Xander Schauffele wins British Open for second major title of 2024

Among the many paths to winning golf majors, there is one where the mastery looks almost flawless, and that is the path that Xander Schauffele took to his profoundly calm victory at the 152nd British Open. It’s not just that his closing-round 65 and back-nine 31 were the best marks of the 80 players at Royal Troon, or that they secured victory by two strokes at 9 under par after starting one behind. It’s how it looked and felt, and it looked and felt like something the imagination would not dare contemplate. Schauffele ended up detached from a bundled leaderboard, from his bygone image as a chronic contender who couldn’t quite rule, and from any known reasonable limitations going forward.

“A wonderful next 10 years,” predicted his father and first coach, Stefan, without arrogance or nonsense.

The hard facts said that Xander Schauffele, who failed to win any of his first 27 majors despite 12 top-10 finishes, has won two of the last three. They said he is the first male player since Brooks Koepka in 2018 to win two majors in a single season and the first since Rory McIlroy in 2014 to win the PGA Championship and the British Open. They said he has joined with dizzying haste the ranks of those in this era with two majors — from No. 1 Scottie Scheffler to Jon Rahm to Collin Morikawa to Bryson DeChambeau to Justin Thomas, among others — but better yet, he has joined the likes of Morikawa and Zach Johnson among those whose two majors include one on the links here, a testament to his versatility.

They all said that, but Sunday’s round, with its striking neatness, said something else. It told of a man whose breakthrough in May at Louisville had elevated his trademark calm from great to mighty. Playing in the clouds on a gray day with cool air, perfect for a long walk on the beach that borders the course, he found his way to No. 18, saw the “yellow leaderboards” of his earlier dreams, asked caddie Austin Kaiser to walk with him and said to himself, “You’re about to have your moment here.”

He was leading with three. Two groups behind him still had to finish. That didn’t seem so relevant. When Schauffele was later asked to rank his round, he said: “Absolutely top. The best round I’ve ever played.”

“Oh, my God,” Kaiser said. “It just keeps coming. Wow. He played unbelievable. This is probably the best round he’s ever played.”

Sunday’s back-nine birdies at Nos. 11, 13, 14 and 16, which separated him from playing partner Justin Rose, third-round leader Billy Horschel, newcomer Thriston Lawrence, a fading Scheffler and the rest, looked almost light and airy, even from 16 feet (No. 13) and 13 feet (No. 14). They looked as if they were designed to energize a post-victory conversation Kaiser remembered from May among his friends just after the PGA Championship, when one of them said to Schauffele, “Do you feel lighter?” Schauffele replied, “Yes, I do.” His chip over a bunker at No. 16 looked terrifying when he started it and beautiful when he shaped it. He said hello to the hole and crept four feet away.

Even Rose’s caddie, Mark Fulcher, thought it was “nice not to have to pay for a ticket and still be able to see it because it was fantastic.” He said of Schauffele, “He’s a pretty nice guy, too. You almost wish he was a bit of a wanker,” but he’s “a top guy.”

“It looked like he had everything under control,” Kaiser said of an event in which the winds off the Firth of Clyde left no one in control until the winds finally died down on Sunday.

“I thought (the breakthrough win) would help me,” Schauffele said in an on-course interview, “and it did. I had a sense of calm, a calmness that I didn’t have when I played the PGA.” He said at his press conference: “I grabbed it and there was no way I was going to let it go.”

Rose shot a fine 67 to tie for second at 7 under, then said of Schauffele, “He plays with a freedom that tells you as a player that he probably doesn’t get too bothered by the bad stuff.” Horschel shot a fine 68 to tie with Rose, then said of Schauffele, “He’s the second-best player in the world.” Once Schauffele got going, it almost became a sideshow as Lawrence impressed with a 68 to tie for 6 under, Russell Henley had a 69 to tie for 5 under, Shane Lowry recovered from his painful 77 on Saturday to shoot a 68 to tie for 4 under, and Scheffler threatened to pull back a stroke or two until he reached No. 9 and three-putted from 6 feet 7 inches to elicit a double bogey and a groan of sympathy from the crowd.

He finished tied for seventh at 1 under, while even he — the first player since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win an unthinkable six events, including the Masters, at this point in the year — became a muted sideshow to Schauffele’s untroubled excellence. Suddenly, the subject had shifted from Scheffler’s dominance to Schauffele’s completeness.

“I don’t know if that’s true or not,” Schauffele said of the “complete” part, “but I’m definitely going to believe it because here we are. … It’s a completely different style of golf. You’ve got to hit shots and have different ball positions. There’s so much risk-reward when the wind is blowing 20 miles an hour and it starts raining (like Saturday). There are so many different variables that come into play. It’s really an honor to win this. For me, it’s big. For me, winning the Scottish Open (in 2022) was big because it meant my game could travel. So to double that and win a major in Scotland is even cooler.”

He had won two majors with very different tenors, one so full of birdies in the sun that you had to score 21 under to win and one so full of windy discomfort that it said something about solidity. He had done one with an admirable frisson and one with an enviable depth of composure. “We knew that,” his father said. “You see, we knew that because he had seconds in everything. So we knew the versatility, right?” He concluded: “Who is the biggest threat or the biggest potential for the next career Grand Slam? I would say, ‘Just look at the numbers.'”

One of the numbers read “65” on that dreamy yellow scoreboard late Sunday, the hand-lettered message read “WELL PLAYED XANDER,” and a young man known for being shy and friendly held the claret jug for a phalanx of photographers. He kept his smile calm, instead of his electric Louisville grin. It seemed that, technically, he had returned to Earth.