{"id":10172,"date":"2025-07-20T10:09:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T10:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/10172\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T10:09:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T10:09:52","slug":"xander-schauffele-criticises-diabolical-decision-at-the-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/10172\/","title":{"rendered":"Xander Schauffele criticises ‘diabolical’ decision at The Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Xander Schauffele says some of the pin locations at The Open<\/a> have been ‘diabolical’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schauffele<\/a> made a big charge up the leaderboard on moving day at the final men’s major of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The reigning champion golfer of the year carded a five-under 66 that contained two eagles and two birdies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the 31-year-old PGA Tour<\/a> star felt some of the pin locations at Royal Portrush were particularly shocking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schauffele told reporters in the mixed zone that the par-5 12th wasn’t great, despite holing a 44-foot eagle putt from across the green.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There’s been some diabolical pin locations this week,” Schauffele said. “And that was one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s a very gettable par-5 with it being sort of helping off the left. But it was nice to see a long putt go in. I think it was my first long one of the week.”<\/p>\n

Schauffele moved up nine places on the leaderboard on Saturday and has a chance, albeit very slim, of winning the Claret Jug for a second time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he will likely need some mistakes from runaway leader Scottie Scheffler, who Rory McIlroy described as ‘inevitable’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schauffele has struggled to hit the same level of form he reached 12 months ago that saw him win two major titles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the year, he was forced to sit out eight weeks of the campaign with a rib injury and only returned at The Players Championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schauffele still feels something is missing and felt ‘terrible’ about his game after making the cut in Northern Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He phoned his golf coach Chris Como last night already has felt a difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Today was nice,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Even with some of the shots coming in [yesterday], I felt like I was luck boxing my way through the back nine, somehow making contact and then sitting it somewhere near the hole and getting it in,” Schauffele added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Today felt like I was in more control. Obviously, the weather was much nicer and sort of what we’re used to on the PGA Tour. But it felt like I could control my golf ball a lot more.”<\/p>\n

“I needed three more today”<\/p>\n

Pre-tournament favourite Scottie Scheffler <\/a>will take a four-shot lead into the final round of The Open.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scheffler backed up a scintillating 66 amid torrential downpours with a 67 on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Schauffele claimed he was likely too far back now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I needed three more [birdies] today to feel like I’m somewhere close enough,” Schauffele said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So what is the plan tomorrow?<\/p>\n

Blackout.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I believe in myself and what I can do,” he said. So just blackout hopefully. No luck boxing, blackout, there’s your headline, and try to shoot something and give myself a lot of opportunities.”<\/p>\n

Follow GolfMagic for live text updates of The Open<\/a>, along with all the latest news, opinion and analysis.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to our Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Xander Schauffele says some of the pin locations at The Open have been ‘diabolical’.\u00a0 Schauffele made a big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55,6548],"class_list":["post-10172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-xander-schauffele"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}