Xander Schauffele was walking down the first fairway at Torrey Pines South on Tuesday, and it hit him.
Seven years earlier, he and his father were sitting on the couch, watching TV, hearing the U.S. Open would return to Torrey Pines in 2021. Schauffele was 14 when it came here in 2008, leaning against a tree on the 18th hole and craning his neck to see Tiger Woods curl in a 12-foot putt to force an 18-hole playoff that he would win, then dropping a ball and attempting that same putt every time he played the South Course. Now Schauffele was 20, a junior at San Diego State, coming off the Lamkin Grips San Diego Classic and getting ready for the Aggie Invitational in Bryan, Texas.
He was born a couple miles away, attended Scripps Ranch High, played nine-hole high school matches at Torrey Pines, got tee times on the muni’s two courses and endured 5½-hour rounds hacking out of the legendary rough with locals. The U.S. Open there? A dream, an audacious goal, an oasis shimmering in the distance. A moon shot.
“We were like, ‘Hey, we need to do whatever we can to get into this tournament,’” Schauffele re. “Here we are sitting here trying to win the thing. Maybe I didn’t set lofty enough goals seven years ago, but they’re definitely lofty enough now.”
If that doesn’t make sense, he rephrased it more succinctly: “It’s pretty cool.”
It also can be pretty frightening, knowing there might never be a greater nexus of opportunity and proximity in his career than this week. He’s 27, he’s finished in the top 10 in half of his 16 major championship appearances, he knows every blade of kikuyu grass on the 7,652-yard layout, every confounding break on the Poa annua greens.
Is that enough?
Is it too much?
“It’s a course I’ve seen a lot in my life, in front of my home crowd,” Schauffele said in a U.S. Golf Association preview video for the tournament. “So it’s all on me, you know what I mean?”
He finally shed his dismal record and “got the monkey off my back” in the Farmers Insurance Open on this same course — three missed cuts and a tie for 25th — with a second place in January. He skipped the tour event last week to play 64 holes of practice rounds at Torrey South after it was closed to the public, some as a solitary figure carrying his own bag. He’s read books by “brain coaches” about mental acuity, studying methods to “reprogram” his mind when he ascends the leaderboard. He switched to a low-spin golf ball. Two weeks ago, he changed putting strokes.
Enough?
Or too much?
The switch on the greens, from a traditional putter to a longer arm-lock shaft and grip, is particularly curious considering he ranks eighth on the PGA Tour in strokes gained-putting. He stuck it in the bag for the first time two weeks ago at the Memorial Tournament in Columbus, Ohio. Finished 35th in putting.
Anchored putters were banned in 2016, but the arm-lock method, where a longer shaft is braced against the inside of the left forearm for righties, is not currently verboten. Schauffele and his putting coach, Derek Uyeda, both agree it should be.
“It wasn’t really much of a decision,” says Uyeda, who works out of The Grand Golf Course in Carmel Valley. “All the numbers were better. The joke was I didn’t want him to go away from his normal gamer because he’s the best putter in the world. The conversation went, ‘Hey, let’s look into it.’ We looked into it and as a team we decided let’s give it a go.
“It’s an advantage. If other guys are going to have an advantage, then we’re going to look into it. We’ve done our research and used some technology to find out what’s going on, and it’s an advantage.”
It requires reweighting the putter head, lengthening the shaft, altering the grip and adjusting the face’s loft from 2 degrees to 4.75 to compensate for the forward lean of the stroke. The idea is to keep the putter head more stable and constant through , and Uyeda says data on face angle, dispersion, launch, strike accuracy — “every number I look at in of putting” — is improved, even above the banned belly putters.
Of course, they’re not measuring them standing over a 12-footer on 18 on Sunday afternoon at the U.S. Open.
“Sure, the change was quick,” Schauffele says. “It’s still fresh in my bag. I just felt like it’s such a big advantage that I could utilize, especially on Poa annua (greens). They’re tricky greens to putt on. The longer the day goes on, the bumpier they get with people walking on them. Launch conditions are very important out here, and I feel like my launch is even more consistent with this arm-lock style putter.”
But …
“I’d be lying if I said I’m 100 percent super comfortable with it, but I think each and every day I use it, I get more and more comfortable.”
Comfortable, an interesting choice of words.
Schauffele has thrived on the underdog role at tournaments, lurking on Sunday and making a charge that ultimately falls short. He has nine second-place finishes — nine — since last winning on tour in January 2019.
