At the 2023 Sentry Tournament of Champions, Xander Schauffele withdrew after eight holes in round two through injury. He’d shot an opening three-under, was +1 for his eight holes on Friday, but back issues that first surfaced at the Hero World Challenge in early December had crept up again earlier in the week and fearing that he might do lasting damage, decided safe was better than sorry and opted to withdraw and forego what would’ve been at least $200,000 for a 39th place (DFL) finish.
He was coming off the back of his best season to date, winning three times in 2022 including back-to-back at the Travelers Championship and Genesis Scottish Open, and had secured the winning point in the Presidents Cup where he’d won three from a possible four points.
That week in Hawaii back in early 2023 is the last time that Schauffele teed it up in tournament mode and didn’t go home with a paycheck – Ryder Cup excepted – and, as previously mentioned, had he chosen to hang around for another 46 holes and tap it around with his putter, he’d have been well rewarded.
Prior to that, we’ve to go all the way back to the 2022 Masters to find the time Schauffele last missed a cut, meaning that at 52 events, he holds the distinction of having the current ‘most consecutive cuts made’ streak on the PGA Tour, 11 ahead of Scottie Scheffler. For further context, Corey Conners sits third with 27, while Shane Lowry’s 15 has him at fourth.
Should Xander go another five years without an ‘MC’, he’ll likely break Tiger Woods’ 142 made-cut streak, but that’s unlikely, even for a player as consistent as Schauffele has become, but another two weeks with a paycheck will see him overtake Tom Kite and move into fifth in the all-time PGA Tour standings.
And it’s that consistency that’s made him such a fantastic competitor. There has never been a single facet of Schauffele’s game that stands out as being uniquely brilliant, but he’s been consistently well above PGA Tour average in each of the Strokes-Gained metrics and there are only a handful of players in the game who can boast such a thing.
Scottie Scheffler is one, but Scottie’s hot-and-cold relationship with his putter means that his putting data numbers and heavily skewed. The same can be said for Rory McIlroy, who ranks third in Data Golf rankings, Collin Morikawa, in fourth, is below Tour average in Driving Distance, while Jon Rahm in fifth is the only other player in the Data Golf top 10 to be above average in each of the statistical metrics, and even then, his driving accuracy is only marginally ahead of the mean.
The big shift in the 2022 and 2023 versions of Schauffele to the double major-winning 2024 version are seen across the board. He’s added length, while only marginally sacrificing accuracy, but it’s in approach play, short game and putting that he’s made considerable gains. And if you want a recipe for success, hitting it longer, hitting it closer, chipping it better when you miss, and holing considerably more putts is about as reliable a recipe as you can get.
The big question, of course, is whether it’s sustainable. Pádraig Harrington has a theory that most elite golfers have a rough 18-month window in which they peak and play the best golf of their careers, and they have to cash in, so to speak, when they’re in that sweet spot. He certainly did, winning three majors in just over 13 months back in 2007 and 2008, but since first breaking into the top 10 in the OWGR in 2018, Schauffele has been ever present since and has been a regular feature on major championship leaderboards.
The only thing he hadn’t done was win one, and now he has two. He’s got four top-10 finishes in The Masters – including a T2 – in his last six appearances, he’s only once been outside the top-10 in the US Open in eight starts, and now that he’s proven to himself and to his peers that he’s not going to shy away on the biggest of stages, the world is his oyster.
He goes to Paris in a fortnight’s time as the defending Olympic champion – and he’s made no secret of what the Olympics means to him. While other elite golfers said thanks but no thanks to the Olympics in Rio and in Tokyo, when Schauffele was offered the chance to join team USA for the 2020 Games, he couldn’t say ‘yes’ quick enough.
His father Stefan had been an aspiring decathlon star and was on course to represent Germany in the 1988 Games in Seoul before a collision with a drunk driver in late 1986 put paid to those dreams. Xander’s Great Grandfather had also been on the verge of being an Olympian but despite being the reigning German Track and Field Champion, was also ruled out of the ’36 Berlin Games through injury and acted as a judge instead.
Le Golf National, which plays host to the 2024 Olympic Golf competition, should be right up Schauffele’s street. Requiring accuracy off the tee, discipline, and all parts of your game to be firing, he’ll be highly fancied to go close to securing a second Gold Medal and carving out another slice of history.
And the way he’s been playing, it’ll take a brave man to bet against it.
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