Scottie Scheffler excelled in basketball at Highland Park

And table tennis player…

“I’ve known him since we were kids,” said fellow Tour pro Sam Burns. “It’s hard to overstate how competitive he is.”

What about a pickleball player?

“You think about it – that One hits a golf ball and it remains stationary, always the same distance from the ball,” said Ben Johns, the world’s top pickleball player. “So I wasn’t really expecting him to move around and be as athletic as he was.”

What does this have to do with golf? Just everything. With six wins and four other top-five finishes this year, Scheffler has set himself apart from the field with a sharp drive, unparalleled ball-striking and a mental focus that makes rivals jealous. But he is one of the most athletic golfers on tour, opening up his 6-foot-3-inch frame, generating power from his legs and hips and using his hand-eye coordination to make perfect contact.

“He can do a lot of things that most golfers can’t do,” said John Fields, Scheffler’s coach at the University of Texas.

An example? Fields remembers watching a teenage Scheffler dunk a basketball.

“You think many people can do that?” Fields asks.

It’s true — any talk of vertical leap in the golf world focuses mostly on Phil Mickelson’s 2004 Masters win — but Fields said it’s just another component of Scheffler’s athletic arsenal. The longtime Texas coach began recruiting Scheffler when the golfer was 12 and observed him both on the golf course and in the basketball gym over the years. Scheffler was always pointed toward a pro golf career—he famously wore pants during junior rounds to imitate tour players—but he was also a well-rounded athlete who played a variety of sports.

“Being able to play multiple sports and compete and learn to play on a team — I was never focused on one thing when I was a kid,” he recently explained. “My dad always did a good job of letting me play and have fun.”

Scheffler was born in New Jersey, but grew up in Dallas, so it’s not surprising that he was playing youth football as a grade-schooler, lining up for a YMCA team called the Vikings. Sports changed with the seasons and Scheffler also played basketball throughout middle school.

“Scotty was never really the guy you wanted guarding you,” said childhood friend and high school teammate Clayton Murtha, “because no matter what the game was, he was always bringing high intensity, especially defensively.” At the edge.

Golf always took up most of the time, and Scheffler consistently won junior events. He won the U.S. Junior Amateur in 2013 and was just 17 when he made his PGA Tour debut at the local Byron Nelson Championship in 2014.

His longtime golf coach Randy Smith remembers Scheffler visiting him shortly after winning the U.S. Junior Amateur. He committed to Texas four months ago and was about to begin his senior year of high school.

“He came over the next week and said, ‘I know a lot of people say I shouldn’t do this and I know what you’re going to say, but I wanted to tell you I’m going to do it. ” “Play basketball my senior year,” Smith said. “I think I surprised him. I said, ‘I like it.’

Scheffler was the sixth man off the bench for a talented Highland Park team. He grew by more than a foot in high school and was a lanky sharpshooter who was comfortable crashing the boards or firing from the wing.

“He would sit there and look at three-pointers like they were hot fudge sundaes,” Smith recalled.

Scheffler was listed at 6-1 as a senior and had no NBA aspirations, telling a Florida reporter at the time that he was playing hoops “for fun.” “That’s what my friends were doing, so it was nice to take a break from golf.”

There was at least one incident when his passion for basketball conflicted with his passion for golf. As a junior, Scheffler was playing ball in a friend’s backyard a week before the state golf championship tournament when he suffered what he would call “the most serious injury I have ever suffered.” He was running down the court when he stepped on a “ginormous acorn”, twisting his ankle.

“My friends get scared when they hear the acorns crack,” Scheffler recalled to reporters in 2021.

He had to play golf in an ankle brace and sneakers for the next week, but managed to win his second of three state titles. Regardless, the injury put his friends on high alert.

Matt Frascilla, another classmate from Highland Park, described playing pickup games in the school gym the summer after Scheffler’s senior year.

“The whole running joke was that whenever Scotty went to the basket, everyone would move out of the way,” said Fraschilla, an assistant basketball coach at Harvard, “because no one wanted to be the guy who hurt Scotty Scheffler.” .

Scheffler still plays the occasional basketball game, as well as other sports, but as he recently noted, “I try to limit it a little bit because I can’t get hurt.”

Pickleball is a topic of particular interest these days. Scheffler has played casually and competitively with top players such as Jones and Anna Leigh Waters, as well as Professional Pickleball Association owner Tom Dundon.

“I remember the first time I played with him – he was so raw,” said Johns, the 25-year-old star of the game. “And his footwork was weird. I was almost worried he would injure himself because he would make every effort to get to the ball.”

The two played against each other again a few months later at a celebrity pro-am event, and Johns could tell that Scheffler had been practicing.

“It was amazing how much his game improved,” Johns said. “He was taking advantage of what he was good at.”

Burns has played every possible game with Scheffler over the years. In pickleball, he prefers to stand as his teammate rather than his enemy. “He kind of holds the court, so I don’t have to do a lot, which is nice,” Burns said.

Because Scheffler is such a competitor and so determined to succeed, Burns said, he succeeds in whatever sport he tries. Of course, it all changes in golf: the athleticism that allows him to generate power despite unconventional footwork, the hand-eye coordination to make powerful cuts and always make good contact, the strategic thinking that allows him to hit shots with pinpoint accuracy. Helps you overcome setbacks and compete against the best in the world, no matter the stakes.

But one question remains: Can he still dunk? As Scheffler acknowledged, there’s too much at stake these days to risk a bad fall or injured ankle.

Still, Burns said, “I’m sure if you told him he couldn’t, he would try.”