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Who the heck does this kid think he is, Jack Nicklaus?
Those were the words of a Corpus Christi Country Club member sitting on a hill watching a 14-year-old Scottie Scheffler play in the club’s member-guest.
Scottie was James Ragan’s ringer, a hired gun in khaki pants who flew into the South Texas city along the Gulf of Mexico. Who would ever suspect this gawky teenager and his pal, a 16-year-old cancer patient, were about to clean their clocks. James told his older sister, Mecklin, “Nobody’s going to know who Scottie is. We’re going to win this thing.” James smiled and broke into laughter at the thought.
Later, during an alternate-shot nine-hole match, one of five they would play against older men who were ill-prepared for the beating they were about to absorb, James hit a pitch that rolled across the green and settled in a back bunker. As Scottie surveyed the situation, he asked James to pull the flag.
This was the moment that led to that question.
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“I’m sitting there as the dumb dad, and I’m not a golfer and I’m not going to open my mouth, though I wanted to,” recalled Scott Scheffler, the ringer’s dad. “Scottie got up there and I thought, 'If there’s a time and a place to make a golf shot, this would probably be it.'”
Sure enough, Scottie being Scottie, he holed it, and Mr. Scheffler, being as humble a man as you’ll ever meet, resisted rubbing it in. Instead, he turned, hands spread wide and palms up, shoulders shrugged and said, “Sometimes the hole just gets in the way of the ball.” Dumbfounded, the man on the hill pressed on. “Who is that kid?”
Scott Scheffler, replied, “Oh, that’s my son.”
The same son who, the night before the final day of the member-guest, stayed up late trying to chip in on the backyard putting green built for James. Jim Ragan, James' father, guessed that Scottie must’ve attempted 200 chips without holing one. He went to bed disappointed but, in the next day’s shootout, when it mattered most, Scottie chipped in to ensure they advanced.
Reminiscing on the day, Scottie cracked that it was the last time teenagers were allowed to play in the tournament. All these years later, members at Corpus Christi recite their own jokes, noting that Scottie Scheffler is the only Masters champion to also win the Corpus Christi Country Club member-guest.
After retiring to the Ragans’ home, Scottie and James drank Dr Pepper out of the trophy. When James tried to hand Scottie the prize to take back to Dallas, Scottie refused.
“I didn’t come here for the trophy,” Scottie said. “I came here for you.”
Think of all the kids, let alone the adults, who would have wanted the trophy for themselves. Here were two friends that were genuinely happy for one another. Perhaps no moment better exemplified their bond through golf, and through James’ struggle with pediatric cancer.
“He just never stopped smiling,” Scottie said.
Ultimately, James had two inoperable tumors near his heart. He died Feb. 17, 2014, during his sophomore year at Rice University, more than seven years after his diagnosis. Scottie and his father attended the viewing and rosary service, and heard loved ones at his funeral service take turns sharing stories of all his efforts to put the lives of others first.
The Scheffler family never has forgotten James, nor his mission to save the next kid from dealing with the horrors of pediatric cancer. But what Scottie has achieved in the golf world in the ensuing decade since James’ brush with greatness would come as no surprise.
“He knew Scottie was going to become what he is today,” Mecklin said. “James always thought Scottie was destined for great things.”
Before Scottie Scheffler became three-time PGA Tour Player of the Year, a two-time Masters champion, an Olympic gold medalist and FedEx Cup champion, he dominated the Texas Junior Legends Tour. He won more than 90 Legends Junior and North Texas PGA tournaments, and he also struck up a friendship with James, who had an ever-present smile, kind eyes and was the life of the party. He was class president at Carroll High School in Corpus Christi and the 2011 salutatorian.
James had been diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare and often fatal form of bone cancer. In June 2006, at the age of 13, he left seventh grade as one of the best athletes in his class and started eighth grade 10 weeks later in a wheelchair.
