Open Champion Xander Schauffele is looking to make golf history at the 2024 Paris Olympics

Xander Schauffele will be aiming for gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics

In the build-up to Paris 2024, Xander Schauffele spoke exclusively to Today’s Golfer about his Olympic preparations, and why winning gold again would mean so much to him and his father

After several hours of media interviews, Xander Schauffele is done talking about the PGA Championship and The Open Championship. The Olympics has been on his radar for several months now and he is only too happy to discuss how much it means to him and his family.

“I was a bit in shock, to be honest,” he says, when asked to describe how it felt to stand on the top step of the podium three years ago.

“You see it on TV, with the emotion and hearing your national anthem. It’s just incredible, really special. For me and my family, it obviously means a lot with what my dad was trying to do before his tragic accident, so there’s a really special tie-in. That’s what makes it more personal to me than other guys, I guess.”

Schauffele likes to tell the story of how his dad Stefan slept with his Olympic gold medal on that first night in Tokyo and then spent the rest of the year showing it off to his mates. There are many other tales he could tell, like the drugs test which delayed his celebrations, or the heartwarming reaction of his grandparents on seeing his gold medal for the first time.

“They’ve seen a lot of things in their lives,” he said, “but to see their reaction when I pulled out the gold medal, that surprised and shocked me.”

Growing up, Schauffele would obsess over the athletes in track and field and sit for hours watching all the events on TV every four years. His dad would practically insist on it and encourage Xander’s dream of one day competing in the Olympics. He had held similar aspirations of his own until a promising career as a decathlete was cruelly cut short by a drunk driver in 1985. Stefan was just 20 at the time and lost the sight in his left eye as a result of the accident.

After battling depression, he turned his attention to family life and invested his time and energy into the athletic pursuits of his two sons. He started coaching Xander from the age of nine and is credited with instilling in him an insatiable work ethic and underdog mentality.

“I always felt like I was mentally tougher than the other kids,” Xander told us ahead of the Tokyo Games in 2021. “I always wanted it more. I was sort of this grinder who would never quit. If I ever felt sorry for myself, my dad and I would have this two-hour talk.”

The father-son dynamic was intense and the arguments were frequent and fierce. “We once destroyed a whole bathroom,” Stefan previously recalled in a separate interview. But that same fighting spirit manifested itself in Xander’s golf game and was very evident in Tokyo three years ago.

Needing to play the last two holes under par, Schauffele came up clutch. He got up and down from a greenside bunker for birdie on the 17th and then struck a wedge shot from 98 yards to three feet to save par and secure the win.

At the time, it felt like a coming-of-age moment, the kind that elevates a young pretender onto golf’s top table of talent and champions. Except that hasn’t quite been the reality. Not until this summer anyway.

Since winning three times in 2022, Schauffele had been in the final pairing seven times on Sunday and walked away empty-handed on every occasion. Just a week before the PGA Championship at Valhalla last May, he let another lead slip at the Wells Fargo Championship – just as he did at the Players Championship in March.

So many chances, so many missed opportunities.

Inevitably, it led to questions about his ability to close out tournaments. So did it ever reach the stage where he started to feel bogged down by the noise and weight of expectation?

“Oh yeah, doubt creeps in,” he says without a shred of hesitancy. “It’s easy to be emotional about losing but once you get that out of your system, you really have to rationalize and understand and identify why you didn’t win.

“The thing is… I wasn’t playing poorly. I knew I would figure it out. I just needed to keep putting myself in a position to win. I’ve been knocking on the door for some time. I just needed to go out there and earn it.”

Left unchecked, such setbacks can send golfers spiraling into a whirlwind of self-doubt and impatience, especially if they keep on happening. But the PGA Championship was different.

Earlier in the week, Schauffele had been operating on ‘Tiger time’, getting up at 5am every day to learn the nuances of the course. It paid off in a big way on Sunday as he nervelessly got up and down on 17 and 18 to beat Bryson DeChambeau by one and set a new Major Championship scoring record at 21-under-par.