His eight top 10s in his first 15 major championships are the most by anyone since all four tournaments became stroke-play events in 1958. In four U.S. Opens, he’s never finished worse than sixth. The only other guy with top 10s in each of his first four: Bobby Jones, in the 1920s.
At the Masters in April, Schauffele narrowed a seven-shot margin with Hideki Matsuyama to two as he stood on the 16th tee, then dumped an 8-iron into the water, scored his first triple bogey in 1,042 career holes at major championships and finished third. And faced more questions about whether he can win the big one, whether he’s comfortable — that word — when he sniffs the top of the leaderboard.
“It really doesn’t matter to us, and it really doesn’t matter to him, either,” Stefan Schauffele, his father and longtime coach, said that afternoon at Augusta National. “He wants to win. But second place is a semi-success, meaning statistically, eventually, there will be first places instead of second places. It’s just the way it works.”
Phil Mickelson, his playing partner for the first two rounds at Torrey Pines, is living, breathing proof. His first major title came in his 43rd attempt.
Schauffele is playing his 17th this week.
“I would just say that I was 33 when I won my first major,” said Mickelson, who has six major titles and 11 runners-up. “He’s significantly younger than that, and he is an incredible talent. He’s easily one of the best players in the world today, and his game is so complete with no weaknesses. He’s just that rare talent. When you learn in plateaus, once he gets that spike I think he’s going to stay at that new level for a long, long time.”
To that end, Schauffele has spent time trying to understand the distinction between predator and prey. He’s always been the former, starting his college career at Long Beach State before transferring to SDSU, turning pro in the immense shadow of Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, being 5-foot-10 in a game of 6-4 bombers, being coached by his cigar-chomping dad instead of a high-priced swing guru at an exclusive country club.
During a routine media availability before the Memorial, he launched into a candid, contemplative analysis.
“I think it’s funny,” he said. “I think this whole underdog role is probably why I’ve been successful. It’s always important to play with a chip on your shoulder, but at the same time I think it might be the reason that’s maybe holding me back in big moments. I kind of ride this underdog wave, but when you’re trying to win tournaments and you’re at the top of a leaderboard, you can’t chase a ghost, you know what I mean?
“There’s no one in front of you to sort of bite at. Mentally, it’s such a new realm for my brain that I’m just trying to process it all and really get more comfortable and think differently once I’m at the top. You can’t really be waiting for someone to get ahead of you to chase again.
“I still need to get to the top of the leaderboard to try out all these new things.”
Enough?
Or too much?
More than an 18-inch, silver, engraved trophy and $2.25 million is at stake this week. Qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics will be decided by world rankings after the U.S. Open, and the race is particularly tight for the four American spots.
Schauffele is currently No. 6 and fifth among Americans, but No. 1 Dustin Johnson has withdrawn from consideration. Patrick Cantlay and Patrick Reed are immediately behind him, and Brooks Koepka (10), Webb Simpson (12) and Tony Finau (14) are within striking distance given the right mix of results at Torrey Pines.
The significance: His mother grew up in Japan and his grandparents still live there. When he played at the Zozo Championship outside Tokyo in 2019, the first-ever PGA Tour event in Japan, he had about 40 of his extended family in the gallery.
“I’m aware of it,” Schauffele says of the five-ring ramifications from the other side of the Pacific Ocean, “but I guarantee if I am coming down the stretch on Sunday with a chance to win, I’m not going to be thinking about the Olympics. … I’d be lying if I said it was something I dreamed of as a kid. I dreamed of playing here as a kid.”
Xander at the U.S. Open
San Diego’s Xander Schauffele is the first male golfer since Bobby Jones in the 1920s to have top-10 finishes in each of his first four U.S. Open appearances. He is particularly good in the first round (average score of 68) and final round (69.5).
2017 (Erin Hills): Trailed by one after an opening-round 66, was 10th after 54 holes and closed to fifth with a 69 in the final round, six strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka.
2018 (Shinnecock Hills): A 68 in the final round got him into a four-way tie for sixth place, five strokes behind repeat champ Koepka.
2019 (Pebble Beach): Closed with a 67 and finished in a four-way tie for third, six strokes behind winner Gary Woodland.
2020 (Winged Foot): Followed an opening 68 with four rounds in the 70s to finish in solo fifth, 10 strokes behind winner Bryson DeChambeau.
