BMW CHAMPIONSHIP

August 24, 2024

Xander Schauffele

Castle Pines Golf Club

Quick Quotes

Q. I think you started the day outside of 10 shots of the lead and now at the moment you're within five. What are your plans for this afternoon, and will you watch any of the golf and watch how Keegan finishes?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Probably just hang out. I don't really have a whole lot planned. Got my uncle and brother in the house. One of my brother's buddies is in town. So just chill, hang out with them, and just try and rest up.

Q. The flyover on Thursday, you looked at Scottie and you started laughing. You and Scottie looked at each other and were laughing. I was wondering what you thought of it.

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, that was more of my caddie made a comment to Scov and Ludvig. I'll just keep that to ourselves. It was funny, though. Not very inappropriate, but it was funny.

Q. What's your objective for the week going into today knowing that you can't get to No. 1 anyway?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I mean, it would be hard to. I'd have to win and Scottie would have to do something he's never really done. It was just to -- I think if you're in really good form going into East Lake and playing good golf, you can kind of, I believe at least, I try to chase down Hovy last year and came up well short, but it was kind of dicey for a little bit, and I was much further back than I'm going to go in this year.

Q. What was working best for you today?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yesterday I kind of got a little mixed up and was a little bit out of sorts. Today was a little weird, too, starting out. I kind of got gusted, I think, on 3. I hit an 8-iron that literally went -- I got like 25 yards of hurt, which we haven't had all week. I kind of was posing, and it was a little embarrassing for that thing to hit the wall and go in the water 20 yards off. Then hit a flagstick a hole later. Felt like I had to dig deep in my little patience bucket that's running thin this late in the year on a Saturday.

But lucky to sort of turn it around and hit some good shots coming in.

Q. How can you tell when your patience is running thin?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I just feel this thing rising in me that I don't want to forcefully push down, but you can kind of tell when you're being tested out here. When you're playing really good golf, things go your way, and it's easy to brush off bad things. When you're trying to sort of force it a little bit and things aren't going your way, then it gets frustrating, and then when you start playing good golf and hitting good shots and you hit it in the water and you hit a flagstick, you've got to dig deep sometimes.

Q. Were you kind of feeling like Scottie was feeling on 10 yesterday?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, it is frustrating playing at altitude. I remember it being in Vegas when I first moved there -- it's only 5 percent where I was playing up in Summerlin. It was about 3,000 feet was the highest point. I talked to Collin Morikawa and Kurt out there and I would ask them all the time how to handle altitude because I would hit a flush wedge shot and it would be like 45 feet over the flag or short, and it would be so frustrating.

A little bit of that feeling this week, as well, and I know I'm not the only one where guys are flagging shots and it's plugging in a bunker over a green or coming up well short. It's a little bit of that altitude deal.

Q. You've talked a bunch this year about climbing a mountain. In your mind where do you feel you are in that climb?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: You know, if there's a peak, somewhere upper, mid, still far behind, hanging on.

Q. Just hanging on?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Just hanging on. Just trying to climb.

Q. You worked really hard in Memphis. Chris came out and you did a lot of work before Memphis. It was just one bad round in Paris; was that enough for you to want to fix something right away or could you not just write it off as one bad day?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I think mentally you kind of write it off as a bad day, but there's a reason for everything, and so identifying that reason and sitting with him and talking with him and talking with the rest of my team and making sure it's not my body, it's sort of a setup thing or just an old swing thing, something Chris is having me move the club a little bit differently. It doesn't feel bad, but it's just a little bit new.

When I get comfortable, I revert back, and I think at times when I'm playing bad, I sort of revert back into how I moved the club before.

Q. When you're playing bad you revert back?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: No, I can kind of sneak it sometimes. It's kind of -- it's not bad. It just gets bad the longer I let it go kind of. I can kind of play with it and not think much of it. It's just kind of like everyone else. You kind of work on your swing and you get to a good place and then you start swinging nice and you don't think about anything and then all of a sudden you start hitting bad shots and you start thinking about your swing, rinse and repeat that cycle.