You can probably file this away under “Famous Quotes Before Disaster,” because this type of attitude leads to tragic endings.
Scottie Scheffler actually laughed off the incident where he clearly experienced pain in the aftermath of a “what was that?” swing off the 11th tee last Friday.
Let’s revisit that incident:
It’s alarming enough to see a top-ranked golf professional making moves like this on the tee to begin with, and the pained exclamation and bend indicate something serious happened there.
Even more alarming is his admission that it’s happened before – I know he had a neck injury not too long ago, so I would have thought that he would be looking into what was causing this issue.
However, in fine “whistling past the graveyard” fashion, Scheffler brushed it off, according to the Golf Magic website’s Andy Roberts:
Scheffler was seen wincing in pain after hitting a tee shot down the par-4 2nd during the second round.
Golf Channel reporter Rex Hoggard asked him whether he experienced any further issues on Saturday.
But Scheffler thankfully said he was feeling absolutely fine.
“Yeah I feel good,” confirmed Scheffler, who won his third career major at the PGA Championship last week.
“I just had a little pinch, it happens every now and then. “It also happened once last week too so it’s not a big deal.”
The bolding is mine.
Let’s unpack this.
So, Scottie was feeling good at the time he was speaking – he had just had “a little pinch, it happens every now and then. It also happened once last week so it’s not a big deal.”
The degree of negligence in that statement, my friends, is mind-boggling.
Let me give you an analogy, if you will.
You’re driving home in your very expensive sports car and you hear a knock, then smell something burning.
You make it home, step out of the vehicle, and nothing seems amiss. So you shrug and head into the house.
A week later, you’re driving your friend around and again, there’s a knock and your friend tells you that he smells something burning.
You nod and wave it off, telling him, “Ah, it happens every once in a while. In fact, it happened last week, so it’s not a big deal.”
Tell me that you wouldn’t be agog at this attitude and that you wouldn’t tell your friend that he needs to get that engine checked yesterday.
Here’s what makes it worse – you can buy another sports car if you’re so foolish as to destroy the one you have out of negligence, but you can’t buy another back when you wreck the one you have.
Ask Fred Couples.
Or Tiger Woods.
That “pinch” is the warning sign your body is giving you that you’re doing something very, very wrong in your golf swing.
I can guarantee you that one or both of these gents experienced back issues before catastrophe struck, and simply waved it off as “no big deal.”
I mean, if you’re going to insist on playing an entire tournament and a playoff round with a destroyed ACL and a leg fracture, I’m not placing any bets on your common sense.
Do you want to know what I had written on my “Smash Golf” blog when Tiger won that U.S. Open in 2008?
I had said that it was a gutsy performance playing with the injuries he had, and although he’d won the U.S. Open against all odds, I wondered how many future majors he had cost himself aggravating all of that damage.
It seems it may have cost him all of his future majors but one, because even though it would be six years before he would need back surgery, he only ever won the 2019 Masters in the intervening years. And even then, it seemed he only won it because no one else wanted to.
I wish Scottie Scheffler all the best, but as the chiropractor said in the comment submitted by Chief Cowpie in the previous posting:
Joints, muscles, ligaments, don’t get along with these oddball actions. Then the injuries change the action to compensate and it spirals from there… NEVER back to where it started.
You’re seeing it in real time, just as I watched in disbelief when Tiger Woods took up with a swing coach in 2010 and I said he was eventually going to break his back – whether or not I actually spoke those words, I called the swing model “the back-breaker.”
It took 4 years from 2010 before it reached that point, but by then, the damage was done.
I also predicted he’d never win another major if he kept at it – and he didn’t win his next and last major until five years after he’d left that coach.
This chiropractor, by the way, also mentioned in the comment that he’d predicted disaster for Tiger.
It doesn’t happen overnight. It might not happen at all, if you’re lucky enough.
But a man in his 20’s who has already had a neck injury and who is experiencing “pinches” serious enough to bend him over in pain, should be very concerned with what is going on with his golf swing.
Again, all the best, but this has “tragedy” written all over it.
WAX Golf 
Golf is the only game in which the ball is stationary but people feel they need to perform acrobatics
I will admit to laughing at this comment.
Scheffler is only two years older than me,but I can’t tell you how many people in my age group,who only play maybe once or twice a month,experience pain from playing golf.They buy expensive equipment too.Equipment that encourages harmful mechanics,with ignorance of golf history,and modern golf pros being all one sees is a bad combination.I genuinely worry for the future of golf if nothing is done.
Golf will be fine, I’m sure.
Golfers, however… not so sure.
In the space industry the term “normalization of deviance” was used to describe what happened with the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. Check out the wikipedia page. Sociologist Vaughan defines the process where a clearly unsafe practice becomes considered normal if it does not immediately cause a catastrophe: “a long incubation period [before a final disaster] with early warning signs that were either misinterpreted, ignored or missed completely”
I like your car example. Must confess I am guilty of that sometimes, but hopefully only on cheaper things.
That’s amazing, Peter – I was in the 10th grade and in the gym on lunch break when that disaster unfolded. I don’t believe we watched it live, but we certainly had watched previous launches and landings on television in class.
I knew about the O-Ring flaw from historical programs on space travel, but I never really absorbed the part about the flaw being known, warned against and ignored by NASA. Incredible negligence there.
“Normalization of deviance” could actually be the best explanation for what’s going on in the golf swing world. To see golfers swinging in ways that will hurt them and in many cases cause life-altering injuries with the fatalism that prevails, it makes sense.
My personal belief has been that so much technical knowledge of the swing has been lost since the days of the Classic Golf Swing era, people are out there just winging it.
Then it occurs to me that the older generation didn’t really know kinesiology either, but for some reason knew enough to not twist their lower backs to achieve a shoulder turn.
It just baffles and befuddles me, as someone who has been participating in sports since the age of six. Complete madness, and everyone just nods and goes along with it.
It is an unusually large number of pro golfers (almost always men) that have succumbed to injury while in their 20s/30s. Jason Day, Anthony Kim, Will Zalatoris, Justin Thomas, Jordan Speith…the list goes on. I remain flummoxed that rational humans cannot connect these effects to the swing that causes this wreckage. Give Tiger credit for at least changing up the swing styles that cause injury. Perhaps they are fearful to try something different since their flawed swings have won and have provided top 1% lifestyle. But emulating Snead or Hogan or Nicklaus must be too “old school”. Me, I like old school..
Thanks, DJ for another insightful review!
Cheers – It is truly mysterious, Peter.
I cane across a sports rehab website where they claim to treat and rehab golf swing injuries.
Yet they had a section on analysis and in it, they are talking about measuring the X Factor separation of hips & shoulders.
I’ve said before, anyone teaching the Modern Golf Swing (including the X Factor rubbish) is automatically disqualified from teaching golf swing mechanics.
They should be subject to tort law.
https://x.com/i/status/1927528139376165079
DJ, you’ll love this swing…New NCAA champion. Kid will need an agent, an asset manager, and an orthopedic surgeon! Hope he makes enough to carry him into his career after golf, which will begin in 2028 or earlier!!
Michael LaSasso
Holy cow, Peter. That is shocking. Absolutely shocking. Obviously a great golfer to win the NCAA, absolutely terrifying technique.
I watched early Will Zalatoris and could see that he wouldn’t last due to spinal problems. This is the first swing I have watched where my physical body reacted with a twinge. 2028 is a good estimate. But I will take the under.
Hello Geoff! I reckon that you can imagine my feelings then, looking at these Modern Golf Swings all the years I watched televised golf, not only in horror but also hearing these moves praised by the analysts. I’m still not over that trauma.