Nico Echavarria, 32-year-old Colombian golf star, has had some great moments: his two victories, both in 2018, on the PGA Tour Latin America; his three PGA Tour wins (2026 Cognizant Classic, 2024 Zozo Championship, 2023 Puerto Rico Open); and his 11 major starts (best finish: T41, 2025 PGA Championship). Lest we forget, Echavarria also won a sudden-death playoff in the 2025 Masters Par-3 Contest. In a duel with JJ SpaunEchavarria secured the coveted crystal pedestal, when on the second hole of the playoff he stuffed his tee shot to kick-in range.
It would be a while – give or take 17 months – before Echavarria would face another American star in a head-to-head matchup. But it happened to the Presidents’ Cup on Sunday, when Echavarria pulled the short straw International team: a date with the world number 1 Scottie Scheffler in one of the 12 decisive matches of the event.
The Internationals, who held a three-point lead in singles, needed to scratch out only 5 points to clear the Americans. But no one leaned on Echavarria – not for lack of effort or desire on Echavarria’s part, but for the sheer difficulty of the task in front of him: the highest ranked player in Data Golf versus the 126th ranked, who is also, statistically speaking, the weakest player on either side of the Presidents Cup.
There was an obvious analogy — heck, Echavarria himself had mentioned it when he spoke at the PGA Tour’s Asheville, N.C., event earlier this month. “A bit of David against Goliath,” he said. Echavarria was talking about Team International vs Team USA in general, but the same principle (and then some) applied to Echavarria’s drawing on Sunday.
However, things happen in sports. Ask Mike Eruzione or Buster Douglas or Appalachian State. Match play in golf can be especially difficult to predict. “I don’t think the stats are as important this week as people think,” Echavarria said earlier this week. “I think it’s more of a mentality of playing one-on-one against one person. You don’t have to shoot six under. You can shoot three and win a match, and that’s a point.”
Maybe, but three above rarely come against the best player in the world. On Sunday, Scheffler grabbed the lead with a birdie at the par-4 2nd. Undeterred, Echavarria chipped in with a birdie — and win — of his own on the ensuing par-5. But then Scheffler started doing Scheffler things: birdie on 5. Birdie on 6. Birdie on 8. Three up. “He doesn’t make a lot of mistakes,” Echavarria said afterward. When Scheffler rolled in another bird at 10 to go to 4, if the fat woman wasn’t singing, she would certainly be clearing her larynx.
Echavarria wasn’t just fighting with Scheffler, he was also fighting with the fans. It’s part of the deal when you’re on the road in these supercharged team events, but Echavarria seemed to be worse than most. “It didn’t just happen once,” he said after his turn.
The most offensive — and consequential — disruption came on the tee at the par-4 14th, where Echavarria ended up swinging, a fan yelled, “Go Scottie!”
As Echavarria’s drive sailed toward the rough right, he let go of his driver and looked toward the offending heckler. Scheffler was also in the spotlight. He walked across the tee box and barked, “There’s no place for that!”
Echavarria missed the hole, hitting his third shot from the back of the green, 32 feet from the pin. Scheffler, meanwhile, had a tap-in par, which surely would have won him the hole. Only it wasn’t, because Scheffler, in an act of sportsmanship, granted Echavarria his parity for a push that will go down in Presidents Cup tradition.
“We have the No. 1 player in the world who is a class act,” Echavarria said afterward. “I didn’t expect him to give me this.”
No one was, not at the moment. But in retrospect, it was the only thing to do.
Scheffler, as he does so often on the golf course, had seen what many of us had missed: the injustice of the actions of an imbecile fan could not simply be dismissed and then swept under the rug. We need to take action. In Scheffler’s mind, with his opponent down, there was only one way to proceed. He wasn’t a hero or looking for a congressional medal. He was only doing what was so clearly right. That might also explain why after the match Scheffler refused to frame the act as any kind of noble or magnanimous gesture. Most were just angry with the offending fan.
“There’s just no place for that,” Scheffler said at the U.S. team press conference Sunday night. “I was very frustrated. It was honestly a big distraction, I think for me, just because we compete and we work so hard to put ourselves in these moments. When you have a fan who decides to enter the tournament, you can say, I think, what you want to the players, but I think there is an amount of respect here. You should get about 30 seconds or when you have prepared your ball to shoot the ball in more than 30 seconds. silence.
“It just doesn’t sit well with me. He never hit a shot as bad as he did, I think, except for the 14th, if there wasn’t a fan screaming in his swing. I don’t really want to talk about it that much.”
And that was it.
Echavarria was also irritated, which is why he liked it so much to hit on 16 to pull within two holes of Scheffler with two to play. In a move right out of Patrick Reed’s playbook, Echavarria brought his finger to his lips and shut the crowd down.
“It’s just frustrating with the amount of things they tell you, so when you can give them a go, it feels really good,” he said. “Doing that to keep the match was very cool.”
It didn’t last much longer. When Echavarria’s approach on the next hole, the par-4 17th, passed the pin and across the green, so, too, did his last hope of removing Scheffler.
Scheffler won the match, 2 and 1.
He also gained a new fan.
“It’s just different,” Echavarria said. “As good as he is, he’s a really amazing man.”
