Why the Win Feels Empty After 2 Minutes

The best golfer alive said the quiet part out loud, and it applies to every win you’ve ever chased.

Before the 2025 Open Championship, Scottie Scheffler, the number 1 golfer in the world, sat down at a press conference and told the truth. Out loud. Into a room full of microphones.

“Why do I want to win this tournament so badly? Because if I win, it’ll feel awesome for about 2 minutes.”

2 minutes.

Then he kept going: “This is not a fulfilling life. It’s fulfilling from a sense of accomplishment, but not from the deepest places of your heart.”

Some context, if you don’t follow golf. Scheffler was 29 at the time, with 16 wins, 3 major championships, millions in prize money, and the top ranking on the planet. He said all of this from the summit of his sport, days before one of the biggest tournaments in golf.

Which is exactly why it lands. When the guy standing on the peak tells you the view runs out in 2 minutes, believe him.

I know his math from the inside. I built CrossFit LA, one of the first 10 CrossFit gyms in the world, from 8 members into a community of more than 350, and eventually sold it. I co-created the Whole Life Challenge, an online health program that reached over 250,000 people. Every finish line paid out a hit of relief, a little awe, maybe some champagne. Then Tuesday showed up with a new target already on the whiteboard.

Honestly, Scheffler’s 2 minutes might be generous.

Here’s the trap underneath it. If you play for the feeling the win gives you, you’ve handed your peace to a moving target. You hit the number, and the number moves. You win the tournament, and by dinner you’re planning the next one. The relief was real. It just came with an expiration date measured in minutes.

And look closely at those 2 minutes, because they’re telling you something. For 2 minutes, the chasing stops. The judge inside goes quiet. You get to be still. Which suggests the trophy’s real gift was permission: for 2 minutes, you stopped striving long enough to feel what was already there.

Peace. Joy. Contentment. Love. They’re the blue sky. Clouds roll in, sometimes for weeks, and the sky sits behind them the whole time, unbothered. The work is remembering it’s there, especially mid-storm.

So maybe the whole game deserves a second look. If a 3-time major champion can stand at the top and say the deepest places of his heart stay hungry, then the game itself might be rigged: built to pay out in accomplishment, a currency your heart doesn’t spend.

There’s a different game available, and you can play both at once. Play to feel. Play to connect. Play to remember who you already were before the scoreboard got involved.

And keep competing. I do. I still love a win, and I want plenty of them for you. Just watch what you’re asking the win to do for you. It can give you 2 great minutes. It can’t tell you who you are.

If something in you recognized Scheffler’s words, that’s worth sitting with. The quiet hunger at the top, the one that never makes it into the boardroom, is far more common than the highlight reels let on. And it’s workable.

With love, Andy

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