“Relief,” he says, was the overriding feeling after finally snapping a 679-day winless streak. Victory there, and at Royal Troon two months’ later, also gave him confirmation that he made the right decision by revamping his team and bringing noted swing instructor Chris Como on board late last year.

“We spoke before about me wanting to gain some distance, so I hired a trainer, a different trainer, and I also hired Chris. Both those guys, in their own separate way, have given me general strength and power and enabled me to move the club more efficiently. All that has catered to an increase in speed, hitting more fairways… everything I wanted really.”

“When you’re so close to the top, all you can do is move a little bit up or move backwards. I was definitely very wary of that, especially having been with my dad my whole life, but I really appreciated Chris’ approach to his teaching. He doesn’t put too much food on my plate.”

“It’s not like my swing feels 100 percent comfortable but I trust his advice and I’m definitely playing the best golf of my career. I’ve hit these spurts before, but they’re in much smaller windows and I’ve been playing better golf for a longer period of time right now.”

Although Schauffele didn’t have an answer to Bryson’s brilliance at the US Open four weeks later, he wasted little time in joining the multiple Major club by becoming the first man since Rory Mcilroy a decade ago to do the PGA-Open Championship double in the same season.

What’s more, he also extended a remarkable record of having finished 20th or better 76 percent of the time in Major Championships, a rate which eclipses that of Jack Nicklaus (66 percent) and Tiger Woods (62 percent) through their first 29 starts.

He spoke in the build-up about there being “a lot of unchecked boxes” still to chase and is equally bullish when discussing how many Majors titles would be equivalent to par for him.

“I’m going to have to realistically write a number down… but at some point I definitely had one of each down,” he says. “I think winning a Grand Slam would be incredible and showcase your talent across all different types of grass and regions.

“That’s a really big goal of mine, for starters, because I feel like I haven’t even gotten to the top of my ceiling. I still feel like I have areas I can improve and clean up, and that’s exciting to me.”

Having finally shed the ‘Best Player Without A Major’ tag, there is quiet optimism that Schauffele’s purple patch can be used as a springboard for sustained success.

To go back to the numbers, the World No.3 currently ranks second for scoring average on Tour and is the only man to rank inside the top 35 this season in Strokes Gained: Off-The Tee, Approach the Green, Around the Green, and Putting – not even Scottie Scheffler can match that!

When we suggest that consistency is perhaps his greatest asset, Schauffele points out that top 10s are not the yardstick by which the best players are measured. The wins column remains a source of frustration for him and is heavily weighted in Scheffler’s favor (six to two) as we enter a crucial period of the season which will see both men teeing it up four times in the next five weeks, starting in Paris and ending at the Tour Championship to decide the FedEx Cup.

Schauffele chose to stay over in Europe, rather than returning home after The Open Championship, which should give him ample time to prepare for his title defense at Le Golf National.

He was absent when the US Ryder Cup team came unstuck there six years ago, which may or may not be a good thing as he bids to make history as golf’s first double Olympic champion. He’ll also have family with him in Paris and intends to make the most of it, having been denied the full Olympic experience in Tokyo because of Covid restrictions.

“My whole team is so excited and so am I. You know, Paris is such a destination, so I hope I’ll be able to experience the Olympics like I couldn’t before and get to view some of the other sporting events.”

“We’ll have to see how much time I have and how much work I need to put in to get ready. I may pop in early (to Le Golf National) and get some extra rounds in. It looks like you have to be really strategic around the property and place your shots smartly, so I’m really looking forward to getting over there early.”

If it means avoiding the 5am starts again, it might well be worth his while.

• More than a medal! What you get for winning golf at the 2024 Paris Olympics
• Justin Rose: “I rate the Olympic Games up there with my US Open win.”

About the author

Michael Catling – Features Editor

Michael Catling is Today’s Golfer‘s Features Editor and an award-winning journalist who specializes in golf’s Majors and Tours, including DP World, PGA, LPGA, and LIV.

Michael joined Today’s Golfer in 2016 and has traveled the world to attend the game’s biggest events and secure exclusive interviews with dozens of Major champions, including Jack Nicklaus, Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Gary Player, and Justin Thomas.

Get in touch with Michael via email and follow him on Twitter.