After Justin Thomas snapped his 1,064-day winless drought on Sunday at the RBC Heritage, he credited Xander Schauffele for helping him rediscover the putting feels that deserted him as he wandered through the golf wilderness.
“As funny as it is, a huge help, I called Xander at the end of last year because I think he’s one of the best putters in fundamentals and not just putting but everything,” Thomas said after beating Andrew Novak in a playoff at Harbour Town Golf Links. “I was just like, ‘Can I just pick your brain for like two or three hours, just talk to you about putting?'”
Thomas’ shop talk with Schauffele allowed him to realize that he had lost his “home base” for putting fundamentals that made him a great putter during his rise to world No. 1 in 2017-18. “The questions he asked me,” Thomas added, “made me realize that I’m trying basically too hard and I’m trying too many different things.”
Thomas’ Harbour Town win was due in large part to his iron play; he ranked fifth in strokes gained: approach. But the flat stick also played a big role. Thomas ranked third in strokes gained: putting for the week, and he rolled in a 21-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole to earn his 16th career PGA Tour win.
On Monday, Schauffele downplayed his role in sparking Thomas’ resurgence as a great putter while speaking on a conference call ahead of the 2025 PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, where he will be the defending champ.
“J.T., he played great,” Schauffele said. “I don’t think I really have anything to do with him winning. He maybe gave me too much credit. He was pretty upfront and asked if I could kind of tag along for practice one day. When I’m in town here [in Jupiter, Fla.], J.T. is a very familiar face that I compete against. It’s one of the ways us folks here in Jupiter like to sharpen up before a tournament. It was simple. He started asking me questions, and it ended up with me being the one asking him all the questions, sort of how he thinks about putting, what he’s done in the past.
“You know, I think more than anything, it was just sort of he was searching and maybe trying too hard, and he’s done so many good things in the past that it was sort of like maybe an eye-opening, sort of like, ‘I used to do, three, four, five of the things we were talking about, and I stopped doing them because I was down this crazy rabbit hole of trying to get better.’ Felt like all the answers were right in front of him. J.T. is so good that he figured it out pretty quickly.”
Thomas, who has two runner-up finishes this season to go along with his win at the RBC Heritage, ranks 24th in putting this season. That’s a significant improvement from 2024 and ’23, when he ranked 174th and 135th, respectively.
Schauffele had no problem helping Thomas try to reignite the spark in his putter.
It wasn’t long ago that the roles were reversed.
“Like I said, he’s giving me too much credit,” Schauffele said. “He’s always been so good. He’s been a former No. 1 in the world. I’m the one that was there before asking him what he was doing, how he prepared, how he competed. So it’s a nice thing to be able to sort of play on teams with certain individuals and be able to sort of share notes. Golf is kind of tricky. We keep a lot of stuff to ourselves, and like you said, we try to get ahead of each other but every once in a while, you know, if someone is struggling or you feel like you need a little pick-me-up, you can always talk to any of the pros around the area, which is a nice feeling.”
Schauffele and Thomas will be two of the trendy picks at next month’s PGA Championship.
Thomas won the first of his two PGA Championships at Quail Hollow in 2017, while Schauffele has two runner-up finishes at the Wells Fargo Championship, which most years is conducted at Quail Hollow.
“Writers call it horses for courses,” Schauffele said. “Golfers sort of play well in stretches and like certain courses for some reasons. I’m sure there’s some analytics or statistics that could back that up. You just have to get on a property and you have to feel good, and the vibe has to be good, and I’ve sort of had that feeling when I’m on property there.”
A win at Quail would make Schauffele just the third player to go back-to-back at the PGA Championship in the stroke-play era, joining Tiger Woods and Brooks Koepka.
Schauffele’s road to back-to-back PGA Championships won’t be easy, with a resurgent Thomas, who is now ranked No. 6 in the world, joining Scottie Scheffler and recent career grand slam winner Rory McIlroy as the likely favorites.
McIlroy also has a string record at Quail Hollow, including running away from Schauffele during the final round of last year’s Wells Fargo Championship.
That’s a loss that Schauffele remembers well, and he hopes to flip the script should they both be in contention in a few weeks.
“The times I think about competing against him, I feel like he’s gotten the best of me almost every time,” Schauffele said of McIlroy. “Thinking back to Quail, you know, I got the brunt of firing Rory McIlroy, hitting it further and straighter than everyone, chipping and putting it better than everyone, and we kind of saw what that looked like in birdieing, I don’t know, what felt like every hole on the back nine.
“He’s accomplished the Grand Slam, which is big congrats to him. He already was, but is going to go down as one of the greats that I’ve ever played against. Any chance you can get to sort of take him down or have a go, it’s always a good time.”
