Scottie Scheffler in the third round of the PGA Championship.
getty photos
Around 5:30 a.m. on a dark and hot Friday in downtown Louisville, Ky., a black SUV pulled up from the four-story AC Hotel on East Market Street. Its location: Valhalla Golf Club, about 17 miles to the east. At the wheel was an ESPN production runner covering four on-air personalities – reporter Jeff Darlington; commentator and former US Open champion Geoff Ogilvy; and play-by-play announcers Dave Fleming and Bob Wischusen – on site to cover the 106th PGA Championship. Most of the 30-minute drive was traffic-free, but that changed as the SUV approached the club. Shelbyville Road, the main road in and out of Valhalla, was backed up due to a police investigation related to a pedestrian fatality.
To avoid the chaos, the ESPN runner diverted the SUV onto less congested back roads and soon ran into a police officer patrolling the intersection about a third of a mile from the club's entrance. When the ESPN staff showed up and showed their parking credentials, the officer let them through. However, as they approached the entrance, they were again stopped by a bus just before the entrance. As they waited for the bus to leave, a Lexus SUV – marked as a PGA Championship car – pulled up in the westbound lane next to them.
“And that,” Wischusen told me in a phone interview Saturday evening, “is where the argument started.”
The confrontation – which you have now read, heard and/or remembered about – involved the world's top-ranked male golfer, Scottie Scheffler, and a Louisville Metropolitan Police Department detective named Bryan Gillis. Briefly: After Scheffler entered the westbound lane, Gillis, who was directing traffic, stopped Scheffler and gave him instructions. But, according to Gillis, Scheffler “refused to listen and rushed forward, dragging him to the ground.” In a statement Friday, Scheffler said he was “proceeding as ordered” and that the incident was caused by “a misunderstanding of what I thought I was being asked to do.” Scheffler was arrested and taken to the Louisville Municipal Department of Corrections, where he was charged with three counts of impaired driving and second-degree assault on a police officer, a felony.
News of the bombing was broken by Darlington, who had witnessed much of what had happened. At 6:35 a.m., Darlington tweeted: “No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler was arrested by police in handcuffs after a misunderstanding with traffic led to his attempt to run over a police officer at Valhalla Golf Club. The officer tried to attach himself to Scheffler's car, and Scheffler then stopped his car at the entrance to Valhalla. The officer then began yelling at Scheffler to get out of the car. When Scheffler got out of the car, the officer shoved Scheffler into the car and quickly handcuffed him. He is currently locked in the back of a police car.”
Forty-five minutes later, Darlington posted a video on Twitter – which as of this writing has been viewed nearly 20 million times – of two police officers leading the Masters champion into a handcuffed police car. “You're going to jail,” the officer told Darlington in the video, “and there's nothing you can do about it.” Later that morning, Darlington cemented his status as the star witness to the most dramatic sports story of the year, perhaps a decade, when he reported his account of the mind-bending events on SportsCenter.
However, Darlington was not the only witness. His four colleagues who were traveling with him had been at the scene, watching from inside the SUV. On Saturday, Wischusen, who has yet to speak publicly about what led to his arrest, spoke to GOLF.com about what he saw and heard. His account confirms Darlington's, but Wischusen also provides new details.
As Scheffler pulled up to the left of the ESPN car, Wischusen said he and his ESPN colleagues could not see who was driving. Moments later, the officer “jumped in front” of what the ESPN crew would later learn was the Lexus driven by Scheffler. “He was nice, you know, energetic, let's say,” Wischusen said of Officer Gillis. Wischusen said Gillis shone his flashlight up and down Scheffler's car and yelled at him: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, who are you? Where are you going? Return to the line. You are not allowed to enter here.”
Wischusen said he could not hear anything Scheffler said to Gillis but that Gillis was “yelling” at Scheffler for passing the ESPN car on the left. Wischusen said that because the policeman and his colleagues were wearing yellow jackets, it was not clear to him and his colleagues whether they were police officers or the security of the tournament.
After Scheffler cooperated with the officer, Wischusen said Scheffler began to pull away. As Darlington explained, at this point Gillis “attached” himself to the car. As Gillis, whose body camera was not working during the incident, explained, she was “dragged” by Scheffler's car, resulting in “pain, swelling and bruising to her left wrist and knee” and her pants were irreparably damaged. .”
