LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY | It’s nice, one would suppose, to be the answer to the question ‘Who was the last person to shoot 62 in a major championship?’
Xander Schauffele wasn’t sure.
“Did I get in before Rickie [Fowler]?” Schauffele answered Thursday afternoon, referencing the matching 62s they shot last June in the first round of the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club.
Ah, the things that can be shrouded by the mists of time.
The correct answer is Schauffele, who posted his U.S. Open score just after Fowler last year and who shot 62 again in the opening round of the PGA Championship at Valhalla, giving him the distinction of owning exactly half of the 62s posted in major-championship history.
It took more than a century for anyone to shoot that magic number, and now that it’s happened four times, it seems almost quaint that, not long ago, there was a new frontier feeling attached to that number.
The former major-championship scoring record of 63 – set by Johnny Miller in the final round of the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont and equaled many times until Branden Grace shot 62 in the third round of the 2017 Open Championship – seems so 20th century.
Was one of the 62s better than the other?
To his credit, Schauffele didn’t fall back on the familiar theme that, as good as his first round was, he left a few shots out there.
“I can’t nitpick,” Schauffele said. “I’ll take a 62 in any major, any day.”
Schauffele’s 9-under-par score equaled the lowest score relative to par in major-championship history, matching the totals shot by Rory McIlroy at the 2010 Open Championship at St. Andrews and Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters.
To his credit, Schauffele didn’t fall back on the familiar theme that, as good as his first round was, he left a few shots out there.
“That’s not how I operate,” Schauffle said. “I’m very content with how I played.”
Golfers being the way they are – “We could shoot 56, and we should have shot 55,” Justin Thomas, one of Schauffele’s playing competitors on Thursday, said – it’s natural to think about the one or two that got away, but there’s no sense in being greedy.
It was, Thomas said, “one of the easiest 9-unders you’ve ever seen.”
The fact that it was Schauffele who took the scoring deepest on rain-softened Valhalla didn’t come as a surprise. Though he is approaching the two-year anniversary of his most recent victory, at the 2022 Genesis Scottish Open, Schauffele has been brilliantly consistent.
Schauffele has made 46 consecutive cuts, and though it pales in comparison to Tiger Woods’ record of 142 consecutive made cuts, Schauffele hasn’t missed a tournament weekend since the 2022 Masters.
While it’s easy to focus the narrative on Schauffele’s 22-month winless stretch, he has eight top-10 finishes in 12 starts this year, including a pair of runner-up finishes, most recently last weekend when Rory McIlroy closed with 65 to snatch the Wells Fargo Championship title.
Schauffele finished in the top 20 of the past eight major championships, and he seems to live on leaderboards. Schauffele’s knuckles should be sore from all of the doors on which he has been knocking.
Asked Thursday if he’s playing the best golf of his career (which includes seven PGA Tour wins and a gold medal from the 2020 Olympics), Schauffele wasn’t going to equivocate.
“I’d say it’s very close to it, if not it,” said Schauffele, a 30-year-old native of San Diego.
One round in, this PGA Championship seems to be setting up as an unbridled scoring festival. Despite playing more than 7,500 yards with collars of deep, dense rough on every hole, Valhalla offers wide driving corridors and receptive greens, softened by recent rains and with more potential downpours in the Friday forecast.
For Schauffele, who does the stoic act well during a round, any potential burden associated with what he hasn’t done doesn’t seem to be weighing on him.
Schauffele didn’t start well in the first round. He parred the par-5 10th hole to begin his round while the coffee was still brewing, then got things rolling with a deuce at the par-3 11th. A poor tee shot at the par-4 12th hole left Schauffele with a 225-yard approach shot from the rough. He ultimately made a 15-foot par putt before making birdies on four of his next six holes and he was on his way.
It was vaguely reminiscent of what McIlroy did at Quail Hollow when he turned a two-stroke deficit after seven holes into a runaway victory at Schauffele’s expense.
“It sucks not winning, but he didn’t lose,” Thomas said. “He got beat. You can hang your head and really take it into next week when you lose a golf tournament. But I think when you’re right there and playing well and you just get beat, it is more motivation, I’d say, and just kind of stick with what he’s doing.”
For Schauffele, who does the stoic act well during a round, any potential burden associated with what he hasn’t done doesn’t seem to be weighing on him.
“I think not winning makes you want to win more, as weird as that is,” he said. “For me, at least, I react to it, and I want it more and more and more, and it makes me want to work harder and harder and harder. The top feels far away, and I feel like I have a lot of work to do, but just slowly chipping away at it.”
One trivia question at a time.
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