Scottie Scheffler dishes on his wild season, Cowboys 2024 outlook, life as a father

Dallas native and No. 1 golfer in the world Scottie Scheffler joined Pardon My Take, a Barstool Sports podcast, to discuss his incredible season on the PGA Tour, his arrest, life as a new father and more.
Here are some of the highlights, edited lightly for clarity.
You made $62 million this season, congratulations. Has it hit your bank account yet?
Scottie Scheffler: It’s been a fun year. I don’t really think about the money very much. I think that kind of becomes a big deal just with the FedEx and everything. But at the end of the day it’s just playing golf and the money is just a gift on top of that.
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I remember playing my first PGA Tour event as a pro, and I didn’t play great, I finished maybe 40th place. It was like two weeks after graduating college and I made like 30 or 40 grand or something like that. I remember looking at Meredith when I got home when I got the text. You get a text from the Tour after each tournament telling you how much money you made, and I looked at her and was like ‘Oh my gosh I got paid for that? That’s insane.’ It’s pretty fun. I still feel like a kid. I get to go play golf and have fun.
It was great that Jeff Darlington was there when you got arrested to chronicle it, because if there was no one there at the time of your arrest, the report just says ‘Scottie Scheffler arrested.’ An hour later we would have seen the charges, but since Darlington was there and he had eyes on it, it almost seemed like from the start, the narrative was ‘Free Scottie.’
Scheffler: The part that still really blows my mind is, yeah I got arrested which is one thing. But the reason I got arrested was the police officer charged me with second-degree assault. At this point, for the most part I’m over it. Talking about it a lot throughout the year, it really was very traumatic. But at this point I feel like I’m getting over it in a sense. When my friends would ask me about it, I would start shaking again because it was such a wild thing that happened. But now I feel like I’m on the other end of it and things are starting to calm down. Now it’s like ‘Yeah, I went to jail.’ It’s a good bit.
My friends have had quite the field day with that experience, but I’m glad it’s kind of in the rearview mirror now.
How are you feeling about the Cowboys this year?
Scheffler: Typically I go into every year with a ton of hope and get crushed. This year, for some reason, my hope’s not as high. I’ve kind of moved the hope over to the Longhorns. But the first game will start and I’m gonna think ‘They’re gonna win every game this year.’ I’m that Cowboys fan who says ‘We’re gonna win the Super Bowl, we’re gonna go the playoffs,’ and it just never even comes close to happening.
During the Cowboys-Packers playoff loss, we were playing a tournament in California that week. I remember, it was that Sunday before the tournament started, we were out playing golf with Sam Burns and a couple other guys. Sam and I wanted to get home for the game but we were having a chipping contest. The game had started, but we were gambling so we had to finish the match. Then by the time we finished the match, we were watching the score and I thought ‘I’m not going home to watch this.’ They were getting blown out and my phone was tossed to the other side of the green. We went home and watched the second half, but it was tough.
Do you think Dak Prescott is the guy for the Cowboys?
Scheffler: Yeah. I think the team is good enough. They just don’t seem to perform when it matters the most. Sometimes that’s bad luck, could be a mental thing. The team last year was so good and then in the first game. I don’t know how fluky a sport football is, but if it’s anything like golf, stuff can happen really fast and it gets away from you at the wrong time. It’s tough, man.
If you’re at the top of your game, what’s that line between going out and practicing something and finding something to improve on, but also not messing up what you have going right now? Do you have stuff you look to improve?
Scheffler: I think that’s where guys can sometimes run into trouble. In golf, you always feel like you can get better because it’s so hard. I don’t understand why golf is the sport where fans want to watch the guys suffer, but other sports, we want to see the best. We want to see football players at their best, we want to watch guys dunk the basketball and make long threes, but in golf, we want to watch these guys suffer.
Every offseason I have one point of emphasis. Some years it’s been my diet, last year it was my putting. One year, it was doing a lot of stuff in the gym. As I think more and more about this offseason I think I’m going to focus more on endurance and eating better. I’m going to go back to the diet and workout stuff this offseason to be my point of emphasis, just so as the year goes on I can maintain the same level of performance.
Do you have a favorite round this year?
Scheffler: I think the Olympics is probably a pretty tough one to beat, just with the way it happened there late in the round and with it being the Olympics, that was a pretty special day. We made the turn and I had birdied the first three holes, made pars on the next six holes. I missed some makeable birdie putts early in that round on the front nine.
When we made the turn, Ted [Scott] kept me in a good headspace and I started making birdies. There was a time where I felt almost out of the tournament and I switched my attitude to ‘Alright, let’s just try to see if we can get a medal.’ All of a sudden, I started making some birdies and some guys started making mistakes. I remember looking up at the scoreboard on 17 and I saw that Tommy hadn’t birdied 14, which was a reachable Par 5 and probably the easiest hole on the back nine, and I think Rahm had made double.
Everything fell into place and I had a great back nine and was able to win.
Was there ever a moment in your journey with golf when you didn’t think you’d make it?
Scheffler: Yeah, that stuff runs through your head all the time. Can I do this? Is this really going to happen?
I remember when I turned pro in 2018, I started by playing Monday qualifiers. On the Korn Ferry Tour, there’s more spots, so I would show up to the Monday qualifier and shoot 6-, 7-. 8-under and not make it. I’d go the next week, I remember I flew to St. Louis, I flew to Buffalo, I’m flying all over the country to these random places playing Monday qualifiers, playing really well and not getting in. I’m sitting there to myself failing time and time again and playing good enough to where I feel like I should be succeeding. I’d get home, look at Meredith and say, ‘This is hard. This is not what I signed up for.’ I think you know it’s going to be a grind, but at the same time in the back of your head you just expect things to go the way they should go. You think you’re just going to show up and play great and everything’s going to be awesome. But there’s a lot of times in golf where it’s really hard.
Do you feel like a better golfer now that you’re a father?
Scheffler: I think part of it has helped me mentally because golf can be tough. Sometimes we can all be our own harshest critic, so when it comes to how I’m performing on the golf course, after a tough day I’ll look at myself and say ‘If this was Bennett, what would I tell him after the day?’ Part of that has been helpful. When you get home, it’s one thing for your parents and Meredith to say they don’t care what you shoot, but at the end of the day it means a lot to me. But when you get home and see Bennett and he sees you walk through the door you forget about everything else. It’s pretty amazing.
You just want your kids to be happy. Bennett is so young, like he learned how to smile in the last month and a half. But when I get home and he finally finds where I am in the room and he lets out this big smile, it’s just awesome. That was one thing I didn’t understand going into fatherhood was how great something little like that feels.
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