Xander Schauffele, Louisville Police Det. Bryan Gillis This Week's Sports Hero, Zero

by Julian Spivey

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Xander Schauffele had been one of the best golfers and biggest names on the PGA Tour for quite some time now with 10 wins combined on the PGA Tour and European Tour and having won the Olympic gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics (held in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic). But despite some big moments in his career – the gold medal and the 2017 Tour Championship win – he hadn’t yet won one of the sport’s four major tournaments (Masters, PGA, U.S. Open or British Open) making him probably the biggest name in the sport without one.
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Schauffele had come close many times in major tournaments. He’s finished runner-up at the Masters in 2019, runner-up at the British Open in 2018 and has three top-5 finishes in the U.S. Open. Schauffele had played in 27 major tournaments before this year’s PGA Championship with 21 of them seeing him finish in the top-25 and 13 times in the top-10. He’s only missed the cut on three occasions. He just hadn’t found his way to the top of the leaderboard at the end of 72 holes.

That was until he went wire-to-wire at the PGA Championship at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. Last weekend and secured his first major title. He started the tourney with a major tournament record-tying round of 62 and by the end had a major tournament record of 21-under par winning the event by one stroke over Bryson DeChambeau.

Now Schauffele can get that “best in the sport without a major” monkey off his back. At 30 years old it likely won’t be his last major tournament win either. 

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Unfortunately, for Xander Schauffele, his winning his first career major tournament was only the second biggest story out of the PGA Championship in Louisville last weekend as the world’s No. 1ranked golfer Scottie Scheffler, fresh off winning his second Masters Tournament in three years last month, found himself in handcuffs early on the morning of the second round of the tournament due to some over-zealous and, frankly, bad policing.
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Though it seemed to be a misunderstanding from the beginning, Scheffler was arrested and charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding traffic signals from an officer directing traffic when trying to enter Valhalla Golf Club on Friday, May 17, while emergency vehicles and workers were dealing with an accident involving the death of a pedestrian.

From the very beginning the whole ordeal seemed fishy and like the Louisville Metro P.D. and its Det. Bryan Gillis had overreacted and overstepped, especially because one of the nearest eyewitnesses to the event was ESPN reporter Jeff Darlington, who gave his first-hand reporting from the scene.

It was shocking that the charges weren’t dropped early this week but after footage of the traffic stop caught from a nearby traffic camera was released by the LMPD on Thursday, May 23, the whole incident looks even dumber on the part of the P.D. and basically makes Gillis’s initial statement seem like a fabrication – for instance nowhere in the video is he “dragged by Scheffler’s vehicle” as was in the initial report. The officer, who has been punished by his department on 11 previous occasions (including 13 days suspension combined for five of those offenses), has once again been disciplined by his department for failure to turn his bodycam on during the arrest of Scheffler.

Amazingly, even after all of this has come to light the charges against Scheffler still have not been dropped as of Thursday, May 23.

It seems evident based on the many disciplinary actions against Det. Gillis that he should no longer have a job at the LMPD, but then again that is policing in 2024.