The Conjugal Caddy and the Coveted Green Jacket
“I cried like a baby,” Scottie Scheffler, 25-year-old… winner of Golf’s Masters (Time April 25 / May 2).
For one week every year the Augusta National Golf Course is more than up close and personal for Mimi and me. It’s across the street from our condo. And “up close and personal” was no doubt a sort of mantra among the press corps at the conclusion of this year’s Masters Tournament after their interview with Scottie Scheffler — this year’s winner of the Green Jacket. He spilled his guts. The press loved it but Scheffler probably won’t do that again — at least not spill it like he did in the press-room wrap-up. He’s new at interviews. He’s just 25 and he’s new at winning big ones. Scheffler was practically unknown until he won the Phoenix Open in February, the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, and three weeks later the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play. That last win moved him to Number One in the Official World Golf Ranking just before the Masters Tournament. Here’s the rest of that quote which Time magazine (above) cut short. It’s quoted from an article in The Augusta Chronicle (Tuesday, April 12). It’s this part that inspired this page.
Scheffler Credits His Wife for Help before Final Round…
I cried like a baby this morning. I was so stressed out. I didn’t know what to do. I was sitting there telling Meredith, “I don’t think I’m ready… I’m not ready for this kind of stuff.” I just felt overwhelmed. She told me, “Who are you to say you’re not ready? Who am I to say I know what’s best for my life?” And so, what we talked about is that God is in control and that the Lord is leading me; and if today is my time, it’s my time. And if I shot 82 today, you know, somehow I was going to use it for His glory. Gosh, it was a long morning!
What’s So Striking About this Augusta Chronicle Quote?
Well, it’s certainly sentimental, and I’ve suggested above that the press probably went gaga over the display of emotion in that early morning scene Scheffler described. It’s an unfair assertion on my part because that scene grabbed me sentimentally too like I think it did anybody who read the article. Hats off to David Westen of USA TODAY NETWORK who wisely engaged us readers with his word “tears” in his very first sentence. “Tears?” — painting the word-picture of the number one golfer in the world as he faced imminently the number one career event (so far) of his life? Intrigue? You bet! But there’s more. Much more! Our minister said it very succinctly the Sunday following the Masters. He too was engaging in the very first statement of his sermon: Scottie Scheffler would not have won that Masters without the strength of the covenant relationship of marriage that was undergirding him on that very significant day.... At just the right time Scottie’s one-flesh partner whom he had entered into covenant with said to him the very words he needed to provide the support he needed to be whom God called him to be. Our minister was admittedly intrigued by the tears, but he took us to the bedrock of what really took place between husband and wife.
Beneath the Tears
These words of Frederick Buechner beg to be called to mind: To sentimentalize something is to look only at the emotion it stirs in us rather than at the reality of it…. To sentimentalize something is to savor rather than suffer the sadness of it, is to sigh over the prettiness of it rather than to tremble at the beauty of it. What I’m trying to say is the beauty of this year’s Masters may reside not in the splendor of the event but in the simplicity of a good marriage. Look at it this way:
Meredith Was Carrying the Heaviest Bag
Caddy: A person who carries a golfer’s clubs and provides other assistance during a match. If you listen more than a minute to Scheffler’s interviews you’ll know he thinks his caddy is close to being divine. He can’t say enough good about his bag-carrying friend and confidant, Ted Scott. But if you listen a little longer and fathom a little deeper — as the press did with Scheffler at sundown on Masters’ Sunday — you’ll not miss that his marriage, under God, informs his life above all else; that his marriage relationship is supreme.
For three days Meredith had followed Scottie through every hole, carrying an unseen but weighty bag of her husband’s hopes, ambitions, dreams, and life’s calling. And when she was called upon to provide other assistance on day four she was there with it. This kind of relationship between husband and wife is a reciprocal relationship but it’s — Are you ready for this? — greater than love. It’s a covenant relationship.
What’s a Covenant Relationship?
It’s the exchanged vows at the wedding altar. It’s a binding agreement, a legal contract, a seal between two parties. Some time back, our minister (same pulpit, different minister) quoted famed German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer: It’s not love that makes a marriage endure. It’s the marriage that makes love endure.
