For Xander Schauffele, there’s no place like the road.
Schauffele is playing this week at the Valspar Championship at the Copperhead Course of the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Fla. He’s there, working to find his game after being sidelined six weeks because of an intercostal strain in the rib cartilage on his right side.
“As I feel sort of better and better, just need to get some reps under my belt. Competition golf is not the same as trying to play golf at home. It’s been a process, and I’m pretty determined to play better.”
At No. 3 in the world, he’s the top-ranked player in the Valspar field, signing up at the last minute.
Schauffele has played in two events in his comeback, not finishing to his standards.
Two weeks ago, he finished 4-over and tied for 40th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Last week, at The Players Championship, closing rounds of 77 and 81 left him 13 over and in 72nd.
“I didn’t think it was going to be this tricky. Maybe I’m being a little impatient, it’s been two weeks of tournament golf for me, coming off of pretty much zero golf,” Schauffele, 31, said.
“I have expectations and I think my team has expectations and just try to be professional through and through. But that includes shooting better scores.”
He shot the better scores in 2024 and had high expectations for 2025.
In 22 events last season, he made the cut in all of them. He had 15 top-10 finishes, was the runner-up three times and won twice — at the PGA Championship and The Open Championship.
The Masters Tournament is quickly approaching, set for April 10-13 at Augusta National Golf Club. Scottie Scheffler is the defending champion; Schauffele finished eighth, 10 strokes back.
Valspar could be his final tournament before the Masters.
“I think everyone around me would like it to be, yeah. I mean, I need to play better tournament golf,” Schauffele said. “I think the Masters is demanding, Augusta National’s demanding, and you imagine you would like to, you would rather play good golf going in there than not.”
He has a limit on how many balls he can hit on the range, and that’s difficult for him to stick to. Schauffele has learned that patience doesn’t come easy for him.
“I did blow that out of the water last week,” he said. “Didn’t feel amazing after it, to be completely honest, but fortunately got a good team around me to reel me in. I’m trying to be smart about how I’m going about things, and I definitely feel, I feel like a kid again. I feel like I want to hit a million golf balls and sit out here for until 8 o’clock every night, but I got to be smart about it.”
–Field Level Media
