DUBLIN, Ohio — What does Xander Schauffele remember about his failed driver test at the 2019 Open Championship?
“I kind of lit fire and threw everyone under the bus,” he said on Wednesday at the Memorial, nearly six years later, grinning at the memory. “I remember there was a line, and I was like, ‘I’m stepping across it.'”
The incident in question came at Royal Portrush, when the R&A — the governing body that puts on the tournament, with whom Schauffele had a stern word — selected 30 players at random for driver testing. Several pros failed, though Schauffele’s test was the only one to escape confidentiality.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because something similar happened to Rory McIlroy two weeks ago at the PGA Championship; his driver was selected for testing, it didn’t pass the test and, even though several others failed, too, his was the first to become public. McIlroy put in a backup, which he struggled to control all week. But when the news broke it spread on social media with the whiff of scandal, which several other top players have since said is a complete misread of the situation — including Schauffele.
Settled comfortably in a swivel chair at the front of Muirfield Village’s interview room, Schauffele held court as he explained what he views as the flaws of testing and why McIlroy’s “failure” was perfectly ordinary. He offered insight into how he’d change the process. He fessed up to unknowingly leaking the failed test of the world’s best player. And he reminded the golf world why he’s become one of the game’s most insightful, most entertaining interviews.
It’s worth starting at Portrush, though. Schauffele said on Wednesday that he didn’t remember his exact reaction in 2019, but when I found that quote, it was remarkably similar to his views of today:
Schauffele, 2019, Portrush: “What’s the fair thing to do? Just test the whole field. It’s plain and simple.”
Schauffele, 2025, Muirfield Village: “I would test everyone and make sure I would get everyone’s serial number with a driver. Pretty easy.”
Full credit for consistency. In Schauffele’s view, then, how big a deal is it when these drivers “fail” these tests?
“It really is normal,” he said. “I didn’t even understand the public’s negative opinion on it, it didn’t really register in my head because I know, one, it’s like, we hit our drivers a lot, so they creep and then they go over a line. We don’t know the line — we have no clue. Unless our driver physically cracks and you start hitting these knuckle balls off the tee that disperse everywhere; then you know your driver’s broken.”
Schauffele also wanted to make it clear that a driver that fails a test provides minimal advantage.
“It’s not like you’re going to be a guy who has 170 ball speed and then all of a sudden your driver’s hot and you have 185. It’s not like a corked bat. That’s just not how golf works. You either swing it hard and hit it hard or you don’t.”
The reason it’s such a big deal for pros to switch to a backup, Schauffele explained, is because no matter what the specs say, every driver performs a little different.
“They can have all the same writing and logos on them, but the makeup of each head and shaft is slightly different,” he said. “A lot better now than they used to be, but it’s just hard for us to sort of — we have our trusty club, and then you take it out and switch it … there’s a little bit of a grace period where you have to get used to it.”
He also doesn’t believe that anybody is intentionally playing a hot driver. “Because the whole problem is, when your driver is hot, it will break just shortly after that. That’s just how it works,” he said. It’s the familiarity, not the worn-down face, that carries its value.
Because Schauffele doesn’t view failing a driver test as a negative, he didn’t think twice about mentioning in a post-PGA interview that Scottie Scheffler — tournament winner and World No. 1 — had failed his in the same batch of testing as McIlroy.
“I was the one who leaked it, basically, about Scott’s,” Schauffele said sheepishly. “To me, it was more of like, a credit to how good he was, y’know? I didn’t realize — I apologized. I was like, ‘Sorry, dude. I wasn’t trying to have that be a question in your media after you just won another major.’
“It was more about, like, this guy just used his backup and absolutely rinsed the field again.”
Scheffler did indeed rinse the field. First he gapped his Thursday-Friday playing partners, Schauffele and McIlroy. And then he gapped everybody else, ultimately winning by five. In his winner’s press conference, he offered a simple, thoughtful explanation.
“The driver testing is something that regularly happens on tour,” Scheffler said. “My driver did fail me this week. We had a feeling that it was going to be coming because I’ve used that driver for over a year. I was kind of fortunate for it to last that long, I felt like.”
He added that the current system of testing was “going halfway” and suggested they either leave it up to the players or incorporate a more robust system that tests everybody. Like Schauffele, he called for a more robust protocol.
“I thought it was kind of crazy when you test 30 guys and the other 120 get to kind of roam around,” Schauffele said. “It’s kind of weird.”
He and Scheffler enter the week as the No. 3 and No. 1 players in the world, respectively, while No. 2 McIlroy is skipping this week. Scheffler enters on a heater, having finished 1-1-T4 in his last three starts. Schauffele has played well but not up to his standards; he said he feels a sense of urgency as the Tour’s summer season arrives.
“I know there’s a few big events left of the year and I just need to show up for ’em,” he said. He still has too many swing thoughts, he said, as he continues to simplify.
“I feel like I’ve been a little bit stagnant over the ball, coming back and sitting there, you almost can tell I’m thinking one, two, three, four things. If I can get that down to one or two, that would be ideal.”
Schauffele still has six weeks before the Tour’s return to Portrush.
We’re guessing he’ll bring a backup driver.
