Xander Schauffele won two majors in a career-changing 2024. What does 2025 hold?
Xander Schauffele says it's his instinct to be a day-to-day guy. To stay in your cave, to be a stalactite, to keep dripping water on the stone, believing something will eventually happen. He avoids looking too far ahead -- or spending too much time in the past. That's what comes naturally. But sometimes it's worth looking back to learn from past mistakes. And other times it's worth looking back to appreciate what you've accomplished. To appreciate the way you solved one tiny little mystery on the driving range and then another on the course and another inside your mind and then suddenly you stacked one good day on top of another, chipped away at one mystery at a time, and, when it mattered the most, you solved them in real time, and now everything is different.
On a placid, sunny morning just before the turn of the New Year, I sat with Schauffele on the back patio at Dutchman's Pipe, a new West Palm Beach-area golf club. We watched a threesome tee off No. 1 -- one dribbler, one slice, one baby fade right down the fairway -- and then dived into his best golfing year yet.
The interview has been shortened and lightly edited for clarity. You can watch it on YouTube here or below.
Dylan Dethier: I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to check in with you at the end of the best golf season of your life. Is that fair to say?
Xander Schauffele: So far, yeah. Absolutely. Best season of my career.
DD: Do you feel different now than you did this time last year?
XS: More accomplished, sure. Do I feel different sitting here talking to you now? No. I mean, I feel like me, fortunately. Same guy.
DD: How does that sense of accomplishment translate to the rest of your life? Are you happier? Are you more satisfied? More confident?
XS: Satisfied, for sure. I don't feel more confident, but I would have to be. Going into the next spot in a major, I'd imagine I'm going to be much more confident. I said that after the PGA. Putting myself in a position would be exciting and knowing that I've done it is going to give me a load of confidence. And then clipping my second major at the Open shortly after, that was sort of how I felt. [The PGA] was only one, but it was a huge one for me to get over the hump. And it really paid off and I wouldn't have gotten the second one if it wasn't for the first, obviously, in that fashion.
DD: What's the bigger difference? Zero to one [major] or one to two?