SOUTHPORT, England (AP) — Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are both chasing a second claret jug at the British Open this week.
The world’s top two golfers are unmoved about what that would mean for their legacies.
“I’ll be long gone. I’ll be dead,” McIlroy said Tuesday when asked if winning more trophies and breaking more records would shape how he’ll be viewed in a hundred years.
“I don’t think I’ll be seeing what people say about me. I’ll be six feet under. I don’t think I’ll be a ghost.”
Seems Scheffler’s goal isn’t about chasing a place in history, either.
“This is going to sound a little morbid,” the top-ranked American said. “At the end of the day, I’m going to live my life and it’s going to end. When it ends, I’m going somewhere else, and I’m not going to be here anymore.”
Coming over to play the Open Championship seems to bring the philosophical side out of Scheffler.
It was around this time last year, speaking days before winning golf’s oldest championship at Royal Portrush, that Scheffler delivered a soliloquy about fulfillment and what being good at golf really means.
“I love being able to play this game for a living,” he said back then, before adding: “But does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.”
At that time, Scheffler was dominating golf at a level not seen since Tiger Woods. And he’s still the No. 1 player by a distance, even if he experienced his first missed cut in four years at the Scottish Open last week.
McIlroy performed better in Scotland, finishing tied for seventh, but his final round might best be remembered not for shooting 64 but for him exclaiming “I’m so bad at golf” after hitting a poor approach on the 16th hole.
“Even though I shot a good score on Sunday, it didn’t feel very good,” McIlroy said.
So, instead of taking to the course for a practice round after arriving at Royal Birkdale on Monday, he spent time on the range and said he is “definitely trending in the right direction.”
Links golf take McIlroy ‘back to my childhood’
It has been 12 years since McIlroy won his first and so-far-only Open Championship title, just down the northwest coastline at Hoylake.
Winning back-to-back Masters titles not only saw him complete the career Grand Slam but ended a major drought of more than a decade.
That has somewhat taken the pressure off McIlroy at golf’s biggest events but his home major remains special.
“It brings me back to my childhood,” the Northern Irishman said Tuesday.
As a kid, he could only dream of being a six-time major champion and only the sixth player to win all four majors. This week, a win would see him tied with Harry Vardon as the European player with most majors in men’s golf.
Not that those records matter to McIlroy, it seems.
“I think it would be a pretty unfulfilling pursuit if you’re just chasing records and chasing results,” he said. “You have to enjoy the process. You have to enjoy the journey to get there. I’ve learned that the hard way at times by chasing results and chasing records too much.”
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Steve Douglas, The Associated Press
