FORT WORTH, Texas — When the Family Truckster is cruising smoothly, is there really any reason to take it to the shop?
That’s the mentality Xander Schauffele had heading into Friday’s second round of the Charles Schwab Challenge.
Schauffele’s certainly no Clark Griswold, but he’s taking a simple, smooth approach to this week’s event, especially in light of the lengthy layoff between tournaments and a manageable golf course that lends itself to precise play.
The four-time PGA Tour winner played bogey-free golf en route to a 65 that put him just two shots off the lead. Considering his lack of previous success at Colonial Country Club — Schauffele finished T-48 in 2017 and then missed the cuts in each of the last two years — a simplistic approach seemed the way to go.
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“Bogey-free. Bogey-free was great,” Schauffele said. “I thought really with the wet rough, it was important to keep it out of it, and then once it dried up, you’ve got to guess if it’s going to fly or come out as a dud. I was in the fairway for the most part, and when I was in the rough it was with a wedge, so not too much stress coming into greens, which was probably the key to the bogey-free round.”
If anyone could have come out swinging hard, it was Schauffele, who went into the break on a roll. He had finished among the top-25 of nine of his previous 10 starts, with four top-10s.
Schauffele also finished second in two tournaments he’s won in the past — the WGC-HSBC Champions and the Sentry Tournament of Champions — after making playoffs in both events. He lost to Rory McIlroy in Shanghai and fell out of a three-way playoff with Justin Thomas and Patrick Reed in Kapalua. He’s currently No. 11 on the Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings.
“I felt like I was playing really good right at the Players when the season stopped, and it was sort of one of those things, I think everyone dealt with it in their own way, and I wasn’t upset that I was stuck at home,” he said. “We don’t really get three months off just randomly, so I sort of tried to turn it into a positive and stay productive at home, and I was able to play a lot of golf through that last month of the quarantine. I felt like I was really productive and feel pretty good about it now.”
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In fact, Schauffele’s biggest challenge was to avoid the harassment from his buddies, many of whom he hadn’t seen for months before the event.
“It’s nice to see the guys. J.T. was throwing tees at me earlier while trying to do this interview, but this is sort of what you miss,” Schauffele said. “Golf is an individual sport or game, and we don’t really have the locker room interaction that other teams have, but sort of just seeing your buddies out here and doing what we love to do is always a nice thing.”
As for Saturday, Schauffele said he has no plans to stray from a gameplan that seems to be working.
“It’s definitely something to try and repeat. It’s obviously a hard thing to repeat, but just keeping it in front of me,” he said. “It’s been a while since we’ve had to play under any sort of pressure besides what we try and emulate at home. But just kind of deal with that and kind of do what we’ve been doing.”
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