James and Mecklin co-founded Triumph Over Kid Cancer Foundation, which began fundraising in 2007. Now a non-profit, their mother, Gloria, treats it as her full-time job. It began to raise money for James’ 14th birthday. In lieu of gifts, the idea was to donate to charities supporting pediatric cancer research, which is underfunded and, in many cases, uses the same drugs as patients with bone cancer 30-40 years ago. They threw a toga party, which raised $40,000, to celebrate the fact that James was cancer-free.
But a year later his cancer had returned and spread to his lungs and elsewhere, and he was scheduled for additional surgery and treatment. “People were asking us, are you going to have that toga party again?” recalled Mecklin, whose email tagline since 2007 has read: Fighting pediatric bone cancer one toga party at a time.
“We were like, 'Gosh, we really should.'”
This time they added a golf tournament on a Friday and the toga party on a Saturday.
James had been a nationally ranked tennis player until he underwent surgery to deal with a tumor in his left leg, as well as knee replacement. Anna Foy, one of James’ nurses at the University of Texas MD Anderson Children’s Hospital in Houston, compared his cancer to one of those flowers that you blow on, and the seeds go everywhere. “These tiny particles of cancer get in your blood and once they spread, it’s like wildfire,” she said in “Until 20,” a documentary chronicling James’ treatment and battle.
Doctors told James if he still wanted to play a sport, he could take up swimming, cycling or golf. The latter sounded more his style. The first time he played, as a sophomore in high school, he shot 95.
“I had no idea that was pretty good,” he said. “The rest of it was kind of a love story.”
He used to laugh that he trained so hard at tennis just to be the top player on his high school team but that in golf he had become scratch in almost no time. “Golf brought him so much joy,” Mecklin said.
Channeling his indefatigable work ethic from tennis, James became good enough to compete on the Legends Junior Tour. That’s where he struck up a friendship with Scheffler, who was two years younger but playing up an age bracket. When they were paired together, their fathers became fast friends walking the course.
James’ father remembers a time in the Jackie Burke Cup, a Ryder Cup-style competition pitting Texas teams from the North (Scottie’s team) and South (James’ team) against each other. James and Scottie were opponents in a four-ball match, and Scottie’s team trailed 1-down on the final hole.
Scottie hit his second shot fat, and it landed at the edge of a water hazard 40-some yards short of the green. The ball was half-submerged but, with nothing to lose, Scottie peeled off his shoes and waded in to play his third. He splashed out, and the ball bounced a couple of times on the green and jumped into the hole for an improbable birdie that halved the match.
“Scottie has been an exciting guy to watch since the time he was little,” Jim Ragan said.
After each tournament, the Schefflers would head home to Dallas and the Ragans to Corpus Christi. They’d meet up at another tournament a few weeks later and do it all over again. When James invited Scottie to play in the member-guest, James skipped picking up the Schefflers at the airport. When they got to the Ragans’ home, James was in a lounge chair as a physical therapist massaged his swollen left leg.
Scott Scheffler was concerned. He asked James how he could possibly play that day.
James laughed and said, “Mr. Scheffler, you think that’s going to stop me from playing golf? That’s not going to stop me.”
With that steely determination, it’s no surprise that James was awarded the Legends Junior Tour’s inaugural sportsmanship award in 2010. The following year, the tour named it in James’ honor. Despite five separate tumors in his lungs, which felt like a piece of wood scraping and stabbing his chest every time he inhaled, James played on, winning the tour’s 2010 Jimmy Demaret Junior Classic.
Despite doctors playing Whac-a-Mole with his body and telling him the only thing they could predict was that the tumors would keep coming back, he walked on to the Rice University golf team. With a fanny pack strapped to his waist that was dripping chemo into his port, he shot 2 under par on the front nine in one match. Golf became a metaphor for life.
“Walter Hagen once said you can hit three bad shots and one good shot and still make par. I think that is a little bit about how my life goes. It doesn’t have to be perfect; you just have to fight hard and figure out a way to get it done,” he said.
