Team Cantlay/Schauffele break another record with 63 in Foursomes

AVONDALE, La. -- As low as possible. It’s a mindset not too uncommon around the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, where birdies come in bunches in the Four-Ball format.

Only Friday wasn’t Four-Ball. It was Foursomes. Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay didn’t get the memo.

After a lackluster 67 during Thursday’s Four-Ball session (you can call it that when the scoring average is 65.5), the duo fired a Foursomes tournament-record 9-under 63 in the second round to jump from the cutline to contention. As the morning wave wrapped up, Schauffele and Cantlay were tied for second at 14-under, two shots back of Wyndham Clark and Beau Hossler.

“We needed to be aggressive here in alternate shot, which is a little dangerous,” Schauffele said. “It was just necessary.”

Luckily these two have a bit of a history of going low at TPC Louisiana. The pairing now owns the best Four-Ball, Foursomes and overall tournament scores since the Zurich Classic moved to a team event in 2017. The defending champions carded a first-round 59 in Foursomes last year, later finishing two shots clear with an overall score of 29 under, both records.

Friday’s latest act came with a bit more urgency than the team felt at any point during their wire-to-wire win a year ago. To their own admission, both Schauffele and Cantlay had “anomaly” first rounds that left them with plenty of work to do. Not often do many bogeys get tallied during best ball, certainly not from a pair of top-5 players in the world coming in with great form. But Schauffele and Cantlay bogeyed three holes on Thursday, tied for the most in the field, and stood on the 7th tee 1-over for their round. The friends shared a “painful chuckle” and proceeded to birdie six of their next seven holes to salvage a 5-under round, six shots back of the leaders and tied for 56th.

The Foursomes rounds are often considered the separating rounds, as mistakes become magnified and birdies harder to find. With the leaderboard logjammed at the top, doing anything but the extraordinary wasn’t going to be enough. They had plenty of work to find any separation from the pack.

“We both want to repeat and win this tournament,” Schauffele said. “If we didn’t shoot anything lower than a 65 (today) we would’ve put ourselves in a pretty tough spot.”

Quite a lofty goal. The previous Foursomes tournament record was 65, a mark matched only three times. Leave it to Schauffele and Cantlay.

On their first hole of the day, the 10th, Schauffele stuffed the approach shot from 101 yards out to 13 inches for a tap-in birdie. After another birdie on the par-5 11th, Cantlay drained a 31-foot birdie putt on the par-3 13th to go 3-under through four holes. Cantlay made an 18-footer to save par on 15 then added their fourth birdie of the day on the par-4 16th. They capped it with an eagle on the par-5 18th as Schauffele stuck his 261-yard approach shot to 14 feet and Cantlay converted the putt. A ho-hum 30 on their front nine (another record, lowest nine-hole score in the Foursomes format).

Seemingly the only thing to slow them down was the weather. The duo added three more birdies through the first five holes in their back nine before play halted due to inclement weather. After a two-hour-and-32-minute delay, the duo managed three pars to cap off their round.

Would it have been different without the rain?

“We were flowing pretty good leading into that break,” Schauffele said. “So who knows what would have happened.”

Weather shouldn’t an issue the rest of the week with sunny skies in the forecast for the weekend. What might become a problem? There are no more records to break but their own.

That’s fine with them.

“We'd like to get that 59 again in best ball,” Cantlay said. “We’re going to try.”