In an interview with Ewan Murray for The Guardian on the eve of last month’s Open Championship, Shane Lowry spoke about his famously boisterous and prolonged celebrations after he won the 2019 Open at Royal Portrush. “I work my nuts off,” he said. “You can’t play at this level without doing that. If I win another [major championship], I’ll celebrate twice as good. It’s so hard out here, so hard to win big tournaments, that when you do, you need to enjoy them.”

He added: “Players came to me afterwards [and] I remember Martin Kaymer’s caddie telling me ‘Martin regrets not doing what you did because when he was winning majors, world No. 1, he took it for granted a little bit’. You need to enjoy the moments.”

But what does that mean? For the new champion, Scottie Scheffler, apparently celebration doesn’t look anything like a week of drinking Guinness. Before the championship got underway, the present world No. 1 got pretty philosophical on the subject. “That’s something I wrestle with on a daily basis – why do I want to win the Open Championship so badly? I don’t know because, if I win, it’s going to be awesome for two minutes. Then we’re going to get to the next week – ‘Hey, you won two majors [he had already won the USPGA Championship] this year; how important is it for you to win the FedEx Cup playoffs?’ And we’re back here again.” Well, he was wrestling with that one last week, where he finished third, and I guess he will be again this one at the BMW Championship.

He also said: “The Byron Nelson championship at home [in Texas] – I literally worked my entire life to become good at golf to have an opportunity to win that tournament. You win it, you celebrate, get to hug my family, my sister’s there, it’s such an amazing moment. Then it’s like, ‘OK, what are we going to eat for dinner?’ Life goes on.” (Dinner? Novak Djokovic is said to have celebrated one Grand Slam win with a single square of chocolate. That’s ascetic for you.)

In simple terms, I guess, Scheffler is saying “Is that it?” I have read of athletes in other sports who have achieved a career-long goal and then felt utterly lost – “what’s the point of anything now?” Scheffler perhaps suggested his emotions most profoundly when he said that victory is “fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart”. That’s well put. On the other hand, and while this was the opposite of victory, Scheffler was tearfully distraught when he and Brooks Koepka were hammered 9&7 by Ludvig Åberg and Viktor Hovland in the Saturday morning foursomes at the last Ryder Cup. It didn’t look then like golf didn’t matter or that his next question might be “What’s for lunch?”

It’s a matter of each to his own, I suppose. Also, when you win as frequently as Scheffler does, maybe there is an element of ‘just another day at the office’ about it. At Portrush, Scheffler and Lowry were in the same grouping for the first two rounds. The Irishman was not remotely surprised that the American won this one. “I honestly thought he was going to birdie every hole,” said Lowry. “I think he’s just incredible to watch. His bad shots are really good. That’s when you know he’s really good.”

In Scottie’s case, I think we can be pretty confident that his bad shots aren’t a reference to some dodgy tequila.

You can follow Robert Green on Twitter @robrtgreen and enjoy his other blog f-factors.com as well as his golf archive on robertgreen-golf.com

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