Last week, an interview with the number one golfer in the world, Scottie Scheffler, went viral.

Speaking before the British Open, Scheffler reflected on his success with a level of vulnerability rarely seen from athletes at the top of their sport. He summed up his thoughts with a three-word question: “What’s the point?”

“This is not a fulfilling life,” he said. “It’s fulfilling from a sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from the sense of . . . the deepest places of your heart.”

He pointed to the absurdity of working his whole life to win a tournament, only to celebrate “for a few minutes” before moving on to the next event. Even the joy he finds in the game and the gratitude he feels for the chance to compete don’t provide ultimate fulfillment.

“This is not the place to look for your satisfaction,” he said.

Taken as a whole, it was a remarkable reflection on meaning and purpose, vocation and calling, success and striving. And it struck a chord. Here was a modern adaptation of Ecclesiastes, with Scheffler echoing Qoheleth’s questions: “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (1:3).

Message or the Messenger

Others have written beautifully about the spiritual significance of Scheffler’s words, and how they reflect his Christ-centered identity, his understanding of rightly ordered loves, and his healthy Christian view of vocation.

I’d echo and affirm all those perspectives. But there’s one other lesson we can take from Scheffler, or at least one question we could ask ourselves: Did Scheffler’s words resonate so much because of the truth of what he shared, or because of his status as the best golfer in the world?

Imagine, for a moment, another scenario. Instead of Scheffler in front of the cameras, it’s a middling pro golfer who has never won a PGA tournament. Would a similar message resonate if it came from this athlete?

Even the joy he finds in the game and the gratitude he feels for the chance to compete don’t provide ultimate fulfillment.

We have some evidence it wouldn’t.

In 2008, after ending the season with a blowout loss, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo told reporters, “If this is the worst thing that will ever happen to me, then I’ve lived a pretty good life.”

In 2024, Los Angeles Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon began spring training by stating that baseball has “never been a top priority” for him.

“This is a job,” he continued. “My faith, my family come first before this job.”

In both cases, backlash ensued among sports fans.

Scheffler’s message, by contrast, was widely praised—and even turned into a Nike ad campaign. The messenger seemed to matter just as much, if not more, than the message.

Trustworthy Messenger

I think there are two reasons for this.

In Ecclesiastes, the narrator informs us he “acquired great wisdom” (1:16), “made great works” (2:4), and had “great possessions” (v. 7). In short, he “became great and surpassed all who were before [him] in Jerusalem” (v. 9).

This familiarity with the heights of success added weight to the wisdom he shared.

Likewise, Scheffler’s place at the top of the golf world provides a perspective beyond theorizing and hypotheticals. When he tells us that reaching the mountaintop won’t truly satisfy, we know he speaks from experience.

But there’s another reason Scheffler’s number one ranking matters.

Untrustworthy Nuance

Let’s call it the John Wooden paradox: We seem to especially love the “winning isn’t ultimate” message when it comes from the greatest winners of all time.

Wooden famously coached the UCLA basketball team to 10 national championships in 12 years, all while preaching that true success wasn’t about winning but instead about knowing you gave your best. His “pyramid of success,” in turn, became popular among coaches and business leaders looking for a method that could take them to the top and wanting to know the secret to leading a championship team.

In a similar way, we can easily take Scheffler’s words not as a testimony that bears witness to wisdom but as a pathway for achievement. We think, If I copy his “winning doesn’t fulfill” mindset, maybe I’ll win more.

Alan Noble writes about this tendency in his book You Are Not Your Own, describing how we constantly turn to “another method, better training, or another tool” to achieve success and justify our place in the world.

If we do this, Scheffler’s message is transformed into yet another technique for optimization. And if we aren’t careful and discerning, we can end up back on the same treadmill of performance-based identity that we’re trying to avoid.

Universal Struggle and Eternal Truth

If I’m honest, I’m drawn to Scheffler’s perspective for both reasons, and with mixed motivations.

Yes, I like the Ecclesiastes vibes. But I also want to win. I want to succeed. I want to achieve. And when I see a Christian athlete who says all the right things about identity and priorities while also standing at the top of his field, there’s a part of me that thinks, See, you can have it all.

Yet if you listen to the full five-minute clip from Scheffler’s interview, you can hear something more profound and perhaps even more relatable to our own situations. He speaks not as a man who has solved the problem but as someone in the struggle right now.

He speaks not as a man who has solved the problem but as someone in the struggle right now.

“Why do I want to win the tournament so bad?” he says. “That’s something that I wrestle with on a daily basis.”

Life is long. The struggle doesn’t stop even if we say the right words. As soon as we think we’ve figured it out, we realize we’ve drifted down the wrong path.

This is why we need Christ and each other. And it’s precisely why it’s good to be reminded that our striving and our achievements will not bring fulfillment—whether that reminder comes from the best golfer in the world, the athlete on the margins, or the ordinary believers who walk alongside us in our daily lives.