Estes at gestes@gannett.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.
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