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SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS

January 3, 2020

Xander Schauffele

Kapalua, Maui, Hawaii

JOHN BUSH: We'd like to welcome Xander Schauffele into the interview room after a 5-under par 68. Interesting day out there. If we can talk a little bit about your round and also the patience it took to get it in.

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Interesting is a good one. Five-hour twosomes are always fun. I don't see how we could have played much faster, honestly, unless guys were willing to play in wind and rain at about 30, 35 miles an hour. A day of adjustment is sort of how I like to look at it, and glad we were able to come out on top.

Q. What was the worst of it?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I don't know, probably on the par-5. I was sitting there with Austin, what is that, the first one, 5, 6? 5? Postman hit it up there to about 15 feet, and I was like, man, this is very doable, and then I was walking to my shot, and that was the first wave that got today, and it was pretty aggressive, lasted for about a couple minutes, and I was sitting there with Austin, like I have to hit right now, I think. I can't just sit here in the middle of the fairway and not hit, so I got out and clubbed up, aimed further left and tried to swing as hard as I could just to cover the ravine. It was a wet experience.

Q. When is the last time you've been in up-and-down weather conditions like that, and how much harder did it make it today?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: It's just, like I said, all about adjusting to it. We've done it enough. This is a little extreme, but we've done it enough to sort of know what to do. It's just hard to get yourself to commit to certain lines and certain green speeds throughout the day. But kind of just take your attitude and try your best.

Q. Doesn't it fit your narrative to have something going against you?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I mean, it's going against everybody. It was weird, at certain points it was sort of sunny up on top of the mountain and then we were playing into the wind and rain. It almost helped me today. I was getting a little frustrated earlier in the round. I was missing a few putts. I shouldn't have been frustrated; it was blowing 20 on the greens. It's hard to make 12-footers, 15-footers when it's blowing 20. I was getting frustrated, and the monsoon sort of relaxed me, I guess.

Q. 13 seemed like a pretty good birdie. What did you have in there? Back right pin was it?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: 13, yeah. I got Postman and Flener to the laugh their butts off on the tee box. I don't know if anyone has got a shot of that, but my drive actually hit the pro walk.

Q. It hit the what?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: The pro walk, the walk path up. I hit it so low and so short, it almost -- it skimmed through the rough, actually, that you walk through. It probably had about 80 yards of carry on it, which set up a nice 5-iron from 183. Wasn't really what we were looking for, but hit that to about 12 feet and made the putt.

Q. Downhill?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Downhill.

Q. How good was strokes gained attitude today?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: It wasn't as good as Webb's. It was a little up and down I would say. Not +50 is where I try to succeed every day, but I'd give it like a +28 or something like that.

Q. Totally different golf course, everything else, you shot 62 last year. Are you almost as proud of what you did today?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, I made three putts -- three par putts at about 9 to 11 feet, so to go bogey-free on a day like today was something I wasn't really aware of until I signed my card, and now I'm very happy about it.

Q. And maybe comment briefly on the two-putt at 17 because that seemed pretty hard there.
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: That was one of them. Yeah, my ball landed about three feet short of what I thought would be a really good shot, and it kind of plugged in the front, which left sort of a circus putt I'd call it, and I was just happy to two-putt. It was a big momentum swing. I was aware that I didn't want to go backwards that late in the day.

Q. How important is how you were able to get through today looking forward to these next two days if we get similar conditions? Does it give you something to know what's coming, I guess?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, just to know that I can do it, I guess. It's always nice to know that -- there was periods throughout the day where I played some easy holes poorly but kind of got away with par. Austin and I were a little bit in between, and the short game was able to kind of pull us out of it.

It's interesting. I think you just never know what Hawai'i's weatherman is going to give you. We know what he's going to give us, but we never know if it's going to be true or not. Just kind of roll with the shots and see what you can do.

Q. What's your definition of a circus putt?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Just walk out on 17, go to the front right and have a look at it, up over, down around, back up, and if you miss it a little bit too far left it might go further away from the hole.

Q. Just for clarity, since you're making all this stuff up anyway, if you strive for strokes gained attitude 50, where would you put Webb, just to give us a nice barometer?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: He lives at 50, I think. He lives there, +50.

Q. Is that as high as you can go?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I don't know. You can ask Gary. Gary and I like talking about it. We agree that he's up there, though.

Q. Where is Gary?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Gary, I don't know, I'm kidding. You know Gary. You can ask him yourself.

Q. After winning here last year, how much different is the course with the renovations and the weather right now than it was last year?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Besides looking the same and looking over at Molokai, very different. Hitting longer clubs, different lines, different reads on the greens. We're on the same property, but for the most part there's no memory I can fall back on when it comes to making a putt or hitting a bump-and-run shot on a certain hole since the green layouts are very different. They happen to be in the same spot, but the surfaces aren't the same.

Q. Would you have guessed something around 9-under would be leading through 36 before you started the week?
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I couldn't tell you. You know, I didn't know this was going to roll in today. I thought the TOUR was nice with the pin positions, over under 18-ish. I've heard 15, I've heard 20. But I think this weather kind of keeps up and the wind keeps up, it's not going to be a shootout.

JOHN BUSH: Xander, thanks for your time. Best of luck this weekend.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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