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THE 148TH OPEN

July 20, 2019

Xander Schauffele

Portrush, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: It's moving day, you're supposed to move up, not stay in the same spot. Something good tomorrow will help.

Q. You said you fell asleep. What does that look like?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I watched the film on 16, looked like a 45-footer, ten feet short, so that's my version of falling asleep. Needed a slap in the face to get the ball in the hole. Kind of a careless mistake there.

Besides that, yeah, I think the bogey on 14 is just a bad tee shot. That stuff happens when you play. The one on 16 kind of pissed me off, though.

Q. What do you make of this course after three rounds in terms of what it allows and what it doesn't?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: It's really fair. I think good shots are rewarded. There are areas where you can force it. But if you make a mistake, it's very penalizing. So I think it's a very fair and fun golf course.

Q. There hasn't been any really atrocious wind. It's picked up.
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, I can't even guess. You wouldn't be seeing I think -- I think I saw quotes and Casey he said something about double digits. There's just not enough wind. I forget what he said. He said he'd break his arm or something like that.

There's just not enough wind, if it was rainy and windy. Yesterday we got a little bit of rain the first six holes. I was watching coverage, guys were hitting driver, iron into. I hit driver, 3-wood barely over the bunker.

So if it was windy and rainy, the scores would be very close to even par.

Q. Tomorrow everyone says you've got to play it in the air for a links course. What's that going to be like in high winds?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Trust what you got. It will be hard. Most of the holes are -- if it's the normal wind, the hard holes play really difficult. There's about six birdie holes and everything else is kind of holding on for dear life.

Q. You're going to Memphis on Monday or next week?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: No.

Q. Do you want to?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Of course, I love playing. A month off, I think that was kind of a long time for me. And I'm very excited to play, I know I'm going to be a bit of a zombie. Hopefully I won't leave any 45-footers ten feet short.

I don't know my track record. I don't think I played great after majors. I'll have to do something to kick myself in gear for next week.

Q. What did you do during the month between The Open?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I took a week off after The Open. I left for Paris. I spent four nights in Paris and one night in Ashford Castle. I spent about a week in Europe before this tournament.

I was at home and I wanted to practice but I got sick. So I think I played 18 holes and golfed six days in a month. It wasn't my best preparation for this tournament. But what are you going to do?

When I get sick it's weird, I die, basically. So I lost like six pounds. I don't get colds; I just die, basically. Either I'm healthy or I'm dead. So I died for like a couple of days and now I'm back to life.

Q. That's good.
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: We're working on it. I die like twice a year. We're trying to get that to at least half the time.

Q. How were you able to be so happy-go-lucky talking about when you fell asleep on the course today? You just seem to have a very good attitude, even when you bring up things you're not happy about.
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, it is what it is, at the end of the day. The only time I am an unhappy camper is when I feel like I'm treated unfairly. Golf is -- I do everything out there. I hit the ball, I hit my putt 15 feet short. I can deal with that if it's my own mistake, it's my mistake. I can sleep at night.

But this place is tricky and if you're asleep at the wheel you're not going to play well. That's where my carefree attitude comes from.

Q. If yours was only a fraction over the limit, should they have tested every Callaway driver or any other equipment company when that situation happened?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I mean, they -- yeah, I don't sit at home and test my driver, you know. To my best belief, I was playing a conforming driver. I think The R&A's job -- the PGA Tour takes over the manufacturer. Our job as players is to show up to tournaments, put on a show for The R&A and for the Tour and to handle our business. It's not to make sure our stuff is conforming.

So I think, yes, to make it fair they should test everybody. Other drivers failed. I'll just say it, I'm pretty sure a (indecipherable) driver failed and a TaylorMade driver failed and the Callaway driver failed. This matter should be private. But R&A didn't do their job in keeping it private. So I don't feel like I should -- I can tell you right now what happened or what I know.

It is an unsettling topic. I've been called a cheater by my fellow opponents. It's all joking, but when someone yells "cheater" in front of 200 people, to me it's not going to go down very well.

Q. Did you hear that?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: No, I heard it, yeah. It was a player out here. I'm cool with him, as well. He thought it was funny.

Q. He was joking?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: For sure, but that's not something you joke about. The someone else is like, I'm chipping around, someone is like, Oh, wedges are legal now.

So The R&A, they pissed me off because they attempted to ruin my image by not keeping this matter private. This is me coming out and treating them the exact way they treated me.

Q. Sorry to be dumb here, but I didn't know anything about it until you spoke yesterday.
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah. No one knows about that. There's reasons, like I said, there's reasons why I get so upset. This is part of that.

Q. Did they not keep it private?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: You tell me. An official came up to my dad and asked him, How's are testing going after Thursday? My dad, his temperament is a little worse than mine at times. I'm surprised that guy is -- he's a little bigger than I am, too. I've got a little more bite but he's a bit bigger.

This whole thing was a bit of a stir for my whole team. And like I said, I can deal with certain things if the variables are controlled. But in this situation we're sort of throw in a nice little hodgepodge, if you want to call it.

Q. Have you seen it released publicly before you spoke Thursday or Friday? We weren't aware of it.
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Oh, no, of course. We're the traveling circus. There's certain moving parts on Tour here and everyone on the grounds knew for some odd reason.

So that's enough to throw me off my game. I can handle it, I'm a big boy. I'm not very big, but I'm a big boy. I am alive now. If I was dead, this would be a different story.

But it was just handled unprofessionally. And it did tick me off, for sure.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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