Scheffler, McIlroy embrace mortality talk ahead of Open Championship

On the eve of The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, the two finest golfers in the world arrived not with thoughts of immortality, but with a quiet reckoning about its irrelevance. Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, each carrying the weight of expectation that comes with greatness, offered an unexpected meditation: that legacy, by its very nature, belongs to the living — and neither man plans to be present for the verdict. In dismissing history, they may have found something more useful than ambition: the freedom to simply play.