Xander Schauffele Is Ready for a Fresh Start at Torrey Pines

SAN DIEGO — Xander Schauffele spent the last few months changing diapers and tending to daddy duties rather than doing much swinging of a golf club. It was made easier knowing that the last tournament he played, the Baycurrent Classic in Japan, ended in victory, alleviating some concerns after a mostly disappointing year on the course.

Schauffele, who won two major championships in 2024, the PGA and British Open, never got on track in 2025 after an early-season rib injury sidelined him for six weeks and forced him to play catch-up the rest of the year.

For the first time in his professional career he failed to qualify for the season-ending 30-player Tour Championship.

All of which made his victory in Japan in late October a somewhat surprising and welcome development.

“I just know myself, if I didn't play well in Japan, I would have been super pumped to be there (at home with a baby) and be present obviously but at the same time something would have been just scratching at the back of my head of just like ‘You suck.’ You know what I mean? You've got to play a lot better.

“I think it was a bad year obviously, but that definitely made my offseason a lot more enjoyable.”

Schauffele is making his first start of 2026 in his native San Diego and while his 2025 season might not have been as dire as he suggested, it was below the standard he had set.

He finished the year with just four top-10 finishes, two of them in major championships. And he extended his PGA Tour-leading streak of consecutive made cuts to 72.

But he appeared to regularly fight his swing while searching for magic that saw him rise to No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking in 2025. He is now sixth behind Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Russell Henley and Robert MacIntrye.

“I don't think it's very complicated. I think I made it very complicated, which is why I didn't play well,” he said. “It's been a big goal of mine to communicate -- I think I'm a good communicator, I just ask for a lot from the people on my team.

“It was communicated now to bottle-feed me, if anything. Don't turn the faucet wide open. Just give me a little bit of information once in a while and just let me go. I'll ask a lot of questions, want to know why things are bad, all these things, and sometimes it's good just to sort of shut up and listen to some good advice and let that be it.”

The win in Japan saw him shoot a final-round 64 to defeat Max Greyserman by a stroke.

As satisfying as the victory was at the time, it doesn’t lead to much carryover for 2026.

“It felt like a lifetime ago,” he said. “Even before Japan, I missed East Lake (the Tour Championship), had the little one (his son, Victor), played the Ryder Cup. I was like kind of shocked with how well I played, to be completely honest, and had Japan and I played no golf in the last six months it feels like.

“It feels like I'm starting from scratch. I'm going to play a lot of golf coming up here in the next two months. The hope and my goal is sort of tap back into some of that focus.”

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