How Xander Schauffele Became an Elite Player in Scottie Scheffler’s Shadow with One of His Best Seasons in 15 Years

Scottie Scheffler’s extraordinary, historic 2024 season is one that will overshadow almost everything else in golf. That’s right, given his six wins, including a Masters and an Olympic gold medal; his accomplishments to this point are truly unprecedented. But as the FedEx Cup Playoffs continue, Scheffler’s accomplishments shouldn’t obscure another fact: Xander Schauffele is having one of his best seasons in a decade.

Winning two majors in one year — in Schauffele’s case, the PGA Championship and the Open Championship — is obviously impressive, and victories of such magnitude belie the exceptional statistics that underpin them.

The numbers Schauffele will hit in 2024 are pretty incredible, especially when compared to his career to date.

Schauffele is having his best or second-best season, statistically, in every meaningful category — some (like total hits) by a wide margin. This is what it looks like to make a leap in the middle of an already solid career, the kind of leap that turns you from a star of your generation into a future Hall of Famer.

But it doesn’t stop there. Since 2010, few golfers have surpassed Schauffele’s calendar-year figure through 2024. During that time, there have been only 12 individual seasons in which a player averaged more than 2.5 strokes per round, according to Data Golf.

Scheffler and Schauffele currently represent two of the top three spots, although their seasons are still ongoing with two tournaments remaining.

This contextualizes what Schauffele has achieved so far in 2024. The only individual season better than his in 15 years has been held for the past two years by the same man who is the winningest player on the PGA Tour and is the only one ahead of Schauffele in This year’s FedEx Cup race.

So why is this happening now? Why this What year did Schauffele rise to fame?

For one, Schauffele added swing coach Chris Como to its team less than a year ago, citing that he and his father, Stefan, had gone as far as they could as a teacher-student duo. Instead, he recruited someone who had tutored Bryson DeChambeau, Tiger Woods and Jason Day.

“I think, since I’ve been working with Chris, there are some answers that he has,” Schauffele recently shared. “My dad and I have talked about it. There are some answers that we need — or some questions that we have that we don’t really have the answers to, and Chris has a really good background in biomechanics and has been coaching for a really long time. They’re all really good coaches, I’ve seen a lot of different things, and they’re more likely to have the answers.”

Stefan confirmed this notion after The Open. Note that Como helped Xander with his “wrist position” and “release pattern”.

Schauffele’s other change in play is perhaps less noticeable, but he talked about it at Memphis last week en route to a T2 — just his second top-10 finish on that course, which has been as hot and humid this week as it has been in years past, in seven starts.

“I remember Rory winning the FedEx Cup so many times, and I remember there were a couple times when it was really hot at East Lake, and I played him and sometimes I felt too hot, and it really pissed me off,” Schauffele explained. “He was just passing, and I was like, ‘Man, this guy is in better shape than me.’

“So that’s something I’m really trying to do to get a little bit better cardiovascular fitness so I don’t feel like I’m going to blow up at East Lake. You see, everyone’s been looking overheated all week and at East Lake. That just happens when it’s hot.”

It appears that change, built over the next two weeks at the Tour Championship, has paid off.

Schauffele has earned more than $17 million this season, the third-most in a single season in PGA Tour history (Scheffler, of course, has two top-10 seasons — each of the last two years). The only achievement left for the world No. 2 would be to win his first FedEx Cup and the $25 million prize that comes with it.

Whether or not that puts a spotlight on one of the greatest performances in modern PGA Tour history, it would be a fitting end to the season for a man who has eight top-five finishes and 14 top-10s in just 20 starts worldwide this year.

While there are many small changes that have helped Schauffele progress from good player to elite talent, he knows that, at its core, competition is competition. All the preparation in the world means nothing unless you can go out and perform, like he has done all year.

“My team is talking to me about managing things the right way, being smart about it,” Schauffele explained. “With me, I’m just in my head, I’m sitting there thinking, ‘If you’re trying to win this, trying to be the best player all year long, you’re going to have to do better and be better than everyone else.’

“I have a really good team around me, making sure I eat the right things, do the right things to keep myself physically and mentally healthy. But when it comes time to act, at some point you have to be a dog.”