Xander Schauffele emerges from final round battle for first major
Xander Schauffele – rewarded for consistency – image PGA of America
Xander Schauffele has today broken through for his much anticipated first major, a final hole birdie at Valhalla Golf Club in Kentucky to defeat Bryson DeChambeau, after leading or sharing the lead after every round and emerging from a last-day shootout.
Developing a reputation as the hardly derogatory ‘best player in the game not to win a major’, Schauffele’s season had already been very impressive with eight top tens but while losing a lead in last week’s final round of the Wells Fargo tournament to Rory McIlroy could have served to deflate him, he chose to learn from what he had gone through.
This week he produced the lowest score ever recorded in a major, beating by one shot the major record previously shared by Brooks Koepka in the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive and Henrik Stenson in the 2016 British Open at Royal Troon.
The last nine holes became a battle between Schauffele, DeChambeau and Viktor Hovland, Schauffele leading by two as he headed to the 10th hole.
A bogey at the 10th after a risky fairway would from the bunker allowed both DeChambeau and Hovland to draw closer but it would take until the 18th hole before DeChambeau would draw level but twenty minutes later Schauffele would himself hole an 8-footer for birdie to take the title.
Schauffele had done well to successfully negotiate an awkward stance alongside the fairway bunker at the last to set up the birdie but his pitch to 8 feet left the result in doubt until the last putt was struck.
“I am very satisfied,” said Schauffele. “I’m tired. Once I sat down in scoring, I felt a little bit more tired. But just a whirlwind of emotions.
“I knew I had to birdie the last hole, looking up at the board. I was trying to squeak a birdie in there somehow just to have some kind of cushion. It was a hectic birdie, as well, but it was awesome. I kept telling myself, I need to earn this, I need to prove this to myself, and this is my time.
“I stayed very patient. I was looking up at the board. There’s been times when I tried to look away from it until the back nine, but today I was looking at it.
“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. That bogey was — I felt like there was a chance I could hit it over the green there, and if I could go back, I would have probably bumped it and played it differently based on the lie, but to bounce back with two birdies was tremendous, and I just kept fighting.”
“I was actually kind of emotional after the putt lipped in. It’s been a while since I’ve won, and I really just — I kept saying it all week, I just need to stay in my lane. Man, was it hard to stay in my lane today, but I tried all day to just keep focus on what I’m trying to do and keep every hole ahead of me. Had some weird kind of breaks coming into the house, but it’s all good now.”
The Australasian challenge fizzled out somewhat over the weekend with Min Woo Lee’s final round of 67 moving him to 26th and the leading Australasian.
