PONTE VEDRA BEACH — You don’t have to be a stats nerd to answer the following question: How will your round go if you hit 14 of 14 fairways, 16 of 18 greens, and then gain about 1.5 strokes on the field putting?
The answer is, you’re going to have a good day, and so it was for Xander Schauffele, who posted a current tournament-best seven-under 65 to take the Players Championship lead as play continued on Friday afternoon.
Advertisement
“It’s always easy to be aggressive from the fairway here,” Schauffele said of the location he spent plenty of time in. “There’s quite a few wedges if you’re able to hit it in some sort of tight spots, which we were able to do today. Might as well take advantage of the greens being just a hair softer.” Of note, the World No. 10 entered the week ranked 133rd on the tour in driving accuracy at 55.16 percent.
(For what it’s worth, the news keeps getting better for Schauffele—as the weather heats up in the afternoon; he and other players remarked that the greens were firming up.)
Schauffele’s round didn’t exactly start gangbusters. Playing the back nine first, he made an easy birdie on 11, but gave it away two holes later on the par-3 13th, three-putting from 21 feet. At that point, though, he hit the accelerator, sticking his approach on 14 to four inches, his approach on 15 to five feet, and narrowly missed an eagle try on 16. Those three straight birdies shot him up the leaderboard, and he kept it going on the front, starting with a 22-foot birdie putt on 1. He buried from the same distance on 4, and after a string of simple pars, he finished birdie-birdie, spurred by a fast-moving 37-footer on 8:
Schauffele has been a work-in-progress since a December 2024 right-side rib injury hampered him for the start of 2025. His two major championships the year before often seemed far in the rearview mirror as he struggled to regain his old form. His results were never terrible, but they weren’t up to his elite standard until a fall win at the Baycurrent Classic. He hadn’t shown many signs of elite play this year, either, though he ramped up his play with a T-7 in the Genesis Invitational at Riviera.
Advertisement
“I’m definitely hitting a lot of really good golf shots,” he said. “I think even earlier in this year I started hitting a lot of good golf shots again; 2024 was a year full of really good results, and right now I think we’re a little bit more focused on the process bit of it and trying to make sure things are sort of ironed out and in a decent spot, and then after that you go and compete.”
He admitted, though, that it’s a mental boon to post those good results, but despite the success on Friday, he knows it’s a “long deal.” Still, certain things have already changed in his approach to the process.
“I try to get spoon-fed some information from my team,” he said. “I ask them to spoon-feed it to me versus kind of just giving me too much info. I feel like I want the information and I feel like I can take it, but I don’t think I can always take it.”
The information on Friday, though, was easy to take in—all those fairways, all those greens, and, for now, a lead heading into the weekend at the PGA Tour’s marquee event. His return to the upper echelons of the game may be a “long deal,” but that doesn’t mean he won’t try to seize opportunities in the short term. This weekend, he’ll have his first chance of the year to chase that old winning feeling.
Read the full article here
