{"id":22565,"date":"2025-07-19T23:50:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T23:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/22565\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T23:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T23:50:12","slug":"xander-schauffele-may-be-too-far-back-at-british-open-but-is-making-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/22565\/","title":{"rendered":"Xander Schauffele May Be Too Far Back at British Open, but Is Making Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland \u2014 The Claret Jug is probably too far out of reach. Xander Schauffele made a run Saturday at getting back into contention and defending the title he won a year ago at Royal Troon.<\/p>\n

He simply had too much ground to make up, and even with a solid round at Royal Portrush, the two-time major winner is going to need a lot to go right on Sunday in order to have a chance again at the British Open.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m nitpicking my whole deal, I needed three more today to feel like I\u2019m somewhere close enough to whatever Scott [Scheffler] or [Matt] Fitzpatrick or Haotong [Li] are going to post,\u201d said Schauffele, who shot 5-under-par 66 to move to 206, 7 under par. He is seven shots behind Scottie Scheffler, who shot a bogey-free 67 and is four clear of the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t react [to leaderboards], but today I was. I just felt like there\u2019s no point in not. I need to find any bit of\u2014not that I\u2019m not motivated, but any extra motivation I can to giddy up and try to get something done. There\u2019s a few guys that are playing some incredible golf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schauffele has basically spent the entire year playing catch-up<\/a>. And that\u2019s what he\u2019ll be doing on Sunday.<\/p>\n

After an early-season rib injury that knocked Schauffele out for six weeks, he\u2019s never quite got back to the form he showed last year in winning both the PGA Championship and the Open.<\/p>\n

At third in the Official World Golf Ranking, there has still been some solid results. He tied for 12th\u00a0at the U.S. Open and tied for eighth last week at the Scottish Open. He\u2019ll enter the final round here in the top 10, but Scottie Scheffler is making it difficult for anyone to catch him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so far back, who knows with the weather and whatnot. I believe in myself and what I can do. So just blackout hopefully … try to shoot something and give myself a lot of opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard. I think it\u2019s pretty hard\u2026 depending on how windy it is, if I was leading a tournament, I\u2019d want it to play hard just because you know no one\u2019s going to shoot 62 or 63, whatever it is,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you shoot level to 1 under, you\u2019re going to win the tournament. Chasing is difficult when you\u2019re on a links course with weather and wind and bounces and things like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I definitely\u2014I feel like I\u2019ve been in chase mode all year, which it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schauffele had two eagles in his round at the 7th and 12th holes, added birdies at the 2nd and 15th, but rued a couple of missed opportunities that kept the round from being even lower. He bogeyed the 4th hole and failed to birdie the par-5 5th.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s another sign of progress, even though he was unhappy enough with his play on Saturday to feel he needed to call his instructor, Chris Como, to get a few things sorted.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday was nice,\u201d he said. \u201cHad a nice phone call with Chris last night. Yesterday felt terrible. Even with some of the shots coming in, I felt like I was luck boxing my way through the back nine, somehow making contact and then hitting it somewhere near the hole and getting it in.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday felt like I was in more control. Obviously the weather was much nicer and sort of what we\u2019re used to on the PGA Tour. But it felt like I could control my golf ball a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n

A strong Sunday might not be enough to get Schauffele a victory but he\u2019s moved up slowly in the FedEx Cup rankings lately and is projected to be well inside the top 50, which would assure him signature event status for next year if he can get to the BMW Championship next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland \u2014 The Claret Jug is probably too far out of reach. Xander Schauffele made a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-22565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}