Say hey, golf could use a superstar
As great as he is, Scheffler doesn't move the needle; Westwood makes senior debut; Stray Shots protests Scottie beating favorite Kim
Fans adored Willie Mays (Bettmann Archives/Getty Images)
The famous baseball broadcaster Bob Costas was talking about Willie Mays during the ESPN broadcast of the Chicago Cubs vs. New York Mets game on Sunday night.
Mays died last week and Costas was talking about the reverence baseball and its fans had for the “Say Hey Kid,” explaining how people just wanted to see Mays play. It didn’t matter how he did over his 23-year career, but just being in the same park and watching an instant Hall of Famer was all the fans cared about, win or lose.
“You had to see him,” Costas said, explaining that if you went to a game and Willie Mays was 0-4 and there was never anything spectacular in the field, your eyes would still gravitate to him just because the way he carried himself.
“Something poetic about him,” Costas said of Mays.
Costas went on to reference the same about basketball’s Michael Jordan and how the best maybe that ever played the game was the same as Mays in a different sport.
On Sunday, Scottie Scheffler won his sixth title before July 1, one of them a major at the Masters and the rest all significant events — the flagship Players Championship and signature events Arnold Palmer Invitational, RBC Heritage, Memorial Tournament and Travelers Championship. Yet nothing Scheffler does will bring him to the status level of Mays or Jordan.
Scheffler is just a different cat. He doesn’t have the Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer showmanship gene. In fact, as good as Scheffler is as a player, he may be as poor as an entertainer.
And while that sounds like a slight on the best player in the game, it’s not meant to be. It’s more of an honest assessment of a game at the professional level that seems to be struggling with its audience and its best player at the minute is not the savior.
Scottie Scheffler doesn’t move the needle like the GOATs (Logan Whitton/USGA)
About 1,000 miles away from Cromwell, Conn., where Scheffler was winning in a playoff on Sunday, LIV Golf was playing its final round in Nashville, Tenn. The home of county music was hopping with fans waiting to see the fan favorite, Bryson DeChambeau.