In 10th season, Xander Schauffele feeling like ‘old guy’ on tour

LOS ANGELES – Xander Schauffele is the betting favourite at the Valspar Championship this week, thanks in large part to being the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 7 in the world.

It is not often he is playing in a tournament where the likes of Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood are absent, but Schauffele hardly feels the weight of being a favourite on tour anymore.

Instead, it is the years themselves that are starting to pile up for the 32-year-old father.

“It’s my 209th (career) start so I’m starting to feel like an old guy out here, to be honest,” Schauffele told reporters at Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Flordia.

“I feel that more than the actual rank in a field, you know what I mean. I think once the gun goes off and everyone tees off it’s sort of anyone’s game out here.”

Now in his 10th full season on the PGA Tour, Schauffele has become one of the more familiar faces and in 2024 coupled his consistency with his first two Major titles at the PGA and Open Championships.

The tour itself has also changed greatly since Schauffele won the Tour Championship and Rookie of the Year in 2017. New CEO Brian Rolapp is tasked with reimagining the tour’s schedule, and he made it clear in a press conference last week that he wants to move away from limited-field, no-cut formats that currently comprise the “signature events”.

A younger Schauffele may have opined on what that will do for the future of the tour, or for the pockets of the sport’s elite players like himself. On Tuesday, he deferred.

“As I said, this is my 209th event, as I get older I’m starting to realise there’s a lot more that goes into a tournament than I thought 200 events ago,” he said.

“There’s a lot that goes into it. When you want to change things and make everyone happy and sort of create a structure that’s supposed to be there for 50-plus years, I wouldn’t want to have that job.

“He’s asked us to be patient and I think we’re appreciative that he’s communicating well. Other than that, no, I’m not going to sit and speculate. I did that for too many years.”

Schauffele is off to a promising start this year, after he tied for seventh at the Genesis Invitational and placed third on Sunday at The Players.

He will take that over the slow start to the 2025 season, when he missed two months due to an intercostal/rib injury, finished 72nd of 72 who made the cut at The Players and did not win until October.

Asked what was the hardest part of his game to get back to 100 per cent following that time away, he said: “Besides the actual rib itself or that sort of intercostal area, my brain.

“You have doubts and certain things creep in, and you definitely take good health for granted when you have it, when you’re kind of running around as a kid.

“So now that I’m old and dusty and, you know, things kind of come at you fast. I think it took me a little while to get my feet under me and sort of get that confidence back to compete.” REUTERS