Xander Schauffele finally broke through. What made the difference?

The past 12 months had it all — crazy winning streaks, new major champs, a major-week arrest (!) and more. With 2025 on the horizon, our writers are looking back at the most memorable moments from 2024.

No. 15 — Charley Hull goes viral | No. 14 — LIV, LPGA CEOs say goodbye | No. 13— Solheim Cup parking fiasco | No. 12 — Phoenix Open chaos | No. 11 — Lydia Ko’s Hall of Fame resurgence | No. 10 — PGA Tour/Saudi PIF merger stalemate | No. 9 — Keegan Bradley named Ryder Cup captain | No. 8 — Lexi Thompson stepped away

Biggest golf moments of 2024 No. 8: Xander Schauffele takes the next step

In the hours after his son’s breakthrough major championships victory, I spoke with Xander Schauffele’s father Stefan from his shipping container home-in-progress in Hawaii. He’d been there every step of his son’s journey to golfing greatness, after all. What did it mean to get across the line?

“We knew it was going to come,” Stefan said matter-of-factly; he’d trekked down the mountain for the PGA Championship’s back nine as his son’s victory became more and more likely. “In our minds — I think I can speak for him there — there was never a moment of doubt in that respect. I mean, look how consistent he is. It just happened.”

Okay, but how did it actually feel?

“I just started crying. Finally it happened. Finally, that happened,” Stefan said, inevitability replaced by wonder. “I was just observing until he won — and then I let the emotions go. At that moment I was helpless. Give me the Kleenex box.”

There’s no question that Scottie Scheffler was the PGA Tour’s dominant victor in 2024, and that Nelly Korda did nearly the same on the LPGA side, and that Bryson DeChambeau paired YouTube dominance with a U.S. Open victory. But when it came to the most old-school metric of all — total major victories — only one player on the planet added two to their name.

Stefan Schauffele may have skipped a trip to Valhalla, but he didn’t miss a summer Scottish adventure, making the midsummer trek to Royal Troon for the Open Championship. When that, too, ended in victory, his father was thrilled, moved and even more confident in his son’s future.

“He’s only halfway there,” Stefan said, characteristic twinkle in his eye. “I would say [he’s] the one with the greatest potential for the career grand slam. How about that?”

But what was the difference? What had taken Schauffele from perennial major-championship contender to victor — and then victor again? There’s no simple answer, and some analytically minded might chalk it up to luck, to variance, to flips of the coin. This year at various points Schauffele credited his experience, his ongoing work, the addition of Chris Como to his team and, as he said, sticking to the mantra that a steady drip caves a stone. When I got a chance to spend time with Xander himself earlier this December, then, I was eager to hear him describe it with the benefit of a few months’ hindsight.

“You never know how you’re going to react once you’re in the spot,” he said in between shots on a Florida driving range. “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 cited Carnoustie as an example, calling back to the 2018 Open Championship where he was in the mix on the back nine Sunday and showed what he describes as a lack of discipline.

“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.”

He didn’t achieve golfing perfection in 2024, nor will he in 2025. But for two weeks — two of the biggest weeks, for that matter — he achieved the perfect result. Schauffele is a major champion. Nothing can change that now.

You can watch our full Warming Up interview below.