After winning the Masters, Scottie Scheffler revealed he was in tears on the morning of his final round.
The 25-year-old American had not won a PGA Tour event two months ago, but in the past 57 days he has won four of the six events he has entered, and capped it off with a green jacket on Sunday.
Scheffler shot 71 for the round after four-putting the 18th, trimming his winning margin from five strokes down to three with the double-bogey, to finish 10 under for the tournament.
He looked cool, calm and collected throughout as he fought off the challenge of Cameron Smith, but speaking after his win he revealed he was anything but composed on Sunday morning.
"I cried like a baby this morning," he said. "I was so stressed out – I didn’t know what to do.
"I was sitting there telling [wife] Meredith ‘I don’t think I’m ready for this. I’m not ready, I don’t feel like I’m ready for this kind of stuff', and I just felt overwhelmed.
"She told me ‘who are you to say that you are not ready?' and 'who am I to say that I know what’s best for my life?’
"So what we talked about is that God is in control, and that the Lord is leading me; and if today is my time, it’s my time.
"Gosh, it was a long morning. It was long. My stomach has been hurting for two days straight."
First win: February 13
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) April 11, 2022
Fourth win: April 10
Scottie Scheffler earned his first four wins in the shortest span in TOUR history. pic.twitter.com/ZRrzZDYbKR
The gravity of the situation was what weighed on Scheffler, knowing the opportunity he had.
"I think I had a five-shot lead on Friday, and then a three-shot lead going into [Sunday] – I don’t know if you get better opportunities than that," he said.
"You don’t want to waste them. The human condition is to make things bigger than they really are, and years from now I would say people may not remember me as a champion, and that’s fine.
"But in the moment, you think it’s a lot bigger deal than it really is."
While Tiger Woods was the talk of the weekend after returning to golf and making the cut, Scheffler took inspiration from some of his earlier appearances at Augusta.
"[Woods'] YouTube clips are such an inspiration for me," he said.
"I remember watching the highlights of him winning in '97, kind of running away with it – he never really broke his concentration."