James’ escape after a long day of treatment? He darkened his room and watched Masters highlights and munched on honey butter chicken biscuits from Whataburger or donut holes from Gates Donut Shop.
Due to his love of the game, James was the cancer patient asked to be the master of ceremonies for the 2010 MD Anderson’s “A Conversation with a Living Legend,” its long-running series to raise money in support of the mission to end cancer.
That day, CBS’s Jim Nantz interviewed Jack Nicklaus in front of a packed room of 800 supporters, but James stole the show.
“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world right now,” James said of getting to meet two icons in the game.
Both Nantz and Nicklaus were moved by James’ infectious attitude and his story.
“Here was a kid who faced the worst of odds for survival and he felt sorry for the doctors,” Nantz said. “How can anyone that age stand up in a room like that and be facing a terrible disease and not show any self-pity?”
That day, Nantz recorded the outgoing voicemail message for James’ phone, which meant the world to James – he joked that he’d only swap it out if James Earl Jones did Darth Vader for him.
That proved to be just the beginning of their friendship.
Nantz visited James at MD Anderson when he was in Houston and called him regularly. The first time Nantz heard the name Scottie Scheffler, it was from James, who had watched Nantz wax rhapsodic about the new rising star in golf, Jordan Spieth, and warned him that his buddy was going to be even better.
“This kid was special,” said Nantz, who brought James and Mecklin as his guests to the 2012 NCAA Final Four in New Orleans. “He could’ve been the President of the United States. He was super-smart, incredibly gifted and composed, kind, thoughtful and he had a great life to be lived that was taken away from him.”
The Nicklauses struck up a friendship too. The Legends Luncheon was so moving and impactful that it inspired them to create something similar back home in Columbus, Ohio ― “the Legends Luncheon,” in conjunction with the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament, which the family hosts in late May at the club they founded. In the 14-year history of the charity event, it has raised almost $15 million for Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
“So, you might say that James is still touching lives by what he inspired us to create,” said Barbara Nicklaus. She also texted regularly with James, who sent her one of his last text messages to say goodbye.
A few years before that fateful day, he told them he’d like to go to the Memorial, and the Nicklauses made it happen. Nantz took James to a CBS party on Friday evening of the tournament. Several members of the CBS announcing team took turns speaking. Some were humorous. Others were serious. When Nantz got hold of the microphone, he said, “I’m here with my friend James, who has bone cancer. When I stop doing this, James is the one who should replace me. Come over here, James.” And Nantz gave the floor to James to speak to the audience.
Barbara Nicklaus recalls that the next day James phoned his mother and explained that he was having such a good time that he wanted to skip his flight home, even though it would mean missing his high school graduation the next day.
“You can imagine how that went over with his mother,” Barbara said.
James did return ― and delivered a moving speech to his classmates. (Google it. It should be a TED Talk.) Life hadn’t always been fairways and greens for James. He compared it to army golf.
“Left, right, left, right,” he said. “Balls kind of going everywhere into lots of trouble, but that doesn’t mean you give up or try to play the game any differently. You just try to figure out the best way to deal with it and you go forward and you swing hard and try to get out of the trees. You have to keep moving forward and focusing on the next shot in front of you.”
As James’ cancer worsened, Scottie kept in touch. And James was never far from his mind, including at the 2013 U.S. Junior Amateur where his cancer-stricken friend became part of the storyline. Even at 17, Scottie had the perspective to understand he was just playing a game while his friend was waging a losing battle for his life.
“I used to think golf was a really big deal,” Scottie told Golf Channel on his way to victory. “But it’s not that big of a deal, not at all.”
During his winner’s interview, Scottie said he thought of James often that day, especially when his ball stayed out of a hazard at the 14th hole. He said of James’ charitable efforts, “most likely it’s not going to save his life; it might prolong it, but his charity, he’s doing that for other people, not himself.”
After James’ death, Scottie took over James’ role as honorary starter of the charity toga party scramble in Corpus Christi. The fundraiser was held in May, during the heart of the college golf season, and yet Scottie never missed it while playing for the University of Texas.
