Scottie Scheffler, the best golfer in the world, said something ahead of this week’s British Open that made headlines in the sports world: he’d rather be a great father than a great golfer, and if being a father ever interfered with playing golf, he’d chose his family over the sport.
Now he said he loved playing golf, loved competing and loved winning. But he also made clear that there’s more to life than golf.
“It’s one of the greatest joys of my life,” he said. “But does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.”
Now one commentator – Brandel Chamblee, an informed, often skeptical voice – said, essentially, it was easier for the best golfer in the world, with $88 million in tournament winnings in just the past five or six years, to say such a thing. He doesn’t have to work ever again.
Scheffler has the resources to make his family’s life easier in every way. But so does every top athlete in every sport. Six Super Bowl rings and half a billion dollars in earnings and endorsements wasn’t enough for Tom Brady, who played one more mediocre season that ended his marriage and separated him from his children.
Here’s the part that corporate leaders should read and re-read: “I talk about family being my priority because it really is. I’m blessed to be able to come out here and play golf, but if my golf ever started affecting my home life or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife or my son, that’s going to be the last day that I play out here for a living.”
He continued: “This is not the be all, end all. This is not the most important thing in my life. That’s why I wrestle with, why is this so important to me? Because I’d much rather be a great father than I would be a great golfer. At the end of the day, that’s what’s more important to me.”
Sure, this made news because Scheffler is at the top of his game. He has a decade or more of top play ahead of him. And let’s face it, he’s a man putting care above career. That last part is still something that shocks – that a man would say this.
But Scheffler had a model growing up that more boys and girls are having today but was rarer when he was young. His father Scott was a Lead Dad who focused all of his time on Scottie and his siblings, while his mother Diane Scheffler held senior roles at big law firms. I’d imagine that as a young boy Scottie got to see a different version of masculinity, of what it meant to be a father.
Good news – we know at The Company of Dads that a third of all fathers today are Lead Dads and that number is growing. Perhaps what Scheffler said won’t be so newsworthy one day.
