Xander Schauffele isn’t about to go bang his head against a wall, pull his hair from his skull or snap his golf clubs over his knee when disappointment on the golf course mounts.
Sure, there have been many opportunities of late but he’s just not the type to go all violent on himself or his equipment. Even when Sunday contention turns into Sunday night frustration, he doesn’t lose his mind. As he said after coming up one shot shy of winner Brooks Koepka in the Waste Management Phoenix Open two weeks ago, he’d “lick my wounds and come back.”
Some liquid elixir doesn’t hurt.
“A couple glasses of wine that night and a good night of sleep was all I needed,” Schauffele said. “You just take the positives from the week, identify sort of the mistakes that were made and move along.”
Schauffele, 27, has more runner-up finishes than any player on the PGA Tour since the start of the 2017-18 season – 10, including in his last two starts. Though he did shoot the lowest 72-hole score at last year’s Tour Championship but finished second to FedEx Cup winner Dustin Johnson because of the staggered scoring system used for the season finale, his last official title came in the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions. He has five top-5s in seven starts this season, with the other two finishes being ties for 17th.
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“A lot of good and no wins so far,” is how he described his season. “Overall I’m pretty happy with how I’m playing. Coming down the stretch, just really believe in what you’ve got and at the end of the day that’s kind of all it is. You could be playing incredible golf and if you kind of doubt yourself for a second, it’s going to catch you at the wrong time and I think that’s kind of what it’s been for me.”
He knows there’s been far more good than bad, so while he was stung by the outcome in Phoenix, he learned from it. And he has won four PGA Tour titles, including the Tour Championship, a WGC and the Sentry Tournament of Champions. And he’s No. 4 in the world.
“Some hurt more than others. (Phoenix) didn’t really hurt,” he said. “It wasn’t that I (wasted) too many shots away. I hit a few bad ones coming down the stretch, but for the most part I kind of was hanging tight. And it was a very boring day in a bad way. It was a good learning experience for me in a final group where sort of the whole group is a little stagnant. Our group collectively shot even-par.
“And I looked at Brooks’ group, you had James Hahn who was 7 under through 10 holes, Brooks shot 6 under and you’ve got (Steve Stricker) there who’s steady as ever shooting 4- or 5-under. So you compare the two groups around and you kind of sit there like, well, what group would I rather play in, you know what I mean?
“I could be playing kind of C‑plus golf in a group where guys are making birdies left and right and they’re going to sort of drag me along the way versus if you’re playing great golf and no one in the group’s getting anything going, that could be the difference. It was a really good learning experience for me moving forward.”
This week, that move has taken him north of Los Angeles to Pacific Palisades and historic Riviera Country Club. In three starts, he’s never been worse than a tie for 23rd. And the patience he has shown in dealing with his string of near misses will be directed at dealing with Riv.
“It’s just tough,” Schauffele said. “I think if you could name a harder course without any water hazards for the most part, I’d wait and sit here. This course is, for the setup and just having no real OB or hazards kind of anywhere on the property, it plays really difficult, so I think all of us appreciate the challenge.
“The course is so interesting. It’s one of those places where the more you play it, the more comfortable you get. The conditions this year are unbelievable. It’s going to be playing very different than the last couple years where it was kind of colder and sort of wet. Because there isn’t a whole lot of trouble on the property in terms of like penalties, you sort of get a little impatient and get aggressive when you shouldn’t and you kind of pick up a bogey or double bogey pretty quickly and it’s probably the most frustrating way to do it.
“So I think patience is big out here.”