Longhorns coach John Fields recalled having to jump through several hoops to comply with NCAA rules. Initially, the response was a hard no, but that changed after Fields connected with James’ mother and wrote an explanation of the foundation, the boys’ friendship and the purpose of Scottie’s trip to Corpus Christi.
“Once they had that, it was like, he has to go,” Fields remembered.
During his one season on the Korn Ferry Tour, Scottie checked in from a tournament via Zoom with toga tournament participants. In 2019, Scottie won $300,000 for charity through the RSM Birdies Fore Love program and earmarked $50,000 to Triumph Over Kid Cancer. Mecklin, now a surgery resident who is applying for her fellowship in pediatric oncological surgery, was delighted and had just one question for Scottie: What do you want us to do with it?
“Something that brings the kids joy,” he said.
Mecklin conceived Scottie’s Heroes, a program that brings kids battling cancer into golf by giving them clubs, bags and installing putting greens in hospitals. Scottie often signs balls for kids in the hospital, too. Coming off arguably the most dominant season on the PGA Tour in two decades, Scottie committed to participate in a charity event during the 2024 off-season in Houston.
Scottie has found a way to stay humble and grounded; family, friends, and faith remain his priorities. Scottie said he and wife, Meredith, focus their charitable efforts in their local Dallas community, but Triumph Over Kid Cancer is the exception.
“It’s something we’re passionate about,” he said. “We love the work they do, so we’re happy to support them.”
The Ragans had never hosted an event of this magnitude and flashed back to the MD Anderson event with Nicklaus for inspiration. They recruited Nantz, who squeezed it in around his NFL responsibilities, to participate.
On Oct. 25, Scheffler and Nantz shared the stage for a fireside chat at The Post Oak Hotel in Houston as part of the Teeing Off on Childhood Cancer gala to raise money for Triumph Over Kid Cancer and fund research and patient initiatives at MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital and Texas Children’s Hospital.
A family friend who is a master craftsman built multiple indoor putting greens so Scottie could putt as attendees placed wagers whether he’d sink putts using only one hand or while standing on one leg, which he made on his first try, and finally blindfolded. James’ wingmen, Triumph Over Kid Cancer’s nickname for the handful of kids in the program who give a face to the disease, helped Scottie with his aim as Nantz provided commentary as only he can.
Scottie sank the 10-foot putt on his third attempt.
“It shows the compassionate and human side of Scheffler,” Nantz said. “He’s a special kid.”
And the news went viral that Scottie was auctioning off his famous car.
In 2012, Scottie’s high school team attended the Masters, and his dad drove there in the family GMC along with Scottie’s sisters. But the car broke down and Scott Scheffler purchased a new, white GMC Yukon on the Monday after the Masters to drive home from Augusta.
“Most people get a T-shirt, I got a $50,000 car payment,” Scott Scheffler joked.
He eventually gifted it to Scottie and “GMC Airlines,” as the family dubbed it, racked up 184,000 miles. Last May, he upgraded his vehicle in conjunction with the birth of son, Bennett. The top bidder? None other than Nantz, who took possession of the vehicle shortly before the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February for a whopping $50,000, roughly what the Schefflers paid for it brand-spanking new.
“I figure just driving this SUV to the golf course should lower my handicap by at least five shots,” Nantz said.
All told, the dinner with Scottie raised $1.1 million, lifting the amount the Ragans have raised to fund programming and innovative pediatric cancer and sarcoma research to $10.1 million (including grants).
“It felt like the next big step for our foundation, that James is still having an impact in pediatric cancer,” Mecklin said.
More than a decade after James’ passing, Scottie’s bond with his member-guest partner remains as strong as ever and his actions both on and off the golf course have people asking of Scottie, who the heck does he think he is, Jack Nicklaus?
James knew.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Scottie Scheffler's friendship with James Ragan has changed lives
Continue reading...
