Schauffele wins an arresting PGA

He wins his first major with a resolute birdiie on 18, and saves the tournament from the heinous crimes of Scottie Scheffler.

Xander Schauffele

Nearby, Bryson DeChambeau was launching practice shots and looming over Valhalla’s 18th green like the blimp he once resembled. 

He had just torched the place with a 7-under-par 64 in the fourth round of the PGA Championship, finding new frontiers with his tee shots, getting a sweet gift from a tree that threw his wild drive back onto the 16th fairway, pumping his fists and frothing up a barley-fueled crowd.

It wasn’t that the fans were rooting against Xander Schauffele, who had led the event from the very first day. Far from it. But they hadn’t gotten enough of DeChambeau, who spends most of his year on the subterranean LIV Tour, stacking money and yet not really touching the game. Major championship weeks are his four chances to say hello. Schauffele, 30, had already spent years grasping for majors and watching them squirt away like soap bars in a stream. He and DeChambeau were tied as he approached the 18th green, and he studied the possibilities of a chip and a putt that would spare him a playoff, on this very same vulnerable par-5. It was time to reverse a trend. before it became an anchor.

Schauffele chipped to within six feet. He had putted confidently all day. Here, he nudged the ball near the cup and watched it perform a modified victory lap before it fell. His broad smile became a laugh as he embraced Austin Kaiser, his former San Diego State teammate who was now his caddie. He became the first man to shoot 21-under-par in a major, and DeChambeau became the first to shoot 20-under and lose. He hasn’t changed, but the conversation has.

“My dad always told me I had to walk through the fire,” he said. “That fire has been all around me for a while now.”

Alexander Victor Schauffele has been a Top Ten player since he won Hartford and the Scottish Open back-to-back in 2022. The year before, he won Olympic gold in Tokyo, where his mother is from. But this was his first win in nearly two years. His major championship Sundays were enough to steal your religion. This is the ninth consecutive time Schauffele has finished in the Top 20 in a major. He has a second and a third at the Masters and a third and a fifth at the U.S. Open. In 2019 he was tied for the Augusta lead with four holes to go when a commemorative coin named Tiger Woods came to life. Two years later he hit a disastrous, watery tee shot on Verne Lundquist’s 16th hole and made double bogey, which opened the door for Hideki Matsuyama. He also has two runner-up finishes in The Players.

Only after Schauffele won on Sunday was he informed that Ben Hogan had also had to deal with 12 top ten finishes before he won a major, and that was also a PGA. He cackled over that. That’s pretty good company in the edges of the frame.

Yet Schauffele rarely bristled when the subject came up. He’s very rational that way. He wasn’t winning, so therefore he needed to be better. He came up short in Charlotte last week, and he realized he was trying to grind out pars on a challenging course, and someone, in this case Rory McIlroy, inevitably outplayed him. So at Valhalla, a 7,600-yard Twinkie for players of this caliber, he knew he needed to go long. Shoot at pins, pile up birdies, take advantage of the soft, velvet greens and the plump landing areas off the tee. Schauffele shot 62 on Thursday, not quite a year after he became the first man to shoot 62 in a major, at the U.S. Open at L.A. Country Club. Collin Morikawa tied him at the end of Saturday’s round, but Schauffele slept on the lead every night.

Schauffele birdied the first hole Sunday. He birdied the fourth and the seventh and the ninth. Then, on the par-5 10th, he tried to escape a fairway bunker with a hybrid and wound up making 6, which jeopardized his 2-shot lead. But Schauffele birdied the next two holes. He was playing two groups behind DeChambeau and Viktor Hovland, both of whom would forge a tie with Schauffele. Hovland suffered a bad case of the “pulls” on short putts coming in, and finished third. Beside Schauffele, Morikawa was suffering through a pro’s least favorite round, one in which he plays impeccably until it comes time to putt. The 2020 PGA champ didn’t get a birdie until the too-late 18th.

