Scottie Scheffler is going for the career grand slam for the first time, after having won The Open Championship last July at Royal Portrush.
He still holds down the No. 1 ranking in the world, as he has done for over 100 weeks now.
Tuesday, he met the media at Shinnecock Hills and the rest of the world via a web call.
Following are excerpts from the press conference:
THE MODERATOR: Please join us in welcoming World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler. Scottie, start with a few initial thoughts on Shinnecock.
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, I got to play here a couple weeks ago. Played nine holes the last few days. The golf course is in good shape. It looks like it’s shaping up to be a pretty windy week. I think the golf course will play pretty nice.
The fairways are quite generous in some spots, but I think when you get wind and the firmness, they play significantly more narrow than they look. Looks like it should be a good test this week.
THE MODERATOR: We’ve already seen two different winds yesterday versus today. Can you talk about how you’ve played the golf course so far this week?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, like you said, the wind has changed a little bit. Some of the rumors I heard about this place is it could even switch a decent amount throughout the day, as well.
I think this week we’re looking mostly at a westerly wind. There’s some south wind as well one day, but I think it’s mostly out of the west. Overall, it looks like it could dry out the golf course pretty quickly. Everything so far looks pretty nice to me.
Question: Scottie, with the first attempt to win the career grand slam this week, I’m wondering if you could think about it from a casual sports fan perspective. What do you think having a golfer like yourself have this chance or Rory completing it last year, what does that do for golf to maybe not a hard-core golf fan?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: That’s a good question. I think it would definitely bring more eyeballs to the sport, which is always a good thing. I think golf is a great game. I think it’s something that everybody should have a chance to be introduced to. I think you learn a lot about yourself. I think you learn a lot of life lessons through the game of golf.
Some of my best friends in the whole world I know just from playing golf and playing golf with them and growing up with those types of guys. This game obviously means a lot to me as a player, and it’s been a huge part of my life for a long time. It’s something that I would love for more people to get introduced to.
Question: You grew up playing windy courses in Texas and whatnot. I’m curious, how do you learn how to — how did you develop the skill to play in wind? Is it just repetition or tricks you’ve learned over time? How does that work?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Playing in it more often, I think a lot of it is mostly just experience especially in different types of winds. Like the wind at Pebble Beach is different than the wind here, and it’s different than the wind at home. It’s 100 degrees at home right now. Sorry, mid-90s. A little exaggeration there. When it’s hot, the ball doesn’t get as affected by the wind.
Here the wind is a bit heavier. I wouldn’t say it’s as heavy as a Pebble Beach, but it is a pretty heavy wind. I think a lot of that you just learn from experience and playing in all different kinds of conditions.
Question: Is it more about restraint and patience on this kind of golf course? Or I know you kind of try to maintain the same mentality every time you go out there, but anything different here on this very challenging test?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: A lot of it’s execution, and then there’s definitely an element of patience to it because you can hit some pretty decent shots and find yourself in some spots that are quite brutal, especially when you get some high winds.
So, yeah, a lot of it just comes down to execution, but I think patience is a large part of it, as well.
Question: How much of it is physical and how much is mental in terms of preparing for the wind in a situation like this?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I’d probably lean more towards mental just because you’re using a lot of your imagination, especially when you don’t get the exact wind on the practice round days. So, you just have to imagine what that ball’s going to do.
I think that physically I’m not going to learn any new shots on Monday through Wednesday this week that I’m going to try and use you over the weekend. I think a lot of the physical’s always there. I think more of it is just the preparation.
Question: Considering you said on many, many occasions that your whole goal is to be as prepared as possible when you get to the first tee, how do you guard against just knowing this opportunity at The Open is different than the previous ones, just with what’s at stake and all?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: It’s kind of a funny thing. It’s like, yeah, if I win this tournament, that would be amazing, but I think then I show up the next week, and it’s like, okay, now Scottie’s won the grand slam, he’s won all these golf tournaments. Now where do we go from here?
So, no matter what, I think as a player and as a professional athlete, you’re never going to live up to the expectations of people. I think sometimes that’s a little bit of the fallacy in our sport is like, if I win the U.S. Open, then I’m going to be satisfied. I’ve won all the tournaments, and my career is essentially over, and I’ve accomplished everything I could want to accomplish. But I think the goal posts are always just moved further and further.
If you took my career from where I was as a college player, I would have extremely overachieved being in this position. I wasn’t the best college player. I had a decent college career, but by no means was I a can’t-miss type of prospect.
The guys that turned pro at the time were better than me. There were guys, you look at Collin Morikawa and Hovland and Matt Wolff, those guys were winning tournaments immediately when they turned pro, and I had a little bit of a slower burn in terms of the development of my career.
For me, would it be a dream to win the U.S. Open? Of course. But at the end of the day, like I — the grand slam has never been a motivating factor for me. I always just wanted to be the best version of myself, and that got me this far.
So when it comes to this golf tournament, like I said, I’m going to step on the first tee and remind myself I’ve done everything I possibly could in order to play well, and now it’s just a matter of going out there and trying to execute and kind of going back to enjoying the competition versus feeling like you have to win for some reason.
Question: The fairways are being presented much wider this year than in 2018. I know you didn’t play the 2018 U.S. Open, but what is your perspective on that setup decision? And how much do you think driving accuracy will be at a premium this week relative to other major venues that you’ve seen?
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I feel like the USGA is doing a good job of trying to strike a balance between having things be the most difficult they possibly can be while also still rewarding the shots hit that are really good.
I think with the way the game of golf is going, guys are getting so good, it’s getting increasingly harder and harder in order to have winning scores be over par, or whatever somebody would want them to be. It’s getting increasingly harder I think for that to happen.
When you look at this golf course specifically, a good shot off the tee more often than not is going to end up in the fairway. I think sometimes it can turn into a little bit of a bomb-and-gouge type of test when nobody can hit the fairway. I think you can have fairways that are too small and if they get really firm, all of a sudden nobody can hit the fairway. Then it’s like, all right, well, I’m probably not going to hit this fairway. I better just get it up there somewhere so I can get up on the green.
I think the USGA and what’s really good about I think some of these major championship setups is a little bit of the variety that we see from year to year on these courses. This course, having wider fairways, but then the greens play really, really small. So I think you kind of have an interesting paradox between those two, wide fairways and greens that play quite small.
Question: Any thoughts on 2018 here? I’m assuming you watched it on TV. If you didn’t, you can just leave.
SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I’ve watched some of it. I’ve heard the golf course is pretty similar to 2018, so I watched a little bit of the highlights to get a gauge of how it will play once the tournament starts just because I think they’re being a little bit more careful this year, just with some of the episodes I think they’ve had at previous tournaments here.
Playing in my last practice round a couple of weeks ago, I got some info on the course and basically how quickly they can get it to dry out just with the nature of the conditions out here. So I think they’re being a little cautious to start the week just in terms of the softness.