LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY | After all of it – the tabloid talk, the rain, the mud, the fog, the death of a man on his way to work, the arrest of another man on his way to work and a lightning storm of birdies and brilliance flashing across this corner of the commonwealth – it came down to the guy who seemed the coolest of them all in a PGA Championship that felt at times as if it were being tossed in a tempest.
Until Sunday afternoon when the first taste of summer’s heat arrived to blanket the thousands of fans packed into Valhalla Golf Club, the soft rap on Xander Schauffele was that he had misplaced the magic of winning.
The gold-medal victory in Japan was nearly four years ago and all the top-10 finishes and overnight leads didn’t disguise the fact that Schauffele had not won a PGA Tour event in nearly two years while living in the single-digit ZIP code of the world rankings.
When Schauffele finally leaned over a 6-foot, 2-inch birdie putt on the 72nd green Sunday, surrounded by thousands on the adjacent hillsides and with the newly embraceable and endlessly entertaining Bryson DeChambeau waiting for a playoff, it felt as simple as now or never.
A moment of doubt crept in. At first, Schauffele saw it breaking left to right. The more he looked, the more he began to think it might go right to left. He settled on playing it straight, up the hill and firm.
“I kept telling myself, I need to earn this. I need to prove this to myself, and this is my time.”
Xander Schauffele
The putt that redefined Schauffele, making him a major champion, acted for an instant as if it might graze the left side of the hole. Instead, it caught the edge and spun in, eliminating the questions with one emphatic answer.
“I kept telling myself, I need to earn this. I need to prove this to myself, and this is my time,” said Schauffele, who shot 6-under 65 for a 21-under 263 total and one-stroke victory over DeChambeau. The victory, the eighth of the 30-year-old Californian’s career, was worth $3.33 million from the $18.5 million purse.
It was the punctuation mark on a story that has been building for years. While Scottie Scheffler has been doing most of the winning, Schauffele has been like his shadow, pushing the issue and patiently biding his time.
A week earlier, after Schauffele had endured the full McIlroy at the Wells Fargo Championship, he shook the hand of his caddie, Austin Kaiser, and said to him, “We’re going to get one soon, kid.”
It happened soon enough.
From the moment Schauffele signed for a record-tying 62 on Thursday, he had control of this PGA Championship. He was as relentless as the tides, and even when he stumbled, such as with a double bogey on the 15th hole Saturday that had the effect of a drawstring tightening the narrative, Schauffele kept going about his methodical business.
He’s no flashier than the liver pâté-brown shirt he wore on Sunday. Schauffele is sneaky long these days thanks to swing work with instructor Chris Como, and he rarely seems to force the issue, which can be hard to do in today’s supercharged game.
While DeChambeau was throwing haymakers and Viktor Hovland was making six birdies in a nine-hole stretch, Schauffele kept doing what he does.
“I just wanted to be aware of everything. I wanted to know exactly where I stood. I wanted to know – address my feelings when they were happening,” said Schauffele, who comes off as more stoic than celebratory.
If the moment that mattered most came at the par-5 18th hole on Sunday, the second-most important came after Schauffele bogeyed the soft, par-5 10th hole, cracking open the door he had been trying to close.
He looked tentative and a touch nervous, and it was reasonable to wonder whether another near-miss might be building.
Instead, Schauffele made back-to-back birdies at the 11th and 12th holes, counterpunching like a champion.
“That shows grit,” Kaiser said.
With DeChambeau and Hovland playing two holes ahead, Schauffele could see what was happening. That can work both ways, adding either clarity or pressure.
When DeChambeau birdied the 18th hole to pull even with Schauffele (tying the all-time major-championship scoring record at the time), Schauffele coolly saved par with an excellent pitch shot after missing the 17th green.
Collin Morikawa watched it unfold beside him in the final pairing.
“He's one of the best players in the world. Today was exactly all that put into one. He knew what he had to make on 18, and that's what great players do,” said Morikawa, who didn’t make his first birdie until the final hole and slipped into a tie for fourth, three strokes behind Hovland.
The uphill 18th, framed by limestone waterfalls on the right side, asked a simple question: Could Schauffele win it with a birdie or give DeChambeau the stage in a playoff?
“I really didn’t want to go into a playoff against Bryson,” said Schauffele, who rose one spot, to No. 2, in the Official World Golf Ranking.
“Maybe inside he was fighting something, but it’s hard to win out here. It’s not that easy. … Just keep knocking on the door.”
Austin Kaiser
After his tee shot came to rest just outside of a fairway bunker, forcing Schauffele to stand in the sand, he could have played his second shot to either side of the massive fairway. Kaiser first thought that Schauffele should go right, but with the ball above his feet (“He was basically playing T-ball at that point,” his caddie said) Schauffele played his second shot 35 yards short on the left side.
From there, an otherwise simple pitch shot made infinitely tougher by the moment set up Schauffele’s final birdie, the one that ended with both hands raised to the Kentucky sky in triumph.
Before Valhalla, Schauffele had five top-five finishes this year including two runners-up. He has made a habit of playing in the final pairing on Sunday and, until Valhalla, Schauffele had become accustomed to shaking the winner’s hand.
“He didn’t show it,” Kaiser said of any building frustration. “Maybe inside he was fighting something, but it’s hard to win out here. It’s not that easy…. Just keep knocking on the door.”
Go back to the Players Championship in March where Schauffele finished one stroke behind – you guessed it – Scheffler. Asked there about his patience and his persistence, Schauffele said, “A steady drip caves a stone.”
Sunday night, with the Wanamaker Trophy on a table beside him and his metaphorical stone cracked, Schauffele offered another bit of personal wisdom.
“When you believe something enough,” Schauffele said, “it'll happen.”
E-MAIL RON
TOP PHOTO: ANDREW REDINGTON, GETTY IMAGES