THE STARTER
It came too late to earn him a spot on this year’s U.S. Ryder Cup team, but Xander Schauffele’s victory at the WGC-HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai on Sunday reaffirmed that the 25-year-old Californian is among the game’s brightest young talents.
With birdies on the last two holes of regulation and another on the first playoff hole at Sheshan International Golf Club, Schauffele defeated not only Tony Finau, his overtime opponent (and Jim Furyk’s last Ryder Cup pick), but a stacked field that included seven of the world’s top 10 players.
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Schauffele burst to prominence in 2017, when he won the Greenbrier Classic and the Tour Championship and was voted PGA Tour rookie of the year. But despite runner-up finishes at the Players Championship and the Open Championship plus a pair of third-place finishes this year, he failed to crack Furyk’s Paris lineup and lamented his failure to capitalize on his chances to do so.
By winning in China, however, Schauffele has an early leg up in the race to be part of Tiger Woods’ U.S. Presidents Cup team in Australia next December.
On a less-prominent stage in Mississippi, another young Californian signaled he’s a star in the making. Cameron Champ, a long-hitting 23-year-old from Sacramento, won the PGA Tour’s Sanderson Farms Championship in only his second start as a rookie. You might recall Champ’s name on the leaderboard through 36 holes of the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills, in which he competed as an amateur. After a year of seasoning on the Web.com Tour, he’s made it clear that he might have the tools to contend in majors for years to come.
And in the Far East, 20-year-old Nelly Korda won the Swinging Skirts LPGA Taiwan Championship. Korda and her older sister, Jessica, are the third set of sisters to have won LPGA Tour titles, joining Annika and Charlotta Sörenstam and Ariya and Moriya Jutanugarn.
Mike Cullity