Scottie Scheffler before winning The Open: “This is not a fulfilling life”

To no one’s surprise, Scottie Scheffler won The Open Championship yesterday in convincing fashion. His victory was so dominant that, according to CNN, it left his rivals “awestruck.”

But it’s what happened before the tournament in Northern Ireland began that made global headlines.

Often called the British Open, it is the oldest golf tournament in the world. Its winner is crowned “Champion Golfer of the Year,” a title dating to the first Open in 1860. I have watched it each year for many years.

This is the first year I can remember when news preceding the tournament overshadowed the tournament itself. But that’s what happened last Tuesday.

Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 golfer, has won more tournaments and majors than anyone over the last three years. Nonetheless, in what the Associated Press called “an amazing soliloquy,” he said, “This is not a fulfilling life. 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: “I love the challenge. I love being able to play this game for a living. It’s one of the greatest joys of my life. But does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.” Then he asked, “Why do I want to win The Open Championship so badly? I don’t know. Because, if I win, it’s going to be an awesome two minutes. Then we’re going to get to the next week.”

He often says golf doesn’t define him as a person. In fact, he said if the sport ever affected his life at home, “that’s going to be the last day that I play out here for a living.”

Scheffler’s statements regarding the ultimate value of the game he plays garnered national coverage. An article in the New York Times even called him “Nihilist Scottie.” (A “nihilist” believes life has no purpose or meaning.)

Why would someone call him that?

And why is the question relevant for you and me today?

“My identity is secure forever”

The AP article asks rhetorically, “So where does fulfillment come from if it’s not winning?” The writer then answers: “Scheffler is grounded in his faith, in a simple family life with a wife he has been with since high school, a fifteen-month-old son, three sisters, and friends that are not part of the tour community.”

I have followed Scheffler’s golf career over the years with great interest, in part because he and our sons graduated from the same high school in Dallas. But primarily because I am deeply impressed with the way his faith influences his life.

He met his caddy, Ted Scott, at a Bible study. Last December, he co-hosted an annual retreat for members of the College Golf Fellowship, a faith-based ministry. Before winning the Masters last year, he stated, “It doesn’t matter if I win this tournament or lose this tournament. My identity is secure forever.”

Scottie’s sense of self is clear: “I believe in Jesus. Ultimately, I think that’s what defines me the most.”

But such faith is not what defines achievement in our secularized culture. To deny the ultimate significance of temporal success is “nihilism” for those who measure success only in this way. A person who values his faith and family above his golf career is therefore a “nihilist.”

What does this say about our culture?

When God is your partner

In a sense, the Times writer is correct: those who make Jesus their King should be nihilists with regard to anything valued more highly than their Lord.

Jesus was clear: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24, my emphasis). As Os Guinness noted, “Either we serve God and use money, or we serve money and use God.”

Here’s the paradox: When we use temporal things to serve God, temporal things take on eternal significance and acquire a joy and purpose they could never possess otherwise.

Those who play golf for God’s glory find that they have God for a partner. He guides and encourages them as they play and shares their successes and failures as if they were his own. He endows their temporal work with the joy of the Lord and power of the Spirit.

This does not guarantee that they will become the best golfer in the world, like Scottie Scheffler. But it does mean that they will become the best versions of themselves. And every day they spend in this world plants seeds of significance in the world to come.

“Where there is nothing, there is God”

To be a “nihilist” like Scottie Scheffler, let’s make his worldview our own. He testifies, “I’ve been called to come out here, do my best to compete, and glorify God. That’s pretty much it.”

• He knows the place God has assigned him: “I’ve been called to come out here.” Like Scottie, you and I have a kingdom assignment uniquely suited to our spiritual gifts, life experience, and personal capacities.
• He knows the power by which to be effective: “Do my best to compete.” As sociologist James Davison Hunter has shown, serving with excellence is the key to cultural impact.
• He knows the purpose of his work: “and glorify God.” There is room for only one person on the throne in every human heart. We must choose each day to dethrone ourselves, submit our lives to God’s Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), and “ascribe to the Lᴏʀᴅ the glory due his name” (Psalm 29:2).

If living this way is “pretty much it,” everything else becomes nothing else.

The New York Times article calling Scheffler “Nihilist Scottie” makes my point. The writer later states:

The emptiness Scheffler feels between who he is and the game he plays does, in fact, have a place in his faith. Take a look at Ecclesiastes. Or just leave it to an Irish poet to sum things up.

As W. B. Yeats put it: “Where there is nothing, there is God.”

Scottie Scheffler would agree.

Would you?

Quote for the day:

“As modern people, we have too much to live with and too little to live for.” —Os Guinness

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