Does Scottie Scheffler Have Pickleball To Thank For His PGA Tour Domination?
PGA Tour star Scottie Scheffler dominated this past weekend's Arnold Palmer Invitational outside of Orlando.
In fact, he won the event by five strokes – which was the event's largest margin of victory since Tiger Woods won it by five in 2012.
But why on earth would The Dink care about what the world's top-ranked golfer is doing?
This isn't just any pro golfer. Scottie Scheffler is an investor in the Texas Ranchers MLP team and a huge pickleball fan.
You may even recall the attention he got when he "absolutely worked over" Ben Johns in a hands battle.
Cue eyeroll. It's good to know hyperbole isn't dead.
Last week Scottie did an interview with the PGA Tour leading up to this week's Players Championship (where he's the defending champion) where he once again talked about his love for pickleball.
PGATOUR.COM: You’re a big pickleball player and will play it even at tournaments. What’s the appeal for you?
SCHEFFLER: I just like competing at stuff, and so in order to get my mind off golf, I can't just sit around because I'm obviously going to start thinking about it, and so I have to put my mind on something else. And so recently it's been pickleball. I took it up, it's probably been about a year and a half now, and it was fun. I started playing with some of my buddies at home, and then I just got into it. I think it's fun for everybody because it's such an easy sport, and you can have guys that are at slightly different (skill) levels and still have a lot of fun. Since pickleball is pretty easy, you can get fun games going with a lot of different people.
Geesh, the guy wins one hands battle and just happens to be the top-ranked golfer in the world and he just gets to call pickleball easy?
Sarcasm aside, congrats Scottie! You're a great representative of our sport, and we appreciate the attention you bring to it.
Now, if we can only get some of these tennis pros to recruit more of their friends.