Those were the words of a Corpus Christi Country Club member sitting on a hill watching a 14-year-old Scottie Scheffler play in the club’s member-guest.
Scottie was James Ragan’s ringer, a hired gun in khaki pants who flew into the South Texas city along the Gulf of Mexico. Who would ever suspect this gawky teenager and his pal, a 16-year-old cancer patient, were about to clean their clocks. James told his older sister, Mecklin, “Nobody’s going to know who Scottie is. We’re going to win this thing.” James smiled and broke into laughter at the thought.
Later, during an alternate-shot nine-hole match, one of five they would play against older men who were ill-prepared for the beating they were about to absorb, James hit a pitch that rolled across the green and settled in a back bunker. As Scottie surveyed the situation, he asked James to pull the flag.
This was the moment that led to that question.
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“I’m sitting there as the dumb dad, and I’m not a golfer and I’m not going to open my mouth, though I wanted to,” recalled Scott Scheffler, the ringer’s dad. “Scottie got up there and I thought, 'If there’s a time and a place to make a golf shot, this would probably be it.'”
Sure enough, Scottie being Scottie, he holed it, and Mr. Scheffler, being as humble a man as you’ll ever meet, resisted rubbing it in. Instead, he turned, hands spread wide and palms up, shoulders shrugged and said, “Sometimes the hole just gets in the way of the ball.” Dumbfounded, the man on the hill pressed on. “Who is that kid?”
Scott Scheffler, replied, “Oh, that’s my son.”
The same son who, the night before the final day of the member-guest, stayed up late trying to chip in on the backyard putting green built for James. Jim Ragan, James' father, guessed that Scottie must’ve attempted 200 chips without holing one. He went to bed disappointed but, in the next day’s shootout, when it mattered most, Scottie chipped in to ensure they advanced.
Reminiscing on the day, Scottie cracked that it was the last time teenagers were allowed to play in the tournament. All these years later, members at Corpus Christi recite their own jokes, noting that Scottie Scheffler is the only Masters champion to also win the Corpus Christi Country Club member-guest.
After retiring to the Ragans’ home, Scottie and James drank Dr Pepper out of the trophy. When James tried to hand Scottie the prize to take back to Dallas, Scottie refused.
“I didn’t come here for the trophy,” Scottie said. “I came here for you.”
Think of all the kids, let alone the adults, who would have wanted the trophy for themselves. Here were two friends that were genuinely happy for one another. Perhaps no moment better exemplified their bond through golf, and through James’ struggle with pediatric cancer.
“He just never stopped smiling,” Scottie said.
Ultimately, James had two inoperable tumors near his heart. He died Feb. 17, 2014, during his sophomore year at Rice University, more than seven years after his diagnosis. Scottie and his father attended the viewing and rosary service, and heard loved ones at his funeral service take turns sharing stories of all his efforts to put the lives of others first.
The Scheffler family never has forgotten James, nor his mission to save the next kid from dealing with the horrors of pediatric cancer. But what Scottie has achieved in the golf world in the ensuing decade since James’ brush with greatness would come as no surprise.
“He knew Scottie was going to become what he is today,” Mecklin said. “James always thought Scottie was destined for great things.”
A fast friendship begins
Before Scottie Scheffler became three-time PGA Tour Player of the Year, a two-time Masters champion, an Olympic gold medalist and FedEx Cup champion, he dominated the Texas Junior Legends Tour. He won more than 90 Legends Junior and North Texas PGA tournaments, and he also struck up a friendship with James, who had an ever-present smile, kind eyes and was the life of the party. He was class president at Carroll High School in Corpus Christi and the 2011 salutatorian.
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James had been diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare and often fatal form of bone cancer. In June 2006, at the age of 13, he left seventh grade as one of the best athletes in his class and started eighth grade 10 weeks later in a wheelchair.
