Scottie Scheffler’s viral fight with coach? It’s called ‘getting in my grill’

OAKMONT, Pa. — Dad hit golf balls. Son hit golf balls. 

Late Saturday afternoon, on the far left side of the Oakmont Country Club range, the scene was, by all measures, cute. Scottie Scheffler struck shots as his longtime coach, Randy Smith, watched. And a few feet behind them, Scheffler’s 1-year-old son, Bennett, struck shots from the ground as caddie Ted Scott rolled balls in his direction. Every so often, dad looked back and smiled, before he, too, sent some balls toward his boy. A few reporter types eventually wandered over, recorded things and sent the video out into the internet. 

Maybe you saw it. And perhaps you watched the video from the same range a day earlier. If Saturday’s made you feel warm, Friday’s brought the heat. Then, after a U.S. Open second round that saw him hit just six of 14 fairways and seven of 18 greens, Scheffler and Smith spat. The pro pointed. He talked animatingly. He paced. The coach responded. The pro answered back.  

Said announcer Dan Hicks as the USA Network showed the exchange on its broadcast: “The course can just mess with your head. There’s Scheffler over there with his longtime instructor, Randy Smith, and they’re talking about something.”

Said analyst Kevin Kisner: “They’re talking about when I feel that it doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to.”

Said analyst Brad Faxon: “I’ve never seen him this animated, Dan.”

Saturday, Scheffler said he himself had. 

After he’d shot a third-round 70 that put him eight strokes out of the lead entering the Open’s final day, Scheffler called the viral back-and-forth “pretty regular.” It also offered, he said, a window into the player-coach relationship. 

“You look at something like yesterday, like me getting frustrated on the range with my coach Randy … and it’s just one of those deals,” Scheffler said, “when you have the trust between people that you’re almost like a family; you’ve worked together for so long. …

“So when you have the great relationships with people, they’re able to pick you up when you need to be picked up, and then they’re there to kind of keep you in line when things are not going the way they should be and if your attitude’s a little bit off. … When have you that consistency and you have long-term relationships, there’s a lot more trust that gets built up between people, and a true friend is somebody that is there for you when you need them, but they’re also they’re not going to just be a yes-man — they’re there to help you become the best version of yourself, and especially when you look at a team.

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“Like Randy’s job is to help me become the better golfer, and Randy’s got a lot of other roles, but at the end of the day, as a golf coach, your job is to help me become a better player, and sometimes that’s getting in my grill and then other times it’s putting his arm around me and telling me it’s OK.

“I think when you have those long relationships like that, there’s a lot of trust that gets built up and you’re able to say some things that you wouldn’t really say in the first six months of working with somebody.”

You wonder, though: What did they solve Friday?

“To be honest with you,” Scheffler said, “yesterday we left the range, I felt like I didn’t figure anything out. Just one of those days where just the swing wasn’t there. Randy had some thoughts for me that definitely helped today, but I’m going to go hit a few more balls and see if we can figure something out. But overall today was — yesterday for me to shoot one-over was, I mean, pretty amazing, I felt like, with the spots I was hitting it and the way I was playing. I got up-and-down a lot. I made a lot of key putts, especially on the back nine. …

“Today, once again, another battle. It’s been three days of battling out there. Usually over the course of 72 holes you have a couple days where you your swing feels pretty good, a couple days where maybe it’s off, and weeks where you win it’s maybe you have three or four days of good ball striking and holing some putts, and a week like this week I’ve had three days where I haven’t really had my swing, and I’ve been battling out there and still have a chance, albeit an outside chance, but still a chance.”

Saturday afternoon, they worked again. The session lasted about 15 minutes. 

Bennett’s too.