Among the many paths to winning golf’s majors, there is one where the mastery seems nearly flawless, and Xander Schauffele followed it to an utterly composed victory at the 152nd British Open. And not just because his final-round 65 and back-nine 31 were the best numbers of any of the 80 players who competed at Royal Troon, or because he finished 9-under par to win by two strokes after starting one stroke behind. It looked and felt like something you would never even imagine. Schauffele was detached from crowded leaderboards, from his past image as a perennial underdog contender, and from all reasonable limitations known going forward.
“The next 10 years are going to be great,” his father and first coach, Stéphane, predicted without any arrogance or nonsense.
The hard facts are that Xander Schauffele, who didn’t win a single major in his first 27 attempts despite 12 top-10 finishes, has won two of the last three. Schauffele became the first man to win two majors in the same season since Brooks Koepka in 2018 and the first man to win the PGA Championship and the British Open since Rory McIlroy in 2014. Schauffele has quickly joined the ranks of players who have won two majors in this era, from world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler to Jon Rahm, Collin Morikawa, Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas, but more than that, he has shown his versatility by winning two majors, including one on this links course, alongside players such as Morikawa and Zach Johnson.
That’s what everyone was saying, but Sunday’s round, with its remarkable cleanliness, said something else. It spoke of a man who had made his breakthrough in Louisville in May, taking his trademark poise from moderate to powerful. Playing among the clouds on a gray day with cool air perfect for long walks on the beach beside the course, he reached the 18th hole, saw the “yellow leaderboard” he’d dreamed of before, asked his caddie, Austin Kaiser, to walk with him and told himself, “This is where your moment comes.”
He was leading by three strokes. The two groups behind him still had to finish. It didn’t seem like much of a factor. Asked afterwards how his round ranked, Schauffele said, “It was awesome. It was the best round I’ve ever had.”
“Oh my goodness,” Kaiser said. “It just keeps building up. It’s amazing. He played unbelievable. It was probably his best round ever.”
The birdies on the back nine, at the 11th, 13th, 14th and 16th holes on Sunday, that separated Keiser from playing partner Justin Rose, third-round leader Billy Horschel, rising star Thriston Lawrence and a fading Scheffler, looked almost effortless from 16 feet (the 13th hole) and 13 feet (the 14th hole). They seemed designed to acknowledge a post-victory conversation Keiser had with buddies in May just after the PGA Championship, in which someone asked Schauffele, “Are you feeling lighter?” to which Schauffele replied, “Yeah, I feel like it.” His chip shot over the bunker on the 16th hole looked scary when he started it but glorious when he made it. It greeted the hole and nestled in 4 feet away.
Rose’s caddie, Mark Fulcher, also commented, “I’m glad I got to watch it without paying for a ticket. It was awesome.” Fulcher said of Schauffele, “He’s also a really nice guy. I almost wish he was a little bit of a joker,” but “he’s a first-class guy.”
“He seemed to have everything under control,” Kaiser said of the incident, in which winds off the Firth of Clyde were beyond anyone’s control until they finally died down on Sunday.
“I [the breakthrough win] “That would help,” Schauffele said in an on-course interview, “and it did help. I felt calm, a calm that I didn’t feel when I was playing in the PGA.” “I grabbed that calm and I wasn’t going to let it go,” he said at a news conference.
Rose finished tied for second at seven under par with a 67 and said of Schauffele, “He’s playing so comfortably. As a competitor, he probably doesn’t feel like he’s doing too much wrong.” Horschel, who tied with Rose with a 68, said of Schauffele, “He’s the second-best player in the world.” As Schauffele got going, Lawrence finished six under par with a 68, Russell Henley finished five under par with a 69, Shane Lowry recovered from a painful 77 on Saturday to finish four under par with a 68, and Scheffler was a stroke or two behind, but he reached the ninth hole and three-putted from 6 feet, 7 inches for a double bogey, drawing groans of sympathy from the assembled crowd, and the tournament was a near runner-up finish.
Even the first man since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win six tournaments, including the Masters, an unlikely feat at this point in the year, was a faint sideshow next to Schauffele’s unwavering excellence.Suddenly, the conversation shifted from Schauffele’s sheer dominance to Schauffele’s perfection.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” Schauffele said of the “completely” part, “but being here, I definitely believe it’s true. … It’s a completely different style of golf. You hit the shots differently. You place the ball differently. When the wind’s 20 mph and it starts to rain, there’s a lot more risk and reward.” [as it did Saturday]There are a lot of variables involved. It’s a great honour to win. It’s a big thing for me. For me, winning the Scottish Open [in 2022] “It meant a lot in terms of being able to showcase my game overseas, so to double that and win a major tournament in Scotland is even better.”
He won two majors in very different atmospheres: one in the sun, with birdies at his fingertips and needing to win at 21-under-par, the other in windy conditions that spoke volumes. He won one with impressive tremors and the other with enviable composure. “But we knew it,” his father says. “We knew it because he was second-best at every turn, so we knew his versatility, right?” he concludes. “Who is the biggest threat or potential for the next career Grand Slam? I would say, ‘Look at the numbers.'”
Late Sunday, that dreamy yellow leaderboard read 65 and, in handwritten letters, “Well done, Xander.” A famously shy and affable young man held up the Claret Jug in front of a gaggle of photographers. He smiled serenely, not the electric grin he’d had in Louisville. Technically, he appeared to be back on earth.