James and Mecklin co-founded Triumph Over Kid Cancer Foundation, which began fundraising in 2007. Now a non-profit, their mother, Gloria, treats it as her full-time job. It began to raise money for James’ 14th birthday. In lieu of gifts, the idea was to donate to charities supporting pediatric cancer research, which is underfunded and, in many cases, uses the same drugs as patients with bone cancer 30-40 years ago. They threw a toga party, which raised $40,000, to celebrate the fact that James was cancer-free.
But a year later his cancer had returned and spread to his lungs and elsewhere, and he was scheduled for additional surgery and treatment. “People were asking us, are you going to have that toga party again?” recalled Mecklin, whose email tagline since 2007 has read: Fighting pediatric bone cancer one toga party at a time.
“We were like, 'Gosh, we really should.'”
This time they added a golf tournament on a Friday and the toga party on a Saturday.
James had been a nationally ranked tennis player until he underwent surgery to deal with a tumor in his left leg, as well as knee replacement. Anna Foy, one of James’ nurses at the University of Texas MD Anderson Children’s Hospital in Houston, compared his cancer to one of those flowers that you blow on, and the seeds go everywhere. “These tiny particles of cancer get in your blood and once they spread, it’s like wildfire,” she said in “Until 20,” a documentary chronicling James’ treatment and battle.
Doctors told James if he still wanted to play a sport, he could take up swimming, cycling or golf. The latter sounded more his style. The first time he played, as a sophomore in high school, he shot 95.
“I had no idea that was pretty good,” he said. “The rest of it was kind of a love story.”
He used to laugh that he trained so hard at tennis just to be the top player on his high school team but that in golf he had become scratch in almost no time. “Golf brought him so much joy,” Mecklin said.
Channeling his indefatigable work ethic from tennis, James became good enough to compete on the Legends Junior Tour. That’s where he struck up a friendship with Scheffler, who was two years younger but playing up an age bracket. When they were paired together, their fathers became fast friends walking the course.
James’ father remembers a time in the Jackie Burke Cup, a Ryder Cup-style competition pitting Texas teams from the North (Scottie’s team) and South (James’ team) against each other. James and Scottie were opponents in a four-ball match, and Scottie’s team trailed 1-down on the final hole.
Scottie hit his second shot fat, and it landed at the edge of a water hazard 40-some yards short of the green. The ball was half-submerged but, with nothing to lose, Scottie peeled off his shoes and waded in to play his third. He splashed out, and the ball bounced a couple of times on the green and jumped into the hole for an improbable birdie that halved the match.
“Scottie has been an exciting guy to watch since the time he was little,” Jim Ragan said.
James Ragan captures the golf world's attention
After each tournament, the Schefflers would head home to Dallas and the Ragans to Corpus Christi. They’d meet up at another tournament a few weeks later and do it all over again. When James invited Scottie to play in the member-guest, James skipped picking up the Schefflers at the airport. When they got to the Ragans’ home, James was in a lounge chair as a physical therapist massaged his swollen left leg.
Scott Scheffler was concerned. He asked James how he could possibly play that day.
You must be registered for see images attach
James laughed and said, “Mr. Scheffler, you think that’s going to stop me from playing golf? That’s not going to stop me.”
With that steely determination, it’s no surprise that James was awarded the Legends Junior Tour’s inaugural sportsmanship award in 2010. The following year, the tour named it in James’ honor. Despite five separate tumors in his lungs, which felt like a piece of wood scraping and stabbing his chest every time he inhaled, James played on, winning the tour’s 2010 Jimmy Demaret Junior Classic.
Despite doctors playing Whac-a-Mole with his body and telling him the only thing they could predict was that the tumors would keep coming back, he walked on to the Rice University golf team. With a fanny pack strapped to his waist that was dripping chemo into his port, he shot 2 under par on the front nine in one match. Golf became a metaphor for life.
“Walter Hagen once said you can hit three bad shots and one good shot and still make par. I think that is a little bit about how my life goes. It doesn’t have to be perfect; you just have to fight hard and figure out a way to get it done,” he said.
