Winning the Open Championship comes with the title of Champion Golfer of the Year. Xander Schauffele proved he very much deserved such a distinction over the weekend at Royal Troon in Scotland, and with two major championships under his belt in 2024, it seems like the floodgates are opening for a man very much in his golfing prime.
For the first time since 1982, all of the men’s majors in one calendar year were won by Americans, with Schauffele taking two of them — after finally getting the major monkey off his back at the PGA Championship in May.
Schauffele joins an elite group of just Tiger Woods (twice) and Walter Hagen to have won both the PGA Championship at the Open Championship in the same season.
He’s the first player to win multiple majors since Brooks Koepka in 2018.
“It’s a dream come true to win two majors in one year,” Schauffele said. “It took me forever just to win one, and to have two now is something else.”
He very much earned the Claret Jug this weekend, shooting a 2-under 69 in the worst of the worst conditions Saturday afternoon and following that up with a bogey-free 65 Sunday, including a 4-under 31 on his back nine.
Schauffele won the Genesis Scottish Open in 2022 and said that was the moment when he realized his game could travel.
“It’s a completely different style of golf,” Schauffele said of the links layouts across the Atlantic. “It makes you play shots and have different ball positions. There’s so much risk/reward when the wind’s blowing 20 miles an hour and it starts raining. There are so many different variables that come into play. It truly is an honour to win this.”
Every part of Schauffele’s game was clicking Sunday — and through the week. He finished 15th in strokes gained: off the tee, second in strokes gained: approach, and 20th in strokes gained: putting.
“He’s obviously now learning that the winning is easy. He has a lot of horsepower, do you know what I mean? In the sense of 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,” said Justin Rose, who played alongside Schauffele in the final round and finished second to the American.
To start Sunday, the leaderboard was bunched with the anticipated horse race featuring nine golfers within just three shots of the lead. The overnight leader, Billy Horschel, was up-and-down to begin his day but still went out in 1-under. Rose, the wily veteran looking for one more major run, went out in 3-under. Schauffele, however, just didn’t back down — and didn’t make any mistakes. He was 4 under through his first seven holes on the back nine and held on tight through Nos. 17 and 18.
Schauffele hit 16 of 18 greens in regulation on Sunday and became the first golfer in history to shoot a final-round 65 to win a major in the same season.
To their credit, Rose birdied two of his final three holes while Horschel birdied his final three holes to get to 7 under and finish two shots back of Schauffele.
“Obviously Scottie (Scheffler) has got (six) wins and a major, but what Xander has done this year, the consistency he plays with, he’s taken his game to another level,” said Horschel. “He deserves to hold that Claret Jug right now.”
Schauffele’s challengers slowly began to fade as Sunday pressed on.
Scheffler four-putted No. 9 for a double bogey and ended up tied for seventh. Horschel was in the mix until he bogeyed the tricky par-3 8th (the “Postage Stamp”) and No. 10. Rose bogeyed No. 12 along with Thriston Lawrence, who held the lead for a good part of Sunday before ending up in fourth.
“I think winning the first one helped me a lot today on the back nine. I had some feeling of calmness come through. It was very helpful on what has been one of the hardest back nines I’ve ever played in a tournament,” Schauffele said.
The Canadian contingent fared much better Sunday than in the blustery Saturday conditions, with both Corey Conners and Mackenzie Hughes shooting 3-under 68s. At one point in the afternoon both Conners and Hughes were the only golfers to shoot an under-par score on the back nine.
Conners finished tied for 25th (his 11th top-25 result of the season) and will return home to pick up his wife, Malory, before coming back across the pond to represent Canada at the Olympics in Paris in two weeks.
Hughes ended up tied for 16th, his best result at a major since his finished tied for sixth in his Open Championship debut in 2021.
“I love this golf. I felt this was a proper links test and just such a cool design. I had a lot of fun over here and I think that of all the majors that I could win, this would be the most up my alley,” Hughes told reporters in Scotland. “I can see myself winning an Open someday, hopefully soon.”
It was a pair of fine results from the Canadians at the Open Championship this week, but Schauffele’s weekend effort was too good to be topped.
The defending Olympic gold medalist will head to Paris on a high, with a chance to win even more hardware, having proved at Troon why he’s been so consistent on the game’s biggest stages over the last two years.
With this Open Championship win, Schauffele hasn’t finished outside the top 20 at a major in two years.
“Sometimes things go your way, and sometimes they don’t. (Today) I felt like I really controlled a lot of it. I kind of grabbed onto it,” Schauffele said, “and there was no chance I was going to let go of it.”
