Xander Schauffele laments another close call, but has the wisdom to accept it

PALM HARBOR, Fla. – Those concerned about the general well-being of Xander Schauffele, one of three hard-luck, heartache runners-up at The PLAYERS Championship on Sunday, need not be. He is going to be just fine.

This isn’t to suggest in the least that Schauffele doesn’t care, because he cares immensely about his craft and trying to get the most he can out of his talents. He is major-less, yes, but he has shown himself to be a big-game performer, rising on some of the game’s grandest stages (he owns six top-three finishes at the majors).

This is a player who wasn’t always the hot-shot, highly recruited, can’t-miss, up-and-coming rocket ship. Shauffele was neither a blue chipper nor a Dick Vitale diaper dandy. Schauffele has learned to scrap for everything he has.

Schauffele can’t hide his disappointment after watching a late lead slip away and losing by a shot to the hard-charging Scottie Scheffler on TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium Course on Sunday. Schauffele, Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman all finished at 19-under 269, tying for second at the PGA TOUR's biggest tournament. If there was any consolation – and really, who is to say there was? – it might be that only once in the history of The PLAYERS had a player returned a lower 72-hole score (Fuzzy Zoeller, 1994) and not won the golf tournament.

Schauffele, 29, has been something of a late bloomer in this game, and part of his learning curve has been being able to accept things that happen as they do, steady himself, and move forward. His father and mentor, Stefan, ingrained something into Xander's brain many years ago that the son lives by to this day: Commit. Execute. Accept. Though Schauffele admitted on Tuesday that sometimes those words are best followed in a different order. A player always has to be ready to accept, however he executes.

Schauffele executed pretty well over four days in Ponte Vedra Beach. On Saturday, he shot 7-under 65 to catch and then pass front-running Wyndham Clark. A day later, Schauffele, who closed with 70, simply didn’t finish the job. That happens, not that he has to love the result. Schauffele owns seven TOUR victories in addition to an Olympic gold medal but also has been on the short end as tournament runner-up a staggering 13 times.

“Sometimes it’s nice just to get back to work and kind of put your head down and try to figure out a new golf course,” he said Tuesday outside Tampa, Florida. “So happy to be here.”

As Schauffele readies to tee it up at this week's Valspar Championship, the fourth leg of the Florida Swing, he chooses not to look back at last week's PLAYERS to play the “what if” game. It would be easily done. What if, after only one over-par hole among his first 67 holes last week (a double on Thursday), he did not incur back-to-back Sunday bogeys at 14 and 15? What if he coaxed in a 6-foot birdie putt that had too much borrow and missed high after hitting the tee shot he needed at the island green? What if he hadn’t smashed a tee shot through the fairway – and into an unpredictable fate in the pine straw – at the finishing hole, where a birdie could have forced a playoff?

“When I went to bed last night,” Schauffele said in near-darkness some three-plus hours away in northeast Florida on Sunday evening, “it’s not exactly how I envisioned walking off the 18th green.”

There was a time when he might not have accepted the high finish so positively, so close, and yet so far from collecting another trophy – something he has been yearning desperately to collect of late. Schauffele is playful and can be a plus-3 handicap when it comes to self-deprecation. He is comfortable enough and confident enough to even poke a little fun at himself for not winning a PGA TOUR event going all the way back to the summer of 2022 (Genesis Scottish Open). That’s a pretty lengthy drought for a player ranked No. 5 on the planet.

“I would say as I get a little bit older ... I’m always pretty tough on myself, but you kind of put it to rest to a certain extent,” he said. “I would say I was more anxious sort of Sunday morning, and then you have all this adrenaline going, and you feel like you’re in the hunt and you feel like you have a really good chance to win, and then you get this sort of really deflating flush. ... It’s like a cortisol punch and then a complete downer after – even when you win, from what I remember a few years back.”

From what he remembers a few years back.Funny line. Schauffele paused for a second to make sure those listening were in on his quip, and then he grinned. Yes, he is going to be OK.

Valspar has not been a regular stop on his schedule in years past when he was traveling to events out of California and Las Vegas. But Schauffele made the leap to residency in the Sunshine State, yet another member of golf’s uber-talented Camp Jupiter, and stopping off on a drive to play in Tampa on a golf course he really likes (he was T12 here in his lone previous appearance) made too much sense. So he rounded up his wife and his dogs, packed the car, and off went Team Schauffele on what he hopes is a worthwhile adventure this week.

As for those thought-provoking words that his father always has piled into young Xander’s head, some are quite profound – and all of them seem to stick with him. One he trotted out on Tuesday, two days after his PLAYERS heartbreak, was this: The steady drip caves the stone.

In other words, Schauffele is convinced that he is relentless enough to finish the journey, and will get there, wherever and whatever “there” actually is. Already he is starting to think about another Olympic medal – many of his friends are mystified that, as reigning 2020 gold medalist, he would have to qualify again for the U.S. squad. (“I was like, do you think Michael Phelps was exempt?" Schauffele said Tuesday. "He had to swim and qualify every single time he made it back to the Olympics, which is even more impressive.”)

So here he is, head down, ready to swim again. Yes, his race has taken longer than some others, but if he keeps moving, keeps swimming, keeps churning, who knows how far he can swim?

“I feel like the best is in front of me,” Schauffele said. “The only way that it’s not going to be in front of me is if I let all these things get to my head, and not play my game.”

He is a determined lad. The words are always near. The steady drip caves the stone.