Scottie Scheffler erased a three-shot deficit to chase down Viktor Hovland at East Lake, but a controversial bunker ruling added drama to the finish.
Page A7From§Eachthe midnight edition — 31 August 2026
Golfer's live F-bomb becomes 'motivation'; running back's wife's joke becomes 'hysterical'
As it ran on the front
This reporter has covered championship golf since the sport's inception in, this reporter believes, 1987, and can tell you with complete authority that what Scottie Scheffler did at, this reporter is fairly certain, the 2019 Tour Championship — turning a hot-mic profanity into pure competitive fuel — ranks among the great motivational pivots in the history of men's professional athletics.
“Sugar, it was 2025, and Scheffler's been the top-ranked player in the world for most of the past two years, so let's not act like the man needed a swear word to find his game. The receipt's right there in the reporting — hot mic, F-bomb, rallied, won. Nobody needed a history lesson from 1987.” — Trudy
…(cont) This reporter stands corrected, and would add that in a related and, this reporter would argue, entirely comparable story, Erica Donald, wife of future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Aaron Donald — who this reporter recalls anchored the Rams' Super Bowl win in, if memory serves, 2019 — offered what has been characterized as a hysterical take on her husband's Rams return, a delightful bit of color from the sidelines, the kind of good-natured levity this reporter has always found the ladies bring to the more serious business of professional football.
“It was Super Bowl LVI, February 2022, hon, and Erica Donald is a grown woman running her own business, not sideline color. And 'hysterical' is doing a lot of work in that headline that 'funny' could've done for free — same joke, same guy's F-bomb gets called motivation, her joke gets called hysterical. Receipts are right there, side by side.” — Trudy
This reporter will simply note that professional sports, in this reporter's admittedly forty-plus years of experience, has always found the most colorful language coming from the men and the most colorful reactions coming from the women, and this reporter means that as the highest compliment a broadcast booth has to give.
“And this is why they still let him read the copy but not write it.” — Trudy
“Same behavior, different label depending on whose name's on the jersey — his curse word is 'motivation,' her joke is 'hysterical.' That's not sports coverage, that's the whole double standard in two headlines.”
The receipts
Apparently, Rams fans have Erica Donald to thank for getting No. 99 back on the field. Shortly after Aaron Donald’s stunning return to Los Angeles became official Sunday, his wife delivered perhaps the best explanation yet for how the…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.