James’ escape after a long day of treatment? He darkened his room and watched Masters highlights and munched on honey butter chicken biscuits from Whataburger or donut holes from Gates Donut Shop.
Due to his love of the game, James was the cancer patient asked to be the master of ceremonies for the 2010 MD Anderson’s “A Conversation with a Living Legend,” its long-running series to raise money in support of the mission to end cancer.
That day, CBS’s Jim Nantz interviewed Jack Nicklaus in front of a packed room of 800 supporters, but James stole the show.
“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world right now,” James said of getting to meet two icons in the game.
Both Nantz and Nicklaus were moved by James’ infectious attitude and his story.
“Here was a kid who faced the worst of odds for survival and he felt sorry for the doctors,” Nantz said. “How can anyone that age stand up in a room like that and be facing a terrible disease and not show any self-pity?”
That day, Nantz recorded the outgoing voicemail message for James’ phone, which meant the world to James – he joked that he’d only swap it out if James Earl Jones did Darth Vader for him.
That proved to be just the beginning of their friendship.
Nantz visited James at MD Anderson when he was in Houston and called him regularly. The first time Nantz heard the name Scottie Scheffler, it was from James, who had watched Nantz wax rhapsodic about the new rising star in golf, Jordan Spieth, and warned him that his buddy was going to be even better.
“This kid was special,” said Nantz, who brought James and Mecklin as his guests to the 2012 NCAA Final Four in New Orleans. “He could’ve been the President of the United States. He was super-smart, incredibly gifted and composed, kind, thoughtful and he had a great life to be lived that was taken away from him.”
The Nicklauses struck up a friendship too. The Legends Luncheon was so moving and impactful that it inspired them to create something similar back home in Columbus, Ohio ― “the Legends Luncheon,” in conjunction with the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament, which the family hosts in late May at the club they founded. In the 14-year history of the charity event, it has raised almost $15 million for Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
“So, you might say that James is still touching lives by what he inspired us to create,” said Barbara Nicklaus. She also texted regularly with James, who sent her one of his last text messages to say goodbye.
A few years before that fateful day, he told them he’d like to go to the Memorial, and the Nicklauses made it happen. Nantz took James to a CBS party on Friday evening of the tournament. Several members of the CBS announcing team took turns speaking. Some were humorous. Others were serious. When Nantz got hold of the microphone, he said, “I’m here with my friend James, who has bone cancer. When I stop doing this, James is the one who should replace me. Come over here, James.” And Nantz gave the floor to James to speak to the audience.
Barbara Nicklaus recalls that the next day James phoned his mother and explained that he was having such a good time that he wanted to skip his flight home, even though it would mean missing his high school graduation the next day.
“You can imagine how that went over with his mother,” Barbara said.
James did return ― and delivered a moving speech to his classmates. (Google it. It should be a TED Talk.) Life hadn’t always been fairways and greens for James. He compared it to army golf.
“Left, right, left, right,” he said. “Balls kind of going everywhere into lots of trouble, but that doesn’t mean you give up or try to play the game any differently. You just try to figure out the best way to deal with it and you go forward and you swing hard and try to get out of the trees. You have to keep moving forward and focusing on the next shot in front of you.”
Scottie Scheffler gives his time, and his car, for the future
As James’ cancer worsened, Scottie kept in touch. And James was never far from his mind, including at the 2013 U.S. Junior Amateur where his cancer-stricken friend became part of the storyline. Even at 17, Scottie had the perspective to understand he was just playing a game while his friend was waging a losing battle for his life.
“I used to think golf was a really big deal,” Scottie told Golf Channel on his way to victory. “But it’s not that big of a deal, not at all.”
During his winner’s interview, Scottie said he thought of James often that day, especially when his ball stayed out of a hazard at the 14th hole. He said of James’ charitable efforts, “most likely it’s not going to save his life; it might prolong it, but his charity, he’s doing that for other people, not himself.”
