Like burgers and fries, Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay fit together.
Some of it is personality. Some of it is playing styles. Some of it is sublime talent.
Together, they dominated the Zurich Classic, rolling to a two-stroke victory Sunday over Sam Burns and Billy Horschel at TPC Louisiana.
The two-man team event isn’t for everyone because of where it fits on the PGA Tour schedule and because of how different it is from a traditional 72-hole stroke-play event, but for those who like it – and all that New Orleans offers – it’s a week to savor.
For Schauffele and Cantlay, it was another chapter in what is developing into one of the PGA Tour’s and America’s top two-player tandems. In the 2019 Presidents Cup and the 2021 Ryder Cup, Schauffele and Cantlay played together multiple times, compiling a 4-2 record in those events, including a 4-0 mark in alternate-shot matches.
It’s a fair assumption that U.S. captain Davis Love III probably will pencil the two into his Presidents Cup lineup together in September.
Last week, about 15 miles from Bourbon Street, Schauffele and Cantlay started with a best-ball 59, a tournament first, and rode their record start to a wire-to-wire victory.
Does a combined 59 count as breaking the game’s sacred scoring barrier?
“I’ll count it in my book,” Schauffele said.
Schauffele can also count it as putting an end to a tour winless streak that stretched back more than three years, dating to the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions. He won the gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics last summer.
“It’s awesome,” Schauffele said of his fifth tour victory. “If there is any success I could share with anyone, it would be with Patrick.”
Neither Schauffele nor Cantlay shows much emotion on the course, but their styles work together. Schauffele is closer to a power player than Cantlay, but both rely more on consistency than muscle.
“We definitely bring out the best in each other,” said Cantlay, who was coming off a playoff loss in the RBC Heritage one week earlier.
Schauffele and Cantlay are good-enough friends that when the FedEx Cup playoffs ended last summer, they took a vacation together to the Napa Valley in their native California before heading to Wisconsin for the Ryder Cup.“I don't think either of us would have gone out of their way to be friends with each other, but then spending that time together, we realized that we really got along with each other,” Cantlay said at the Ryder Cup.
“I think he's incredibly smart, and I think he's incredibly conscientious. He is someone that probably brings out the best in me. He's more positive, and he has a way of being more light as opposed to me being serious.
“Yet he's very quiet and reserved, so we kind of have that bond, and yet he balances me out a little bit.”
Ron Green Jr.