The 152nd Open Championship Recap
South Ayrshire, Scotland (PSF) - After Xander Schauffele tapped in for par at the 10th hole and walked toward the next hole at Royal Troon during Sunday’s final round of the Open Championship he was tied for third place with Billy Horschel, two shots off the lead, and approaching the hardest hole on the course all week; the 493 yard par-4 11th hole.
Its scoring average was 4.5 for the week, all 74 players to play this hole in the final round before Schauffele were unable to birdie it with 31 bogeys or worse. Schauffele pulled his tee shot, leaving him in the second cut of the rough 173 yards out with no view of the pin. Schauffele would hit a pitching wedge, with his now dare I say iconic pause at the apex of his backswing, and play for the ball to jump onto the green. It would bounce just short of the green and roll out to two and a half feet of the flag. This shot is the absolute turning point in the championship and Schauffele basically became “The Champion Golfer of the Year” in the rough of the 11th hole. He would go on to tap-in for birdie. Ball game.
Seven holes, three birdies, and a couple hours later Xander Schauffele was officially hoisting the Claret Jug. This along with his win in the PGA Championship at Valhalla in May gave him two major championship victories this year, answering all of his critics heading into the season asking if his obvious talent could translate to Sunday at a major championship.
Schauffele’s victory complicates how this season will be remembered in the record books and among the golf world. Schauffele is the first player since Brooks Kopeka in 2018 to win two majors in one year; and every other player that has accomplished this feat has won the Jack Nicklaus Player of the Year award. But in each of those seasons, Scottie Scheffler wasn’t around.
Scheffler has dominated the PGA Tour this year. Outside of achieving his second Masters victory in April he has won The Players, Arnold Palmer Invitational, RBC Heritage, the Memorial, and most recently the Travelers Championship. In the majors following his Masters victory he has finished: T8 at the PGA Championship, T41 at the US Open, and T7 at the Open Championship.
Scottie Scheffler PGA TOUR Stats
So with Scheffler being dominant and winning five times on the PGA Tour and winning the Masters and Schauffele breaking through and winning the PGA Championship and the Open Championship, who wins the Jack Nicklaus Award?
Scottie Scheffler should be the winner of the Jack Nicklaus Award based on the fact that he has been the number one player in the world the entire season and the stats and golf fans eyes have proved it. Aside from the six total wins Scheffler is first on the tour in Strokes Gained, Scoring Average, Greens in Regulation, Putting Average, and went 42 rounds this year without shooting over par. Scheffler put on a clinic dominating the sport and the storylines all season long.
The fact that Scheffler gets my vote for player of the year does not take away from what Schauffele was able to accomplish on Sunday. In classic Open Championship fashion the entire week the weather was wet, cold, and rainy. In the afternoon on Saturday both former world number one Dustin Johnson and current world number one Scheffler himself stated that the back nine was the hardest nine holes of golf they had ever played. The winds were blowing at twenty plus miles per hour, the weather was cold and rainy, meaning you had to be in complete control of your golf ball in order to survive the conditions.
Schauffele never wavered, on Saturday he survived the back nine and shot a two under (-2) 69 on the day, then came out and shot a final round 65 (-6) which was the best on the course on Sunday. It was also the same final round score that he shot at the PGA Championship and went throughout the entire round unfazed, his average par putt on the round was under three feet.
The increased confidence from his win at Valhalla was evident as the golf world watched Schauffele pull away from the crowd on the back nine in Scotland. Schauffele lifting the Claret Jug makes it a clean sweep for the American golfers in the major championships for the first time since 1982. Americans have won every major championship since Jon Rahm’s victory at the Masters in 2023.
Next on the golf calendar is the Olympics. Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, and Wyndham Clark will represent the United States at the Paris Olympics in less than two weeks. Schauffele won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, and with Scheffler in the field this time around hopefully golf fans are lucky enough to see Schauffele and Scheffler duel for a gold medal and best player in the world status at Le Golf National in Paris.