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This is how Wischusen remembers that time: “There [Scheffler] passed by him, the policeman became very angry and chased the car. … My impression was that he was running around chasing a car, and maybe he tripped and fell. I mean, there was some kind of outcropping or medium, you know, by the front gate. And remember, it was raining. It was 6 o'clock in the morning. It was dark.”
Asked how Darlington described the officer “connecting” himself to the car, Wischusen said, “I could see him stumbling, but I didn't have a clear idea of how he wanted to separate his connection to the car.”
Wischusen said Scheffler was driving at a slow speed — “the speed you would drive a car when you get to the front gate of the place,” he said — and before he pulled over he had driven about 10 yards or so. Darlington was moderate.
When Scheffler stopped the car, Wischusen said Gillis was visibly upset. “He runs to the driver's side, and he yells at his headlight, you know, 'Get out of the car, get out of the car' – banging on the window – 'turn off the engine, get out.' of the car. I'm a police officer.'”
The driver “peacefully got out” of the car, Wischusen said, at which point the officer “stopped him in the car and put him in handcuffs.” Said Wischusen: “That's when we realized—you know, from that moment to that moment we were like, Oh my God, whoever's in this car, they're going to be arrested of some kind. And it said, 'Oh my God, it's Scottie Scheffler.
Realizing the gravity and magnitude of the moment, Darlington quickly switched into reporter mode and got out of the SUV to document what was happening. Wischusen, Ogilvy, Fleming and their driver hung from the car. “I'm not an investigative reporter, am I?” Wischusen said. “I thought the right thing to do was just sit in the car, let Jeff get out and ask questions and let the situation go, and certainly not involve ourselves or suddenly try to, you know, have a role. to play.”
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The mood in the back of the SUV as the passengers watch this mysterious scene play out in front of them? Panic, Wischusen said. “It's exactly what you'd think,” he said. “The best player in the world was recently arrested trying to enter the gate of the golf course. I mean, you know, like, what just happened? Are we indeed Do you see what we just saw?“
Darlington did not return to the SUV. He wanted to cover as much of the scene as possible, Wischusen said, so others entered the gate to the TV complex without him. By the time they arrived, ESPN's production team knew what had happened and were already thinking about how to cover the most tragic story in major league history. With tee times pushed back due to traffic delays, ESPN producers had a little time to play with them before players hit the course to complete their first rounds — but not much time. The most pressing issue, however, was getting clarity on Scheffler's situation.
“In a very rapid change, we went from the job of people to call a sports event to a press conference, a news reporting campaign,” said Wischusen. “And at one point we were both. After half an hour on the scene, we had no idea when Scottie Scheffler would be processed and released on bail. Would he back down? Would he stay in jail? Will he miss his tee time? Oh, wait — we found out you're coming back. So, we were wearing both hats at the same time. How can we be a news organization covering the Scottie Scheffler story while at the same time covering a golf tournament going on right now, where there are twelve teams on the golf course playing golf? It's still our job to tell people and show what's going on in the PGA. And for about 14 hours straight we wore both hats.”
Scheffler is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning in Louisville; It is not clear whether he will appear in court in person. Scheffler's attorney, Steve Romines, told GOLF.com that he and his team intend to plead “not guilty” to all charges. Romines said he doesn't expect a one-day decision from the judge. “It is possible that it will be a few days,” he said, at which time “the judge will dismiss the charges, or we will go to court.”
Wischusen said as of Friday evening, as far as he knew, none of the ESPN employees who witnessed the arrests had been contacted by legal teams on either side. If they do reach out, Wischusen said, “I would think they would probably go to Jeff first, because (a) our version of events is the same, and (b) he had more experience than any of us. He got out of the car and recorded more about what was happening and then asked some questions and shot the video. My guess is that if neither side ever contacted either of us, to me, that tells me that both sides would say this shouldn't have happened. Let's just agree that bygones are bygones. Cool heads are there.”
In conversation with Louisville The Courier-Journal, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg was asked if the charges against Scheffler would be dropped. “For now,” said the mayor, “the case is in the hands of our district attorney, and we will let the legal process take its course.”
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