TROON, Scotland – After Xander Schauffele won his first major championship at the PGA Championship in May and finished all of his media obligations, he and his caddie and wife and some close friends gathered to celebrate. Nothing was open at that hour so they found two bottles of whiskey and nearly polished them off between the six of them.
“It was a rough next morning,” Schauffele’s caddie Austin Kaiser said. “But we’re having drinks afterwards and one of our buddies is like, ‘You feel lighter?’ And he smiled. He was like, ‘Yeah, I do,’ ” Kaiser recalled Schauffele saying.
Victory at Valhalla removed the proverbial monkey from his back. No longer stuck with the label of being the best golfer never to win a major, Schauffele said he felt relief. At the 152nd British Open, Schauffele doubled his pleasure and validated his major moment, shooting 6-under 65 in the final round at Royal Troon Golf Club on Sunday to win the Claret Jug by two strokes over Justin Rose and Billy Horschel.
“I mean, it’s a dream come true to win two majors in one year. It took me forever just to win one, and to have two now is something else,” Schauffele said.
In doing so, he became the first player since Brooks Koepka in 2018 to win two majors in a season. Schauffele carded four birdies on the final nine to turn a taut competition in which any of seven golfers seemed capable of hoisting the trophy to sucking all the drama out of the closing stretch and claiming his ninth career PGA Tour title with a 72-hole total of 9-under 275.
“Best round I’ve ever played,” said Schauffele, whose score was the best round of the day by two strokes and one of only two bogey-free rounds on the day.
“Now that he’s won two, it’s all up from here,” Kaiser said. “I told him, we got the lid off. Let’s just stack’em.”
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Kaiser and Schauffele, 30, both transferred to San Diego State at the same time in 2012 and Kaiser has been on his bag since he turned pro in 2015. Kaiser remembers their humble beginnings when they were playing mini-tour events on the Golden State Golf Tour and traveling together in Kaiser’s Honda Accord, staying in Candlewood Suites and cooking sausage and eggs on a hot plate.
Schauffele quickly proved to be a player of great promise but as he piled up 12 top-10 finishes and six top-5s in his first 27 major starts without a victory, questions emerged whether he was a closer. In 2018, Schauffele…
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