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Xander Schauffele of the United States plays his shot from the fifth tee during the first round of the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club on May 16, 2024, in Louisville, Kentucky. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
Xander Schauffele, whose drought is approaching two years, opens with a record 62
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – You don’t lose if you get hit. you lose if you stay down.
Louisville idol Muhammad Ali said it, while world No. 5 Xander Schauffele lived it Thursday.
Schauffele, who hasn’t won since the 2022 Genesis Scottish Open, shot a 9-under 62, the lowest round in PGA Championship history, at Valhalla. It’s the latest reminder that it’s all written into the work requirements of a golfer to keep getting off the mat.
“Yeah, I think not winning makes you want to win more, as weird as that is,” Schauffele said after carding a fourth-round 62 in a major and his first since opening with the same score at the US Open (T10) of last summer. “For me, at least, I react to it, and I want it more and more and it makes me want to work harder and harder.”
Golf is like life, people say. It’s also like a ‘Rocky’ movie.
Even the most elite professionals take it on the chin, but they’re used to finding mental landing space between not winning and tragic failure. This is how they survive – and even learn. Rory McIlroy, who birdied three of his last five holes for a 5-under 66 (T4), spoke before the tournament about having to put himself in competition to see where he is with his game.
While it’s harder to stomach, even gut punches can be instructive, which may begin to explain why all over the leaderboard at this PGA are examples of players getting off the mat – sometimes almost literally.
“I slipped a rib on Saturday the week before Wells Fargo and I wasn’t sure I was going to play,” said Sahith Theegala, who birdied his final three holes for a 6-under 65 at Valhalla on Thursday. “I immediately called my chiropractor and had three very painful adjustments to get it back in place and I couldn’t really breathe or move all Saturday and Sunday.”
With aggressive rehabilitation, he added, he has healed quickly and is now 100 percent.
Ben Kohles went four strokes to get down just short of the green on the final hole of THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson two weeks ago, losing to Taylor Pendrith by one. It was a brutal, blindfolded knockdown, and yet Kohles shot a 67 on Thursday, five out of the lead.
“I was pretty upset and upset for about 15 minutes,” he said.
Tony Finau entered this week with just two top-10 finishes in 12 starts this year. He is ranked 30th in the world, having dropped from world No. 11 after winning the Mexico Open at Vidanta last season.
And yet Finau, warming up to a Valhalla that rewards amazing tee shots, carded a 65.
“It can get frustrating, leaving the tournaments a little disappointed and a little bit off,” he said. “I’ve always been very optimistic. I never feel like I’m far away. … That resilient attitude I think is huge when you play big tournaments. You have to believe you can play well.”
It speaks to the nature of golf that the world’s top two players, No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 2 McIlroy, embody resilience like no other. This would be easy to forget given their impressive achievements, but we know better.
Last season Scheffler had 17 top-10 finishes but was plagued by poor performance and won just twice. He was in tears when he and Brooks Koepka lost a Ryder Cup match 9 and 7. In 2022, Scheffler lost the TOUR Championship and FedExCup in agonizing fashion to McIlroy.
And yet this week Scheffler, the world and FedExCup No. 1 by a wide margin, comes into the PGA Championship on the strength of four wins in his last five starts.
McIlroy has 20 top-10 finishes (the most in golf, with three) but no major wins since winning the 2014 PGA here. But even tough knocks at the 2022 Open Championship and the 2023 US Open – both of which he could have won with even half-decent placement – couldn’t keep him down. He is the only three-time FedExCup winner and is coming off wins in his last two starts, the Wells Fargo Championship and the Zurich Classic of New Orleans (with Shane Lowry).
His most resilient moment Thursday, McIlroy said, came on the par-5 18th, the ninth hole of the day. A good birdie hole became something else entirely after he hit his tee into the water.
“Yeah, I dropped and took my medicine,” he said, “and yeah, I had a big putt-under about 120 yards to make par, which was important after I bogeyed 17.
“That kept any momentum I had going into the next nine,” he added. (He shot a 4-under 31 on the front, including a birdie at the first after the shot came close to the pin.)
Schauffele shot a 5-under 31 on the back nine to take the lead as he made the turn, and extended that with birdies on Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 7. It’s easy to forget, amid all these highlights, that has struggled to close out wins. His four Sunday Group Finals appearances on the PGA TOUR this season are second only to Scheffler (five), but Scheffler has beaten him, four wins to zero.
Schauffele also has eight straight top-20 finishes in the majors, the most on TOUR, but is looking for his first trophy to add to his seven TOUR wins and a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
And now, just four days after leading the Wells Fargo late on the front nine only to watch McIlroy go 8 under in eight holes to beat him by five, Schauffele has carded a doped 62.
Ali was no golfer, but he might have smiled and waved at the leader’s lantern jaw. In a game that hits and bruises, unfolds bumps as relentlessly and apathetically as the meanest partner, there’s no choice but to pick yourself up, shake it off and keep going.
FROM
Cameron Morfit is a staff writer for the PGA TOUR. He has covered rodeo, arm wrestling and snowmobile climbing in addition to a lot of golf. Follow Cameron Morfit Twitter.