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05/17 20:39 CDT After starting his day in jail, Scheffler finds peace on the
course and a chance to win, too
After starting his day in jail, Scheffler finds peace on the course and a
chance to win, too
By EDDIE PELLS
AP National Writer
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) --- Perspective was even harder to come by than birdies
through all the raindrops, bourbon and cigar smoke that streamed across golf's
biggest stage Friday during one of the sport's most bizarre mornings ever.
By the time the world's best player, Scottie Scheffler, had been booked into
jail, had his mug shot taken, his police statement recorded, his release
secured, entrepreneurs near Valhalla Golf Club were already selling "Free
Scottie" T-shirts outside. Fans, some of them self-proclaimed Scottie lovers,
were already wearing them inside.
And by the time the day had ended, with Scheffler remarkably tied for fourth
place at the PGA Championship after a round that looked as efficient as any
he's played of late, he had chipped away, birdie by birdie, at the notion that
the pre-dawn scuffle with police, the trip downtown, that jail-issued orange
shirt, or any of the endless snark and commentary that surrounded all of this
would slow him down.
Was it a classic case of mind over matter? Or another illustration of the
public's never-ending thirst for a round-the-clock reality-show life? Depends
on who you ask.
"It's just amazing how you come out here after something like that, put that
all aside and make a birdie on the first hole," said Dean Adams, a golf fan who
drove up from Nashville, Tennessee, with friends and was waiting for the
world's top-ranked golfer near the 14th green.
Scheffler made five more birdies after that and shot 5-under 66.
Every time a putt dropped or a shot was hit, chants of "Scott-eee, Scott-eee"
and "Free Scott-eee" pierced across the drizzle-dampened, mud-caked country
club. Two fans lifted their bourbon drinks after a nice approach to the 12th
green at around 11 a.m. and shouted "Here's one for Scottie."
"As far as best rounds of my career, I would say it was pretty good," said
Scheffler, who has won four times already this year, including at the Masters.
"I definitely never imagined ever going to jail, and I definitely never
imagined going to jail the morning before one of my tee times."
Amazing as Scheffler's ability was to separate his off-course trouble from his
on-course performance, this was more than a story about a great athlete's
mindset or a remarkable day on the links.
The episode was triggered when a worker for a PGA vendor, 69-year-old John
Mills, was hit and killed by an oncoming bus as he tried to cross through
traffic outside the golf course in the slickened, pre-dawn darkness.
Police reported that the officer who tried to stop Scheffler as he hurried to
the course ended up in the hospital after he was dragged to the ground when the
car Scheffler was driving "accelerated forward."
Scheffler called it "a chaotic situation and a big misunderstanding." He used
some of his time in the holding cell to stretch and get ready for a round he
wasn't sure he'd get to play.
"That was a first for me," he said.
All this came against the backdrop of the Louisville police force's troubled
past: Only a year ago, the U.S. Justice Department found the police in
Kentucky's largest city violated the Constitution in various ways with an
overzealous use of force that discriminated against Black people.
Nobody will confuse the Scheffler incident with the episodes that led to those
findings.
"But it's just another bad look for the city," said golf fan Bill Miller, a
Louisville resident. "I'd want to understand what the cop was probably trying
to do. But it's sad. We just came out here to watch some golf."
To see that this was about more than golf was to take a stroll through the
Kentucky rain and mix in with the umbrella-toting, neck craning crowd that
lined up 10 deep in spots.
Fans wore orange jump suits and another popular T-shirt selection, these ones
plastered with Scheffler's freshly taken mug shot.
They checked their phones for the latest hot take in what quickly became a
second-by-second battle across the social media hellscape to be fresher,
funnier, more inappropriate.
Almost all the memes --- like the photoshopped image of Scheffler wearing his
green jacket from the Masters over his orange jump suit from jail --- were some
level of tasteless.
They spoke more about the world we live in than Scheffler's travails, which are
likely to drag past Sunday when the tournament ends and this circus leaves town.
"The conclusion you can draw is that any time you have a famous person involved
in any incident that's outside the norm of, like, eating three meals a day,
it's fodder for the most outrageous claims that can be made or things that can
be said," said Dennis Deninger, a sports communication professor at Syracuse
University.
"They are almost always based on little or no facts."
One beautiful thing about sports is how that ever-present scoreboard displays
only the facts. As he left the course Friday, the fact was that Scheffler was
three shots out of the lead and had a very good chance to win this thing.
And yet, this was another of those days when a sports story cascaded well
beyond a scoreboard spelling things out in black and white.
"He's the best guy out there right now, both as a player and a person," said
John Glenwood of Louisville, as he waited for Scheffler to pass on the 17th
fairway. "We're here to support him."
His friends standing next to him, who didn't want their names used, agreed.
They said they were big Scheffler fans.
One was wearing an orange jump suit he bought that morning; the other two were
in their brand-new "Free Scottie" T-shirts that might become the 2024 PGA
Championship's most-remembered souvenir.
___
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
