LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After getting lapped by Rory McIlroy in the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship one week ago, Xander Schauffele shook hands on the 18th green with his longtime caddie Austin Kaiser and told him, “We’ll get one soon, kid.”
“It was like the most clarity I’ve ever had,” Kaiser said. “I’m like, yeah, he truly believes it.”
Soon arrived just seven days later as Schauffele shattered the narrative that he couldn’t close by sinking a 6-foot birdie putt at the 18th hole on Sunday to end a nearly two-year winless spell and claim the 106th PGA Championship and his first major championship.
“I just heard everyone roaring and I just looked up to the sky in relief,” Schauffele said.
He closed with an impressive 6-under 65 at Valhalla Golf Club to edge Bryson DeChambeau (64) by one stroke, shooting a 72-hole total of 21-under 263, the lowest score in relation to par and the lowest 72-hole scoring total at a major championship. It’s his eighth career PGA Tour title and this one took patience, perseverance and proved his true grit.
Schauffele entered the week as the only player in the top five of the Official World Golf Ranking without a major championship. He’s had several close calls this season, blowing leads at the Players Championship among others.
“I’ll lick my wounds and right back to it next week,” he said after that disappointment in March, and that the next win would be sweeter after McIlroy fired a Sunday 65 to beat him by five strokes. Schauffele didn’t let the noise that he couldn’t close or that he was the best active player never to win a major bother him.
“People begin to talk and the narrative…it’s so easy to listen to that,” said Chris Como, who became his swing instructor this year.
Schauffele had been coached by his father, Stefan, since he was a kid, but he recently relocated from the West Coast to Florida and began working with Como, who has taught the likes of Tiger Woods and DeChambeau in the past and whose current stable includes Jason Day. They didn’t make household changes to his swing, just getting the club a little bit more on plane and his shoulders a little bit steeper. Combined with his gym work, he’s added another gear.
“This year he’s hitting it even further,” Justin Thomas said on Thursday. “As good as he drove it, now he’s doing the same, just 15 yards further.”
Como’s involvement allowed Schauffele’s father to take a backseat. “He trusts him a lot, I trust him a lot,” Xander said.
But his father still played a role this week, sending positive texts, including one of his favorite sayings on Saturday night — a steady drip breaks the stone — although he wrote it in German and Xander needed a translation.
Schauffele stuck to his process and adhered to his father’s words of wisdom.
“I believe that if you put in the hard work and you let yourself do what you think you can do, you’re going to have some fruits to the labor,” he said. “I’ve felt like I’ve been on this sort of trending path for quite some time. I really had to stay patient and keep the self-belief up, and I was able to do both those things.”
Schauffele is a member of the celebrated “Class of 2011,” but he was often lost in the shuffle as Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas received accolades and collected their majors. Schauffele had his chances at winning his share of hardware, including finishing T-2 at the 2018 British Open and 2019 Masters, and recording 12 top-10 finishes in majors. Kaiser had a good feeling about Valhalla. When Colt Knost, the CBS commentator and host of a podcast, asked him about a month ago who he thought would win, Kaiser named his boss.
“He said, ‘Why do you say that?’ And I go, ‘Zoysia [grass]. He’s played very well on it, it’s a long-ball hitters course and we’re hitting the hell out of it right now.’ And I was like, ‘He’s gonna do it there.’ Colt said, ‘I’m gonna pick you, don’t let me down.’ ”
Schauffele, 30, raced out of the gate with a course-record 9-under 62, setting a PGA Championship record and notching just the fourth 62 in major championship history. (Shane Lowry would become the fifth to do so during the third round on Saturday.) Schauffele became the first player to shoot 62 at a major and win. He followed with a pair of 68s and shared the 54-hole lead with Collin Morikawa. A bunched leaderboard and soft, receptive greens and ideal conditions for scoring meant Schauffele knew he’d have to be aggressive. He targeted 22 under as the winning score in what would turn into a three horse race between Schauffele, DeChambeau and Norway’s Viktor Hovland, who finished third, three back.
