I don’t know much about golf.
Lucky for me, the people that hand out press credentials for the PGA Tour don’t care about that. So when I saw that Scottie Scheffler, the best male golfer in the world right now, was coming to Minnesota for this past weekend’s 3M Open, I thought it’d be cool to see him at work.
So I asked the PGA for a press pass. And then I asked Racket if they would let me, an underqualified yet eager freelancer, write about what I experienced across 18 holes at TPC Twin Cities. Surprisingly, they both said yes. When I asked these questions, however, I didn’t expect the temp to be hovering around 100 degrees. Bound by duty and curiosity, I drove up to Blaine anyway.
After spilling sunscreen all over my shirt, I picked up my credentials around 7:30 a.m., about 20 minutes after the first pair of golfers had teed off Sunday. Before I found my way to the actual golf course, I stopped in the tournament store, which was full of people in performance polos browsing 3M Open-branded performance polos.
At the first tee, the half-dozen or so golfers slated to tee off next were all fine-tuning their short game on the practice green. It felt like I was inside a human zoo. Fans (what few there were this early) surrounded the golfers, watching them putt. Everyone involved was silent, and the zoo-animal golfers did the best to avoid eye contact with their observers. Even though golf is known as the quietest sport, I was amazed at how quiet it was. Which made it all the more shocking when some employee drove up on a golf cart, loudly declaring to someone on the other end of a phone call, “Rico was pissed because he didn’t come to our office.”
I followed the first few pairs of golfers as they made their way through the front nine. As I walked these first few holes, I never found myself in a clump of more than two dozen fans. Neighbors of the golf course watched from their backyards, and others sold water and Gatorade at a steep discount.
Most of the golfers didn’t speak much, but I was charmed when the quiet atmosphere let me hear Li Haotong (109th-ranked golfer in the world) and Pontus Nyholm (133rd) shooting the shit between shots, just as any two non-pros on the course would.
As I kept walking, I got to the sixth hole, at the far end of the course. I looked around and realized the already small gallery had dwindled to just me and four others. As I got closer to the center of the course, the crowd slowly grew, but by the time I returned to the media center to take advantage of the free water, fruit, and air conditioning, attendance was still surprisingly small.
At the end of hole 15 I ran into Haotong and Nyholm again; they were still gabbing away. While walking down the fairway on 17, Haotong kept talking about how he was “terrible,” and after a disappointing drive on 18, he slammed his driver on the tee marker. Elite athletes: They're just like us!
I then made my way back to the beginning, because it was time for 30-year-old powerhouse Scottie Scheffler to start. Not surprisingly, the crowds had finally arrived. Fans standing in the perfect spots to watch other golfers start their rounds were facing away, eyes locked on Scheffler practicing putts. And when he approached the first tee, the entire area became gridlocked.
“Is this Disneyworld?” one fan asked.
“Not as bad as a Tiger crowd,” a staff member remarked.
A few minutes after Scheffler teed off, the crowd thinned out again.
After getting more water and finding a cool bug in my hair at the media center (see above), I went to see more of Schefflermania along the front nine. Sure enough, wherever Scheffler went, there were 100 times more fans than anywhere else on the course.
Around this time I noticed a fan in an oxygen mark being sped away via golf cart. The sun had really come out by Scheffler’s noon tee time, and the tropical temps started beating down on TPC Twin Cities.
Now is a good time to mention that it is basically impossible to see the ball when professional golfers hit it. They smack it so fast, into a light-colored sky, that the best someone like me, and most of the people around me, could do was wait for others to react and then copy whatever they do. That said, I still bought into the excitement of seeing Scheffler swing at that invisible ball.
As the throng followed him to the midpoint of his round, I decided to venture backwards to see what the crowd looked like in his wake. It was barely busier than it was in the morning. Jackson Koivun, who started the final day in the lead and eventually won the whole thing, was in the last pairing; only a couple dozen fans stood watching him. The neighbors and black market Gatorade vendors had mostly retreated inside. I did talk to one man, Troy, watching from his friend’s yard, who told me he could barely see Scheffler when he went by, but still enjoyed the experience.
When I got back to the center of the course again, right around 2 p.m., I applied my fourth round of sunscreen and got some more water. The heat was not messing around. As fans awaited Scheffler on the 14th, I saw lots of red faces and 1,000-yard stares. “I’ll sacrifice visibility to be in the shade over here,” one fan said. The line for the water refill station was “longer than the mob following Scheffler,” another quipped.
The sunbaked course felt quiet again—until Scheffler arrived. I got to enjoy the backs of people’s heads as I tried to catch a glimpse of the world's No. 1-ranked golfer. After his drive on the 16th hole, Scheffler made his way to a porta-potty. When he came back out, one fan yelled, “Come on, Scottie, stay focused!” Scheffler took his advice, looking straight at the scoreboard and never acknowledging the handful of us had just waited for him to pee.
As the day got hotter, the crowd grew denser. From the 16th to the 18th holes, I mostly just stood in a long line as sweat streamed into my eyes. "Scheffler was worth the price of admission, I don’t really need to stay for the last guy,” one spectator said at the 18th. Multiple others echoed that sentiment. The "last guy," by the way, was Jackson Koivuna. Competing in just his 12th PGA event, the victorious 21-year-old comfortably held off runner-up Scheffler the entire last day to place first.
But I can't judge those dismissive Scheffler fanatics; I also bailed, heading back to the media center one last time. “I’ll sit for a little bit,” I thought as I returned to the blasting AC. That turned into a good hour.
When I got back to my car, the thermometer read 111 degrees. That's the price you pay to see golf's hottest star in Blaine.
