Xander Schauffele has cemented himself as the world’s second-best male golfer right now after finally capturing his maiden Major title at the 2024 PGA Championship.
The American has consitently been a world’s top-10 player for a number of years now but his game has been elevated in 2024 after joining up with renowned coach Chris Como towards the end of last year.
He has nine top-10 finishes in 12 starts this season on the PGA Tour, including a Major win, a runner-up at the Players Championship and another runner-up at the Wells Fargo Championship.
We obviously knew he was a better golfer than when he joined the PGA Tour in the 2016/17 season, when he won the Rookie of the Year honors and became the first rookie to win the Tour Championship, but just how has Xander’s statistics improved in those seven years?
He arrived on the PGA Tour as a very complete player already after making it through the Korn Ferry Tour Playoffs. He managed four top-10s in 23 starts on the PGA Tour’s feeder circuit but recorded a stand-out season in his debut year in the big league.
As well as capturing the Tour Championship, he also won his maiden title at The Greenbrier and became the highest-ever rookie finisher in the FedEx Cup at 3rd.
Schauffele became the first PGA Tour rookie to win the Tour Championship in 2017
(Image credit: Getty Images)
In terms of his statistics, he was gaining strokes in all areas of the game barring around the greens. He ranked 138th around the greens and was also outside the top 100 in Strokes Gained: Approach.
The best part of his game was his driving, where he gained over half a stroke vs the field to rank 17th.
Fast forward to 2024 and Schauffele now ranks 2nd off the tee, and he’s also gone from 34th to 2nd in SG: Total, too.
Around the green remains his weakest statistic but he is no longer losing strokes vs the field and has gone from 138th to 36th. That 36 number is also his lowest ranking in all categories of the game – so the weakest part of his game is still the 36th-best on the PGA Tour.
One area has become weaker since his rookie season though, but only just. In his rookie season he gained 0.402 strokes on the greens but now only gains 0.398. It’s almost identical and luckily hasn’t harmed his total SG number of 2.265.
That means he gains 2.265 strokes vs the…
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