Our fourth installment of the Golf Legends series at Today’s Lines looks at the career of the newly crowned PGA Champion, Xander Schauffele.
Let’s review his career milestones before placing your bets on him at top sportsbooks.
How It All Began for Schauffele
Xander Schauffele hails from a mixed parentage of a Taiwanese mother and a German father who both met while studying at San Diego University in 1988. They moved back to Germany for a few years, before returning to San Diego, and not long after, at the age of nine, Xander was first introduced to golf when he joined Bernardo Heights Country Club with his father.
Uniquely throughout his career, his only coach has been his dad, Stefan who taught his son the game of golf from scratch despite limited personal experience in the game.
Xander Schauffele’s collegiate career at San Diego State University was a consistent one. He graduated in 2015 after winning the California State Amateur the year previous, an event which has some esteemed winners on the roll of honour such as Ken Venturi, Johnny Miller, and Mark O’Meara.
The Schauffele Sporting Family Tradition!
Professional sport runs in family blood, with two of his great-grandfathers playing professional football. Johann Hoffmann was an Austrian International, while Richard Schauffele started out as a professional footballer at Stuttgart and went on to become a champion athlete.
Xander Olympics Gold Follows Father’s Dream!
Xander Schauffele’s father Stefan looked set to follow the family tradition at top level sport as a talented athlete. His hopes of making the Olympics in the decathlon were dashed in the cruelest fashion when a drunk driver hit his car, leading to multiple injuries and the loss of sight in his left eye.
Stefan is better known nowadays as his son’s coach with his gregarious character, never far away from his son’s side. That loud and brash character has seen him nicknamed the “Ogre” by Xander himself, who is quoted as saying,
“He was this big German sergeant-type dad growing up. Don’t cross him. I mean, I tried to here and there, but that didn’t go so well for me.”
Xander’s Olympic golf win and gold medal in Japan in 2021, was especially sweet and emotional for the family, given his father’s cruel accident.
Xander Schauffele Early Professional Career
Prior to his Olympics Gold of 2021, Xander Schauffele had become one of the most consistent performers on the PGA Tour and in major championships.
There was no hint of what was to come on the PGA Tour when Xander Schauffele made it through the Korn Ferry Tour in 2016 with a 15th place at the tour finals after a consistent if unspectacular season.
His first PGA Tour year however was an outstanding one, when he won “Rookie of the Year” for 2016/2017 after winning twice in the season. His first win was at the Greenbrier Classic which earned him his major championship exemptions for the year ahead. He made those major championship debuts count with a 5th at the U.S. Open and after a consistent end to the year; he qualified for the season-ending Tour Championship where he became the first PGA Tour rookie to win the prestigious tournament for that second win.
Xander’s Long Wait for a First Major Championship
Despite a remarkable consistency at the elite level of golf over the following few years, Xander Schauffele found tournament wins hard to come by!
We mentioned his Olympics win and that was the undoubted highlight but there were only four other PGA Tour wins in singles events despite his consistency.
Xander Schauffele often found himself in the higher echelons of major championship leaderboards during that period as he accumulated a phenomenal twelve top 10 finishes in the majors from twenty-nine starts.
The week before the PGA Championship, he was nearly a wire-to-wire winner at the Wells Fargo Championship but was headed by Rory McIlroy during the final round
The week after, things came to right for Schauffele at the PGA Championship where he did go wire to wire, holding off strong last day charges from Bryson DeChambeau and Viktor Hovland, to prove his doubters wrong!
Hanging tough, going wire to wire after such a huge disappointment the week prior while chasing that illusive first major championship was one of the most impressive performances of 2024 by Xander Schauffele.
