​Scottie Scheffler might as well have been sitting behind glass at a zoo, not at a podium inside Royal Birkdale’s media center. The world’s top-ranked player, a year removed from his famous “What is the point?” soliloquy at Portrush, was expected by the gathered press to perform similar tricks.One by one, they tapped the proverbial glass:AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“Do you have any other crisis of the soul you want to relate to us?”“Do you feel at peace?”“Your legacy doesn’t matter at all?”Scheffler initially tried not to bite: “I don’t want to start rambling again,” he said, “because that’s what I did last year and we got a little bit off the rails.”But a few questions later, when asked how much specific benchmarks – first to do this, one of four to do that, etc. – motivate him, Scheffler’s philosophical nature returned.“To be completely honest, not really,” Scheffler responded. “I don’t really play, like, for a place in history. I’m not playing for anything like that because – this is going to sound a little morbid – at the end of the day, I’m going to live my life, and it’s going to end. When it ends, I’m going somewhere else, and I’m not going to be here anymore.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“Legacy and all that stuff was never really something that motivated me. For me, it was always competition. I loved playing golf. I loved waking up with butterflies because I’m going out to play a tournament and I get a chance to compete today. I love those feelings, and when I retire, I’m going to miss them.”Scheffler last year: What’s the point?Scheffler this year: We’re all going to die.“Is that going to be a quote?” Scheffler asked the reporters, laughing, before diving deeper.“There’s things I would like to accomplish in the game, but at the end of the day, I have never once thought about how I’m going to be remembered,” Scheffler continued. “To me, it truly doesn’t matter from a sense of like accomplishment. Like when I die, Hey, Scottie won four majors and 20 tournaments, and he won this much money; That has zero effect on me. … I’d much rather be remembered for doing things the right way than the guy that won all the tournaments.”2026open.pngThe Open 2026: Ranking all 156 players in field at Royal BirkdaleAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs The Open heads to a new-look Royal Birkdale this week, it’s time to rank Scottie Scheffler and the rest of the field for the year’s final major. Brentley Romine, Brentley Romine,When he was younger, Scheffler admittedly took himself too seriously. He’s gotten much better, he believes, at taking his hat off and shaking hands in defeat. He also still wants to win, badly, though the nervous indigestion that he’d get before big rounds – Scheffler revealed he was burping up chunks of food for a week prior to the 2017 U.S. Open, where he’d ultimately capture low-amateur honors – the stress isn’t nearly as