Through it all, a familiar face and unmistakable voice were missing. Stefan Schauffele, known fondly as The Ogre, was Xander’s coach even though Stefan never took up the game until he moved to the U.S. from Germany. Before that he was a promising German decathlete who suffered an eye injury when his car was hit by a drunk driver. His son was the vessel for all that pent-up competitiveness, mostly for good, sometimes to Xander’s discomfort. Stefan caddied for Xander only once. The partnership ended on the 16th hole when Stefan called Xander “an idiot.”

Stefan also stirred the pot in Rome last year when he insisted his son and other U.S. Ryder Cup players get paid more. Not the distraction that an already delicate American squad needed. But eventually the Schauffeles realized they needed professional help. Chris Como, who once coached Woods, took over.

“If my dad isn’t teaching me, he doesn’t see the need just to hang out,” Xander said. “I miss him being here, but I’ve got a lot of respect for the way he was able to let go of the wheel.”

Stefan was at his retreat in Kauai on Sunday. As Tod Leonard of Golf Digest reported, he was stoic as Xander came down the stretch, but wound up “crying like a baby” when the final putt fell, and was still that way when his son called. “Once he made that putt I wound up melting like butter in a skillet,” he said.

Stefan didn’t let Xander hit balls off a tee, to promote his iron play, and he did his best to discourage Xander from watching videos of himself. He reasoned that Xander’s ball flight would tell him what he needed to do. He also used his own experience in the discus and shot put to show Xander how the hips and arms work in sequence, and how to “separate your levers.” And, yes, there were his days as an ogre, which he and Xander lampoon on the family website.

Fortunately, Schauffele was brilliant enough to blunt the memory of Friday morning, when the PGA became Breakiing News on CNN. A tragic accident that claimed the life of a pedestrian caused a massive jam at the club entrance. Scheffler asked one Louisville cop if he could circumvent the mess and was told he could, but then encountered another cop who wasn’t as accommodating.

Since that policeman wasn’t wearing a body cam, we have no idea why Scheffler was arrested for second-degree assault on an officer, which is a felony. He was accused of dragging the cop until he fell and his trousers were ripped. Scheffler was taken to a holding cell and was actually loosening up, while inside it, and when he finally got to the course he birdied the first hole and shot 66. But on Saturday, the time-release stress got Scheffler and he shot 73. Watching him shoot 65 on Sunday and finish eighth, one realized just how weird things have to get to keep him out of true contention.

Neither the PGA nor Valhalla nor Louisville will get flowers for their traffic flow problems. Will Zalatoris took a look at the slapdash situation early in the week and told his parents to stay home.

Scheffler will be arraigned on Tuesday. He finally called the incident “a hoax” and a “witch hunt” and said “most of the best lawyers in the country think this is a disgrace. There’s never been anything like this in America. They’re trying to steal the tournament away from me. It’s rigged, just like I knew it would be.”

(No, he didn’t. He is an adult. And he actually praised his captors.)

Scheffler was one of 25 players who shot 10-under-par or better. Sure, it was tense and gripping and a lot of fun, but major championships should be something more than batting practice. Ten-under would have won four of the last five PGAs. Justin Thomas’ 5-under won the 2017 PGA at Charlotte’s Quail Hollow, which will house the event next year.

On Saturday and Sunday the average score was under 70. Woods shot 18-under to get into a playoff with Bob May and win it at Valhalla in 2000, but par was 72 then, not 71. He shot 270. Schauffele shot 263.

There were the usual assurances that this was only the beginning for Schauffele, that he’ll follow the path of Phil Mickelson, who was 33 when he won the Masters and joined the Major Dudes. Mickelson then won five more. But they said the same thing when Thomas, Adam Scott, Jason Day, Davis Love III, Fred Couples and David Duval won their first. None of them, to this point, have gotten around to winning their second.

Schauffele will be happy to walk through new flames. Besides, hot golfers like him know what you fight fire with.