TROON, SCOTLAND | The clubhouse of the Royal Troon Golf Club is no more than a medium-length putt behind the 18th green of this famous Scottish venue. Sturdy and stone-built, it looks as though it was constructed to withstand sieges as well as the elements. To many competitors in the Open Championship making their way up the closing hole last week, it must have looked warm and welcoming after the rain or wind or both they had endured during their rounds, plus having to wrestle with the considerable difficulties presented by some of golf’s fiercest closing holes.
At this, the 10th Open to be staged at this famous west-coast links, the clubhouse formed the back of the stage onto which players walked to conclude their rounds. As they did so, the applause of spectators banked up in stands on either side rained down on them. “It’s amazing …,” Justin Rose said. “For me, like that’s the best look in golf, those two long grandstands that you walk down and the big yellow leaderboard. That’s what I call a magic moment.”
Xander Schauffele, 30, made his entrance to this stage for the fourth and final time soon after 6 o’clock, on a grey, calm Sunday evening, closely followed by Austin Kaiser, his friend and caddie, the two men knowing that victory in the 152nd Open Championship was about to be Schauffele’s. In a few minutes, he would become the “champion golfer of the year.” The awful weather of the previous day had gone if not been forgotten and was replaced by a soft serenity that made it possible to hear the rise and fall of the sea only a few yards away.
“It’s an honour. I’ve always dreamt of doing it,” Schauffele said later, glancing often at the handsome trophy to his left. “That walk up 18 … really is one of the coolest feelings I’ve ever had in my life. I got chills walking down and quickly had to zap myself back into focus because the tournament wasn’t over yet.”
In May, during the PGA Championship at Valhalla in Louisville, Kentucky, Schauffele had to play the 72nd hole knowing that Bryson DeChambeau had set a 20-under target of score, so he needed to birdie the long par-5 18th to win. Coolly and calmly, Schauffele met the challenge, sinking a 6-foot birdie putt for his first major championship.
Two months later and thousands of miles to the east, Schauffele’s last few holes in the fourth major championship of the year were tense. But this time he was the man in charge. He didn’t have to beat someone else’s target. They had to try to catch him.
He had taken the lead on the 13th with a birdie and widened it with another birdie on the 14th. Though England’s Justin Rose and South Africa’s Thriston Lawrence were hovering and fellow American Billy Horschel, who had started the day in the lead on 4-under and would close with birdies on his last three holes, was near, they could never catch Schauffele. He swept past them imperiously with a magnificent round of 6-under 65 that included four birdies in six holes starting on the 11th.
“It was at the very tip-top,” Schauffele said of this round.
“Xander is a guy at the top of his game, a guy that has all the attributes that make him a great player and a great champion,” said Rose, who played the last 18 holes alongside in the third-to-last group. “He’s obviously now learning that the winning is easy…. He’s good with a wedge; he’s great with a putter; he hits the ball a long way; obviously his iron play is strong. So he’s got a lot of weapons out there.
“I think probably one of his most unappreciated ones is his mentality,” Rose continued. “He’s such a calm guy out there. I don’t know what he’s feeling, but he certainly makes it look very easy. He plays with a freedom, which kind of tells you as a competitor that he’s probably not feeling a tonne of the bad stuff. He’s got a lot of runway ahead and a lot of exciting stuff ahead, I’m sure.”
It was not only Rose who spoke highly of the new Open champion. Mark “Fooch” Fulcher, Rose’s caddie, did so, too.
“He didn’t put a foot wrong all day,” Fulcher said. “It’s nice that I didn’t have to pay for a ticket to see it. He is not just a good golfer. He is a lovely fella with it. It is nice to know the lad.”
“It’s easy to talk about; it’s harder to actually do when you’re out there. I think Austin and I did a pretty good job of plotting around this difficult property.”
Xander Schauffele
Schauffele’s victory meant players from the U.S. have swept the board at this year’s major championships for the first time since 1982. Scottie Scheffler won the Masters for the second time, DeChambeau won the U.S. Open for the second time and Schauffele tucked the other two into his pocket.
“I felt like I limited the mistakes pretty well [this week],” said Schauffele, a nine-time winner on the PGA Tour. “I was lucky to only have one really hard round in sort of the wind and rain, and I managed that day better than I ever thought I could, to be honest. I felt like I just controlled a lot of what I was trying to do, and the moments where I was losing control, I sort of – if I hit it offline and into the fescue, I wasn’t too worried about it because it’s links golf. It’s how you play golf out here.
“As long as you avoid those coffin bunkers, you can move that ball forward and get yourself back in the hole. I think the style of golf maybe helped me mentally play this week. The style of golf you can play out here, you don’t have to be perfect or hit the prettiest drives or anything. As long as you’re moving the ball forward and dodging bunkers and keeping holes in front of you and making sure your chips are into the wind, all the stuff that us pros talk about. It’s easy to talk about; it’s harder to actually do when you’re out there. I think Austin and I did a pretty good job of plotting around this difficult property.”
Having finished second in the 2018 Open won by Francesco Molinari at Carnoustie, Schauffele has gone one better in this historic event. He said he didn’t know what liquid Stefan, his father, intended to put into the trophy, but it didn’t take long to find that out. Stefan Schauffele, a rather raffish-looking man with broad shoulders and a broad smile who was wearing a straw hat and was standing nearby, said “wine, of course. claret in fact. It is the Claret Jug.”
E-MAIL JOHN
Top: Schauffele charges to his second major this year.
ANDY BUCHANAN, AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
