If History is Any Indication (it is), Then the Rest of the Field Has No Chance Against Notorious Criminal Scottie Scheffler

As I'm sitting down to write this, noted fugitive Scottie Scheffler is tied for 10th at the PGA at 1-under through 7. Though by the time it posts and you're reading this, he'll probably have lapped the field and put this championship out of reach. Because, it seems, history is on the side of the badass outlaw who can't be expected to play by society's rules. Like boxers, hockey enforcers, wrestling heels and 1980s Oakland Raiders, golfers are a breed apart. It's a sport that attracts a certain criminal element. The haunted. The insane. Fearless men who can't be governed. Scheffler is not the first. Case in point:

And the result:

Bettmann. Getty Images.

Bobby Jones. The grand gentleman of the game. The man whose very name makes Jim Nantz rub his nipples with delight as he waxes poetically about Magnolia Lane, Amen Corner, and the ghosts whispering in the pines every Masters Sunday. Like Scheffler, he refused to bend the knee to authority. He was a rebel. A loner. A solitary figure who lived by his own moral code like The Man With No Name or Mad Max, and would not be tamed. 

Jones once said of championship golf, "it is something like a cage. First you are expected to get into it and then you are expected to stay there. But of course, nobody can stay there." He couldn't stay on the course. Scheffler couldn't stay in his car. And they each take that same counter culture spirit onto the course and bend everyone else to their will.

Of course the history lesson in that above Tweet doesn't specify when exactly this was. But since Jones won the Open Championship three times between 1926-30, we have a pretty good indication. It was a time of strife in the world. Economic collapse. Rising threats in Europe and the East. People rebelling against the old ways. And it took one man to stand up to authority, step onto the course, and leave his mark in history. And since time is a flat circle, everything we do we have done before and will be again, this championship was Scheffler's before the 2nd round ever began.