Scottie Scheffler Is A Believer — But Golf Isn’t The Focus
Post via Nike/X
It would be hard to name a sports legend who answered more questions about his faith than the Hall of Fame coach Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys.
Long ago, I interviewed him about tensions between his faith and work. The parable he shared is relevant to the British Open media storm surrounding superstar golfer Scottie Scheffler and his — to some — near heretical comments about the satisfaction that he feels, or the lack thereof, after winning championships. The coverage of this story was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast.
But first, let’s return to Coach Landry, with an anecdote I included in my “On Religion” column written when he died of leukemia in 2000. The headline: “He was God's man, not God's coach.” This focuses on a letter from a fan that left Landry shaken:
A mother was worried because her 10-year-old son was still depressed, even though it had been weeks since the Cowboys failed to make the playoffs. Could the coach help?
"I really didn't know what to say," Landry told me, back in 1987. "That breaks your heart. ... Sometimes, things can just get out of hand."
Nevertheless, the coach also knew there had been times when his relentless, methodical approach to his work crossed the same line. The public saw the stoic general pacing the sideline, nattily dressed in office clothes and his trademark fedora. But sometimes, he admitted, his composure cracked after bitter losses and he wrestled with anger and depression. Landry learned to call this problem by its proper name.
"I know that's a sin," he said. "I learned that I could go home, get down on my knees and confess that to God. I mean, what is football next to God?"
This brings us to Scheffler’s remarkable press conference in which he offered a long, complex set of quotes about the centrality of his family and faith in his life and work. To many sports insiders he sounded like a heretic, as opposed to a prophet.
Headlines immediately jumped on the importance of “family” in his life. A lovely tribute ad from Nike, with the slogan “You’ve already won,” focused on Scheffler and Bennett, his toddler son. Was “family” a safe code word, as opposed to “Christian”?
Check out this online news search for this combination of terms — “Scottie Scheffler, Open, 2025, press, family.”
Now do the same news search and add one additional word — “Christian.”
See the difference? The first search, focusing on “family,” draws headlines from a variety of elite, mainstream and religious publications. Add the edgy word “Christian,” and then — #POOF — most of those story links vanish.
But there was one important exception. The New York Times offered a fine feature that ran under this headline: “Open champion Scottie Scheffler doesn’t need to explain himself. The answer is in the beginning.”
The following is the crucial passage in that report. This excerpt is long, but essential, because it links the core subjects in a logical way, providing the context that readers need.
The 153rd Open Championship will go down as the week everyone tried, and failed, to understand Scottie Scheffler. It all began on Tuesday with an early week news conference. Scheffler unexpectedly cracked himself open and let the yolk run. Winning? It’s not everything, he explained, because it can’t be everything. In the end, there’s the next day, and the next practice, and the next tournament. All of this — full stream of consciousness. Scheffler explained that his existence is not defined by something as fickle as a round of golf.
“This is not a fulfilling life,” he said. “It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart.” He added that, if anything, it bothers him that he cares so much about golf. Faith and family are far, far more important.”
Controversial? No.
Fascinating? Yes.
Scheffler was exactly what everyone wishes for superstars to be: honest, vulnerable, human.
His reward? A weeklong hyper-analysis of his entire psyche.
Everyone, everywhere, from all sides. On the television broadcast. On the radio. All over social media. Reporters asked other players more questions about Scheffler’s comments than their own rounds. By Sunday, Scheffler’s caddie, Ted Scott, sat by the beach at Portrush and recorded a video for Instagram — one of his weekly sermons — discussing his boss’s comments and the widespread reaction. A devout Christian, like Scheffler, Scott tried to explain what might’ve been lost in translation.
“Joy doesn’t come from circumstances,” Scott said.
In the podcast, I noted that the Times team deserved praise for seeing how the superstar’s Christian faith fit into this equation. Nevertheless, the rest of the story returned to a litany of details about Scheffler’s life as a golfing protege, noting that his skills began to emerge before he went to kindergarten.
What was lost? The story never dug deeper into what Scheffler said and the roots of his Christian beliefs.
Maybe the sports desk at the Times needed help from one of the newsroom’s experienced religion reporters? To me, it sounded like the world’s most powerful newspaper didn’t have any experts to quote on the theological issues woven into Scheffler’s testimony.
Consider the credentials of this source quoted in a Baptist Press piece with this headline: “On winning and what matters — Scheffler’s comments are for everyone.”
Before his current role as lead pastor of First Baptist Church in Fairfield, Texas, George Schroeder spent nearly 30 years in sports media. That included stints as senior writer at USA Today and nine Associated Press Editor awards covering national college sports. He was also named associate vice president of Convention News for the Executive Committee in January 2020 and editor of Baptist Press. He left that role in 2021 to pursue a degree at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. …
In his experience, it’s rare for athletes to have such moments, he said. Those admissions on the fleeting happiness with a win usually come in private conversations.
“The highs are ephemeral. And they’re not nearly as important as they — and we — so often make them out to be,” Schroeder said.
A national level sports writer with a seminary degree and a pulpit in Texas, just down the road from Scheffler’s home in Dallas? That will work.
Over at Substack, Daniel Darling — a sports fan who is also director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Seminary — dug into the scriptural and literary history of what Scheffler was saying.
Some of these names might sound familiar, even in elite newsrooms. Let’s end with this block of material from Darling’s essay: “Scottie’s Secret.”
… What Scottie was saying is … something ancient and profound. It’s what C.S. Lewis, borrowing from Augustine, borrowing from Jesus, says about ordering our loves.
Here is what Jesus says: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes, and even his own life — he cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:46)”
Jesus, here isn’t saying you should hate your family. This would be in direct violation of the law, which calls us to honor and care for our families. “Honor your father and Mother” in the OT. “If you don’t provide for your families, you are worse than an unbeliever” in the NT.
What Jesus is saying is this: unless you see God as the ultimate object of worship, you cannot and will not properly love your brothers, your sisters, your family, your job, your hobbies, your very life. We know this to be true. …
In his book The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis quoted an old proverb arguing that any “love,” taken to an extreme, becomes evil: “Love becomes a demon when it becomes a god.” Such love ceases to be love. Listen to Augustine:
“Living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.”
That’s Jesus, C.S. Lewis and St. Augustine. That’s a fine list of quotable sources and, I predict, Scheffler is quite familiar with them.
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