On one pleasant south Florida morning in early December, Xander Schauffele meets us on the sun-soaked driving range at Dutchman’s Pipe, a new private club just a short drive from the West Palm Beach airport. He’s joining us for an episode of ‘Warming Up‘ and while he’s understandably skipped his typical pre-tournament routine — physio, then putting green, then chipping green — he greets us with a grin, grabs a wedge and gets to work. For the next hour, he’ll play golf, talking about everything from his origin story to how he hits a cut, to Tiger Woods’ low-spin, wind-beating 9-iron at the Masters.
In the process, we learn plenty from what he said and how he said it, about golf and about Schauffele, too. Want to learn something about the game and want to know what it’s like to spend some time with golf’s latest two-time major champ? Watch the video below. Or, if you’re more in the reading mood, keep on going. Either way, enjoy!
1. He’ll watch coverage before a round
I asked Schauffele to imagine he was warming up for the final round of a major where he was in contention and this was one interesting insight; I’ve always wondered how guys in contention at big-time tournaments handle this. What’s it like to have golf on TV on before their round when you’re a featured piece of the coverage? Some ignore it. But not Schauffele. While he’s wary of watching too far before his tee time, when conditions may be dramatically different, he’ll flip it on three or four hours before he goes out.
“I like to,” he says. “I’ll watch a little bit of coverage. Maybe I’ll see a putt to a pin that guys are making or missing for some reason and try and remember it. I’m here to get any edge I can.”
2. He likes to be ‘playful’ in his warmup
Playful with shot shapes, specifically. As he starts with wedges and works his way down through his irons, Schauffele will mix up his ball flights to settle in on something comfortable for the round. Calibration, he says, is one of his father’s favorite words — he’s adopted it, too.
“I’ll try and hit little cuts, little draws. I’ll see what sticks, what doesn’t,” he says. “And then I know certain tendencies in my swing that would promote one thing or another. And if I’m hitting a cut or draw, one or the other better, I’ll favor the worse one.”
Schauffele has an easier time hitting a draw — gun to head, he says, that’s the shot he’d lean on — but he likes to be able to work the ball both ways.
3. He thinks there’s a real difference between contending and winning
We often wonder this from the outside: Is there something different between the guys in contention and the guys who actually end up with the win? Or is it basically luck and chance? Schauffele contended in major after major but didn’t break through until this summer, when he bagged two of ’em. He thinks the difference between contending and winning is very real.
“You never know how you’re going to react once you’re in the spot,” he says. “You practice everything you’re supposed to do the right way, the process, all this stuff. But I would get in some of these spots and I felt like there were certain holes in my game.”
He cites Carnoustie as an example, calling back to the 2018 Open Championship where he was in the mix on the back nine Sunday.
“The way I was swinging the club, it was hard for me to hit a controlled sort of cut; everything was off the toe, crashing left. And that’s still my tendency now; I just have more of an understanding of it. But I’d get in these spots and I would see this back right pin. I’m like, ‘Well, the perfect shot is a cut.’ And I’m sitting there and [I’d been] so disciplined the whole tournament to try and just hit like a low draw, just left of it. And then all of a sudden, you know, I’m so good, I’m going to try and hit the cut and then I mess it up. And now you’re all in your head. You just start to unravel. And so a lot of that was happening to me, where I felt my game was so close, I didn’t accept what I had. I always wanted more.
“And so I guess it’s like the pursuit of perfection to where you want to hit all the shots at the right time in the big moments. And along the way you learn it’s not really all about that.”
4. He leans on his talented neighbors for training
Schauffele moved to south Florida, where he lives near big-time pros like Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and plenty more.
“That’s another nice part about being here,” Schauffele says. “There’s so many awesome players to play with here. So sort of my whole deal is if I play nine holes or 18 holes and if I’m able to get one or two, even just one pressure putt, like, the entire day is worth it. If I’m able to hit like two or three pressured iron shots that I have to hit, the entire day’s worth it.”
Iron sharpens iron, they say. Apparently irons do too.
5. The wind at Augusta is as crazy as they say
Schauffele had a famously unfortunate experience with the wind at Augusta National when, while in contention on Sunday, he hit 8-iron into the water short of No. 16. That still stings, but after several more trips to the Masters, Schauffele knows he’s in good company. After all, he still recalls in detail the experience of watching Tiger Woods make the veteran play at No. 12 in 2019, when most of his competition found the water short and he hit a no-spin 9-iron to the center of the green.
“The swirl in the trees is insane,” he says. “I really want to conquer the place. I mean, I feel like I’ve played pretty well there, but it’s a really fun place to be in contention, just with the history and knowing a lot of the shots and being in a lot of the spots … like, I know exactly how the shots are supposed to work. If I can execute it, it’ll be good, you know? And so there’s a different sensation when you’re playing there versus other majors.”
6. He still loves hitting balls
Schauffele is at home on the range.
“My first love was, for sure, the range,” he says. The range was one specific driving range in San Diego, near what was then-Qualcomm Stadium. “That’s kind of how I fell in love with the game at first was just sitting there beating golf balls. Just love watching the golf ball fly.”
He learned to play at a course called Doubletree, where his dad befriended the director of golf and she let him learn; he’d start from the 100-yard marker and, as he got older and better, back to the 150, then the 200, then the red tees and so on. That course is an apartment complex. The stadium isn’t called Qualcomm any more, either. Schauffele’s 31 now. But he says this is just the beginning.
“I haven’t entered my prime yet,” he says matter-of-factly.
7. A driving-range shank doesn’t faze him
Not anymore.
“I used to shank it a lot. Warming up in college, for some reason,” he says. “Not a lot, but like, there were probably four tournaments in a row where I hoseled it, and it kind of helped me understand how insignificant a warm-up is. It was a big learning lesson for me then.”
8. He’s a different person off the course
Schauffele knows that he keeps things even-keel on the course. But away from competition?
“If I’m with my buddies or, y’know, out to dinner — which rarely happens — my wife would say, like, I’m goofy. Very different than what I am on the course. And I try to be the same person on and off, but I can’t focus and be goofy at the same time.”
9. He’s never been late to a tee time — but he’s been close
Schauffele takes a somewhat nonchalant approach to his arrival on the first tee. He never leaves himself time to hit as many drivers as he wants to, he says. So his caddie, Austin Kaiser, will often leave the range before he’s ready, sending a strong suggestion to his player that it’s time to get going.
“The worst was at the PGA at Harding Park,” he remembers. “I had to do a little quick-step.” Schauffele got across the line with 38 seconds left, realizing he’d given the starter a scare. Even better, his playing partner, Steve Stricker, still hadn’t arrived; he made it with six seconds left.
“Of course, I get up there and I snap-hook my tee shot and then Stricker hits the fairway,” he remembers. “I was like, ‘this feels right.'”
Dylan Dethier is a senior writer for GOLF Magazine/GOLF.com. The Williamstown, Mass. native joined GOLF in 2017 after two years scuffling on the mini-tours. Dethier is a graduate of Williams College, where he majored in English, and he’s the author of 18 in America, which details the year he spent as an 18-year-old living from his car and playing a round of golf in every state.
