It’s not as if anyone thought Xander Schauffele had won his last golf tournament at the 2024 Open Championship, but golf – being the fickle creature it is – offers few promises.
Among those promises are:
No matter how good you think your team’s scramble score is, there will always be another team that goes so low you can’t help but wonder about their math;
New clubs always work for the first couple of rounds;
And, it’s much harder to win on the PGA Tour than anyone realizes, no matter how easy Scottie Scheffler is making it look.
Which brings us back to Schauffele.
He missed two months earlier this year dealing with a rib injury, and by the time Schauffele was healthy enough to compete again, there was dust on his game. It was inevitable and, to his credit, Schauffele never made excuses and kept working at getting back to being the player he was when he won two majors in 2024.
Winning the Baycurrent Championship Sunday in Japan isn’t like winning the Claret Jug but for players accustomed to being on one level and having slipped from their accustomed perch, cradling a trophy comes with its own special satisfaction.
“I think our sport’s getting younger and younger and I’m not getting any younger. It’s nice to end this year with a bang. I turn 32 this month so hopefully I catch some stride or get into a good stride here into my sort of mid-30s,” Schauffele said.
“I mean I was plenty nervous. It’s been over a year since I was even looking at winning a golf tournament. I was probably just as nervous or more nervous as (the challengers) were just because I knew I’ve done it before and I had to dig kind of deep in my memory to do it again.”
“I think our sport’s getting younger and younger and I’m not getting any younger. It’s nice to end this year with a bang. I turn 32 this month so hopefully I catch some stride or get into a good stride here into my sort of mid-30s.” – Xander Schauffele
As autumn settles in and what amounts to the PGA Tour’s offseason unspools (there are still four official tournaments remaining), the time for reflection and recalibration has arrived.
For someone like Max Greyserman, who finished second Sunday for the fifth time in his tour career without a victory, the takeaway is probably patience, reminding himself that if he keeps giving himself chances, one of these weeks he will win. All he has to do is think back to Cam Young finally winning at the Wyndham Championship in August.
For others, though, the chase is different.
Jordan Spieth sits 56th in FedEx Cup points, his second straight year outside the top 50. Like Schauffele, Spieth has dealt with his own injury issues and while there have been enough good flashes to buy into his belief that he’s close, there’s still the matter of getting over the line.
Tony Finau stepped into the shadows this year, slipping to 73rd in the points race, having managed just one top-10 finish in 20 starts. He’s had a couple of pre-tournament withdrawals and made a late-season caddie change but statistically, he ranks outside the top 100 in strokes gained tee to green, strokes gained approach, strokes gained off the tee and strokes gained putting.
That’s a recipe for invisibility.
At age 45, Adam Scott didn’t have a top-10 finish this year and his final-round 79 at the U.S. Open landed like a gut punch. Scott has elegantly held off time’s incursion but he finds himself in that netherworld between his prime and having access to play against guys closer to his age on PGA Tour Champions.
The Max Homa storyline reads like a cautionary tale. He went from rock bottom to near the top of the world, inviting us in with his brilliant sense of humor and an appreciation for having persevered where many would have surrendered.
It’s gone sour again for Homa, who finds himself 100th on the points list and still chasing the reliability that has vanished from his game. He has been gracious answering questions about his struggles but, like anyone else, Homa wants the validation that the work he’s done has been worth it.
Again, golf doesn’t come with promises.
Sahith Theegala and Will Zalatoris know all about it. Theegala finished third in the FedEx Cup race last year but a series of injuries gutted his ’25 season. Zalatoris, the 2021 PGA Tour rookie of the year, underwent his second back surgery in three years in May and will start fresh again next year.
Next week at the Bank of Utah Championship, the grind will resume for some. It comes with one promise – everyone starts even on the first tee.