Schauffele opened his final round by walking in an uphill 28-foot birdie putt. He showed a magician’s touch with a delicate pitch from 54 yards and thick rough at the fourth to inside 5 feet. He holed a 15-foot par putt at No. 6, calling it “big for me.” At No. 7, he splashed out of the front greenside bunker at the par 5 and made another birdie putt. His lead grew to two with a birdie at No. 9, hoisting a short iron to 11 feet and sinking the putt to turn in 31.
He would make his one hiccup of the day at the par-5 10th, the easiest hole on the course, lipping out a 6-foot par putt and when Hovland birdied ahead of him, his third birdie in a four-hole stretch, Schauffele had lost the lead.
During his winless drought, Schauffele had tried various approaches to looking at the leaderboard and on Sunday, he decided to look at them every chance he got.
“I really wanted to feel everything,” he said.
Playing the 11th hole, he spied a big board and the reality of the moment sunk in. “I thought I had the lead, so when I looked up at the board I was like, oof, I saw Hovie was at 19, so I was back into chasing mode.”
It was time for Schauffele to live another of his father’s positive messages, the type he used to leave in his scorecard as kid playing in Southern California Junior events: commit, execute, accept. Schauffele bounced back from bogey with consecutive birdies at Nos. 11 and 12 to reach 20 under.
“He showed grit, and that’s who he is as a person,” Kaiser said. “He’s gonna fight until the end.”
So, too, did DeChambeau, who received a fortuitous break at No. 16 when he pulled his tee shot left and the ball spit out of the trees into the middle of the fairway.
“I said thank you to the tree,” DeChambeau said.
Then he drilled an 8-iron to 3 feet and made birdie to improve to 19 under and one back. DeChambeau got up and down at the par-5 18 to tie for the lead and broke into celebration. Schauffele kept scraping out pars from No. 13 through 17. Drip, drip, drip against the rock. As he walked up to his second shot on the 72nd hole knowing a birdie wins and a par would mean a playoff, it was time to commit and execute — he refused to accept the alternative of going extra holes with DeChambeau.
“I just kept telling myself, man, someone out there is making me earn this right now. I just kept grinding. I get up there and just kind of chuckled. I was like, if you want to be a major champion, this is the kind of stuff you have to deal with,” he said.
Standing inside a fairway bunker and with his ball on grass above his feet, Schauffele choked up on a 4-iron and took a baseball-like cut that drew just short of the green on the split fairway to set up a pitch that he hit to 6 feet.
“His short game is unreal, as good as I’ve seen in a long time,” said French golfer Thomas Levet, who was walking with Schauffele for France’s Canal +. “He reminds me a lot of Seve.”
“He knew what he had to make on 18, and that’s what great players do,” Morikawa said.
Schauffele spread his arms wide and looked to the sky, a sense of relief and satisfaction etched on his face as the putt caught the left lip and slid in. He joined Phil Mickelson (2005) and Payne Stewart (1989) as the only PGA champions to win by one after making birdie on the 72nd hole.
Schauffle quickly called his father on the way to the 18th green for the trophy presentation but told his wife, Maya, to hang up for him as his father was bawling into the phone and it was making him too emotional. Schauffele’s wife didn’t grow up around golf but in the 11 years they’ve been together she’s learned to understand what these big moments mean. She’s seen him celebrate a Ryder Cup win and an Olympic gold medal in Tokyo in 2021 but she sensed that winning a major was the ultimate to her husband.
“Winning the gold medal was such an achievement but something about the majors you know when I hear all these guys talking about having a major on your belt just is all time, so I think this means the world to him,” she said.
All those collective drips had finally broken the rock and the narrative that he couldn’t close, that he was too soft to win a major. But Schauffele, who improved to No. 2 in the world, was ready to celebrate with one of his trademark cigars but already began talking about how his work was far from over.
“All of us are climbing this massive mountain. At the top of the mountain is Scottie Scheffler. I won this today, but I’m still not that close to Scottie Scheffler in the big scheme of things,” he said. “I got one good hook up there in the mountain up on that cliff, and I’m still climbing. I might have a beer up there on that side of the hill there and enjoy this, but it’s not that hard to chase when someone is so far ahead of you.”
