Scottie Scheffler, who won the 153rd Open Championship golf tournament recently, had delivered a now-viral soulful reflection on the fleeting satisfaction of winning much before lifting the Claret Jug. That feeling is something Tom Brady knows all too well.
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Scheffler, speaking ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush, gave a raw and introspective five-minute answer to a simple question: What’s the longest you’ve ever celebrated something?
“It feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for like a few minutes,” Scheffler said. “To win the Byron Nelson Championship at home, I literally worked my entire life to become good at golf… Then it’s like, ‘OK, what are we going to eat for dinner?’ Life goes on.”
The brutally honest take from a man who’s at the top of his field struck a nerve with Brady. The football GOAT had experienced the same internal conflict during his early years of dominance in the NFL.
Back in 2005, the seven-time Super Bowl winner gave a now-famous interview on 60 Minutes, just after winning three Super Bowls in four seasons as a starter for the New England Patriots. In it, he questioned the emotional return of reaching the mountaintop.
“I looked around and thought, ‘There’s gotta be more than this… this can’t be all,’” Brady reflected then.
Cut to today, the GOAT admitted that when he heard Scheffler grapple with that same question, it reminded him of where he once stood. Brady, in his latest newsletter, explained that at 27, football was everything to him, but something still felt incomplete.
“I was young… and I could feel myself resisting the expectation placed on elite athletes… to use professional achievement as the primary meter for personal satisfaction,” he wrote.
What followed for the legend, however, wasn’t disillusionment. And it took Brady years to understand that real satisfaction wasn’t tied to any one moment, but to the pursuit itself. “I learned that it was the pursuit of excellence in each of these areas where I found the most joy, not in the achievements themselves,” he penned.
It was the process, not the outcome… The joy and happiness you’re actually looking for is available every day,” expressed Brady, before sharing that learning to balance his personal life, professional drive, and evolving priorities was the key catalyst that helped him find fulfilment beyond the box score.
“Being a great football player didn’t make me a great dad,” he wrote, “but how I became a great player certainly had an impact.”
Perspectives like these that are gained through time, reflection, and a shift in values, which allowed the former Patriot to not only resonate with Scheffler’s honesty but also offer a message in return: That winning might be temporary, but living with purpose is a full-time job.
