13 Thoughts on the Most Normal Sport Day Ever

Edition No. 84 | May 18, 2024

Hey,

I could write 10,000 words on Friday morning alone, but nobody has time for that and nothing I say is going to be funnier than the memes that got rolled out on Twitter today anyway.¹ 

So instead, let’s power rank some of the most normal sport moments from Friday’s chaotic, almost inconceivable day at Valhalla.²

Also, let me lead with this: Obviously the beginning to Friday was horrific. A man named John Mills died at this event, which I don’t want to overlook or understate. It is a constant tussle in situations like this one over whether you should give attention to the most important moments regarding humanity or to the most relevant events to what we actually cover, which is golf and golfers.

But I don’t want to blow past the fact that a man lost his life today at the PGA Championship. That’s tremendously sad and something that’s worthy of attention and recognition.

So that’s a caveat, I suppose, to everything else. And I think we can discuss everything else with both sobriety (because felonies are serious!) as well as levity (because objectively the content really was all-time today).

Let’s dig in.

1. I was on TV for CBS Sports HQ most of the Friday, trying to keep pace with the news, offer my insight and any nuggets I picked up from following Scottie around or other things I was hearing.

In one of the breaks we had while the cameras were off, I finally came across the police report and started reading it out loud to some colleagues.

As soon as I saw the phrase “Detective Gillis’ uniform pants” … I knew I might lose it. Then I came to “valued at approximately $80,” and I started chuckling, but all of that was simply an appetizer for the “were damaged beyond repair” denouement.

I started howling before I could get even all the words out.

It must have been a combination of being punch drunk on the Friday of a major, the exhaustion from being in front of a camera for several hours and the surreal nature of what we were reading, discovering and experiencing in real time, but I just just went bug eyed and started wheezing out the last few words of that sentence which now belongs in golf canon.³

Given everything serious that transpired, it was truly the funniest, most amusing moment of the entire day.

And thankfully detective Gillis also seems to be OK.

2. This maybe wasn’t even the best sentence that was uttered on Friday! It at least has some competition from this one that Scottie dropped in his presser: “I did spend some time stretching in a jail cell. That was a first for me.”

I still do not understand how that’s a real quote. If you would have showed me that quote a week ago and said, “Guess who said it.” I wouldn’t have guessed Scottie in my first 100 guesses.

It honestly might be the most normal sport moment — and we’ve had a lot of them! — of the last several years.

Imagine LeBron, Jokic, Mahomes or Kelce saying, Yeah, you know I played well today after getting loose in my jail cell this morning !!!

3. This brings up an important point I was thinking about tonight: If you don’t know anything about golf and you just tuned in to the end of Knicks-Pacers like I did this evening and you saw, “No. 1 golfer in the world shoots 66 after arrest,” you would think, Oh, what a psycho. That guy sounds like a loser.

And yet, if you follow along, cover the sport or are even remotely interested in it, you know this description — psycho and loser — fits Scottie about as well as “good decision maker” fits Jordan Spieth. That is to say, never has, never will.

And while we still don’t know what actually happened with the altercation, I can’t think of a more incongruous “what the words of the report say” vs. “what I believe went down” than this one.

And with that in mind …

4. The phrase “attempted to attach himself to Scheffler’s car” regarding the officer has also been in my dome all day. What an insane series of words and one that led to basically everything else that played out after that. It’s the most important phrase of all the reporting from Friday, and I still have no idea what it means.

Everything seems to be in play here.

And after today, I would probably believe it all.

5. Even before all of this happened, several of us at the event had been commenting on how wild the logistics of a golf tournament are. It’s a bit like building a miniature city that has to operate flawlessly for seven straight days and then you get a 10-year break.

That’s such a bizarre thing that is so unique to men’s professional major championship golf to begin with, and it often leads to “I don’t know where to go, and I know you don’t know where I’m supposed to go” exchanges with volunteers and security for everyone — players, media, fans, everyone — throughout the week.

In this instance, there seemed to not be a ton of ambiguity with what Scottie was trying to do. But given the chaos of the morning and how unfamiliar and odd a high-level golf event can be even for a seasoned official, it’s not difficult to see how — especially just after a tragic accident — all of this escalated to where it did.⁴

6. The general struggle to find your place of employment on a weekly basis is very normal sport behavior. It’s somewhat related to the logistics piece, but imagine the following happening in other sports.

7. This video is absolutely bonkers. Every part of it seems fake.

Like Soly said, how — out of all the people covering the event, working it, caddying at it, playing in it and even attending — did the one guy this happened to also happen to be the No. 1 player in the world?

8. I wrote for CBS Sports on Friday about how Scottie’s greatest gifts are his ability to be present in the moment and to not take himself too seriously.

Those were tested in ways I (and he) never could have imagined even 24 hours ago. And of course — of course! — he went out and shot yet another 66.

My conclusion (also a nice TL;DR synopsis).

9. Add today’s happening to the very normal list of things we’ve had to cover in golf over the last few years.

• Epidemiological rabbit holes

• Complex geopolitical relationships

• The ebb and flow of oil prices

• The structure of foreign governments

• Extreme antitrust litigation

• Long-term effects of global terrorism

• Civil litigation of alleged cross-state felonies

Like, I just want to watch Ludvig hit 3 irons!

10. One undercurrent running through the grounds on Friday was this: What if, you know, Scottie actually did do something he shouldn’t have? I think the general consensus in every crevice is that, like he said after his round, all of this is just a big misunderstanding. That is the most likely outcome here, and the one I definitely believe. But I was thinking about how differently we would view it if the player was, say, Patrick Reed or Brooks Koepka.

This is how the benefit of the doubt works of course, and Scottie deserves it all based on his history and general disposition.

But, I think these things can sometimes start swinging too far one way or another — either positive or negative — because of the way people are perceived on Twitter or talked about by folks with some level of influence over what the public thinks.

The crowds on Friday were incredibly pro-Scottie, which again, seems pretty fascinating. I’m pro-Scottie, too, so I’m not arguing against it.

But it’s difficult to remember a situation like the following in recent years: Man gets arrested for potential felony, is let out of jail earlier than expected to play in sporting event for millions of dollars and is cheered (not jeered, but cheered) by the locals whose police department just booked this guy. 

That’s pretty crazy!⁵

11. Antifaldo got to the question before I could, but who is funniest person this could have happened to? The answers here are (and will be) amazing. The five that came to my mind.

1. Bryson — Obviously.

2. Spieth — Imagine him trying to explain why he’s innocent.

3. ZJ — “Don’t sir me!”

4. Reed — “I guess if my name was Jordan Spieth I wouldn’t be getting arrested.”

5. Phil — He for sure has a lawyer on retainer in at least 30 states.

12. There are a thousand more great tweets and memes, but here’s a brief collection of some of my favorites from Friday.

13. I’ll say it like this and then let’s get on to the weekend: Scottie Scheffler getting arrested by the Louisville PD, racing back to shoot 66 and then thanking the “kind” and “great” officers who took him to jail in his presser is the most Scottie Scheffler thing of all time.

It’s difficult to imagine many other guys doing it like that.

It’s difficult to imagine many other guys like Scottie.

Thanks for reading until the end.

You’re a sicko, and I’m grateful for it.