Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy played these golf games as a kid

Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy will duel one more time in 2025 in the Golf Channel Games, a team skills competition being billed as a mash up of the NFL Combine meets MLB’s Home Run Derby and the NBA’s Slam Dunk Contest.

During a media call to promote the event, which airs live Dec. 17, the top-two players in the world were asked to name a fun game they used to play as a kid. Scheffler liked to take on all-comers at the driving range at his club in Dallas in accuracy contests – no wonder he’s the best ball striker in the game — and putting green, too.

“if there was a pro, or member, or anybody on the driving range of Royal Oaks when I was growing up, I was trying to do something with them. I mean, and you name it, chipping contests, 9-hole putting contests, 18-hole putting contests, trying to hit the yellow pole,” he recalled. “We had these little poles on the range of Royal Oaks, and if there was competition to be had growing up, I was challenging somebody, and it was always my favorite when the pros were out there. Guys like Harrison Frazar, Justin Leonard, Colt Knost. Those are the guys in which they showed up on the range, and if I was there, they knew something was gonna happen, or I was gonna be bugging them to have some sort of chipping contest, or try and hit the pole. So a lot of stuff like that, and I mean, a ton of it growing up. Those are… I have some really good memories and stuff like that growing up on the range of Royal Oaks.”

Growing up in Northern Ireland, McIlroy said he played a lot of golf on his own at Holywood Golf Club, and to make things a little more interesting he’d play worst ball, playing his next shot from the lesser of the two results.

“I'd play two balls, and I feel like worst ball, if you can shoot a pretty decent score in worst ball, you know that your game's in good shape and pretty sharp,” McIlroy said. He noted he once shot 3 or 4 under in the format, and that any score under par meant he was playing pretty well. “So, that's something I still use to this day, and something that I still feel like it gives me a really good barometer of where my game is, and sort of consistency from swing to swing, or shot to shot and that's something that I think has been pretty formative for me over the years.”

Two great ways to make practice fun and that helped two of the best at the game round into the best and brightest stars in golf.