After James’ death, Scottie took over James’ role as honorary starter of the charity toga party scramble in Corpus Christi. The fundraiser was held in May, during the heart of the college golf season, and yet Scottie never missed it while playing for the University of Texas.
Longhorns coach John Fields recalled having to jump through several hoops to comply with NCAA rules. Initially, the response was a hard no, but that changed after Fields connected with James’ mother and wrote an explanation of the foundation, the boys’ friendship and the purpose of Scottie’s trip to Corpus Christi.
“Once they had that, it was like, he has to go,” Fields remembered.
During his one season on the Korn Ferry Tour, Scottie checked in from a tournament via Zoom with toga tournament participants. In 2019, Scottie won $300,000 for charity through the RSM Birdies Fore Love program and earmarked $50,000 to Triumph Over Kid Cancer. Mecklin, now a surgery resident who is applying for her fellowship in pediatric oncological surgery, was delighted and had just one question for Scottie: What do you want us to do with it?
“Something that brings the kids joy,” he said.
Mecklin conceived Scottie’s Heroes, a program that brings kids battling cancer into golf by giving them clubs, bags and installing putting greens in hospitals. Scottie often signs balls for kids in the hospital, too. Coming off arguably the most dominant season on the PGA Tour in two decades, Scottie committed to participate in a charity event during the 2024 off-season in Houston.
Scottie has found a way to stay humble and grounded; family, friends, and faith remain his priorities. Scottie said he and wife, Meredith, focus their charitable efforts in their local Dallas community, but Triumph Over Kid Cancer is the exception.
“It’s something we’re passionate about,” he said. “We love the work they do, so we’re happy to support them.”
The Ragans had never hosted an event of this magnitude and flashed back to the MD Anderson event with Nicklaus for inspiration. They recruited Nantz, who squeezed it in around his NFL responsibilities, to participate.
On Oct. 25, Scheffler and Nantz shared the stage for a fireside chat at The Post Oak Hotel in Houston as part of the Teeing Off on Childhood Cancer gala to raise money for Triumph Over Kid Cancer and fund research and patient initiatives at MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital and Texas Children’s Hospital.
A family friend who is a master craftsman built multiple indoor putting greens so Scottie could putt as attendees placed wagers whether he’d sink putts using only one hand or while standing on one leg, which he made on his first try, and finally blindfolded. James’ wingmen, Triumph Over Kid Cancer’s nickname for the handful of kids in the program who give a face to the disease, helped Scottie with his aim as Nantz provided commentary as only he can.
Scottie sank the 10-foot putt on his third attempt.
“It shows the compassionate and human side of Scheffler,” Nantz said. “He’s a special kid.”
And the news went viral that Scottie was auctioning off his famous car.
In 2012, Scottie’s high school team attended the Masters, and his dad drove there in the family GMC along with Scottie’s sisters. But the car broke down and Scott Scheffler purchased a new, white GMC Yukon on the Monday after the Masters to drive home from Augusta.
“Most people get a T-shirt, I got a $50,000 car payment,” Scott Scheffler joked.
He eventually gifted it to Scottie and “GMC Airlines,” as the family dubbed it, racked up 184,000 miles. Last May, he upgraded his vehicle in conjunction with the birth of son, Bennett. The top bidder? None other than Nantz, who took possession of the vehicle shortly before the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February for a whopping $50,000, roughly what the Schefflers paid for it brand-spanking new.
“I figure just driving this SUV to the golf course should lower my handicap by at least five shots,” Nantz said.
All told, the dinner with Scottie raised $1.1 million, lifting the amount the Ragans have raised to fund programming and innovative pediatric cancer and sarcoma research to $10.1 million (including grants).
“It felt like the next big step for our foundation, that James is still having an impact in pediatric cancer,” Mecklin said.
More than a decade after James’ passing, Scottie’s bond with his member-guest partner remains as strong as ever and his actions both on and off the golf course have people asking of Scottie, who the heck does he think he is, Jack Nicklaus?
James knew.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Scottie Scheffler's friendship with James Ragan has changed lives
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