THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 14, 2025

Xander Schauffele

TPC Sawgrass

Quick Quotes

Q. Good birdie on 9. What were you thinking? Were you thinking about the cut line at all in terms of your strategy into that hole?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, I was thinking about the cut line for sure. Knew I needed to make birdie. I think 2-putting is probably the easiest way to birdie 9, and I was able to do that.

Q. The second shot, what did you hit, and what's the challenge of that shot with the trees and the narrow green?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Just it was luckily helping off the right, so just kind of turned over a hybrid, aimed on the right side, kind of right of the green, and may have pulled it a hair, but figured if I can hit it somewhere up there on the right side in the rough that's kind of the place to get up-and-down from, and luckily hit the green.

Q. Overall how would you assess your play over the two days?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Really bad. Yeah. Yeah, just not very good.

Q. What's keeping you from scoring?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Everything. Yeah.

Q. Not just putting?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah. Not hitting it close enough, to duffing chips, to missing every fairway, to hitting fairways to missing greens. It's pretty gross, to be completely honest. So if I can eke out this cut, that would be nice. But the game feels pretty bad.

Q. Do you think it's rust or do you think it's something technical?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Surprisingly it feels kind of close, which is, I know, pretty sick to say. I know a lot of guys say that, but I'll get a little bit cozier on the range and kind of get in a decent pattern, and then as soon as I get on the course it seems to get a little bit more crooked. I'm not sure if it's something setup related or something that I'm not doing or not doing on the course that I do on the range, but it feels pretty bad.

Q. You know what it's like to have played with Tiger before. How would you describe -- you're you have the top three players in the world playing together. How would you describe how the crowd was? It just seemed less boisterous than you would have if Tiger was with you.

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, I mean Scottie, Rory and I, we're not going to be throwing our shoulders out fist pumping anything, so I'm sure that would fire a crowd up a little bit more.

Q. You didn't have a lot to fist pump at.

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, we didn't have a whole lot to fist pump at, to be completely honest. So I mean, there's a reason it's called the Tiger effect. I think all the guys in the group typically play pretty good golf, but no one does it better than Tiger.

Q. Any chance you're being hard on yourself?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I almost missed the cut on what is a pretty easy course right now, so I don't think so.

Q. Given what you went through and only your second tournament, not a lot of golf.

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Yeah, no. No. I think I'm being just fine on myself.

Q. Do you still have to restrict at all in practice?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I'm supposed to, but about to blow that out of the water this afternoon.

Q. Do you have a ball count or something like that?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: Supposed to, yeah.

Q. Are you feeling good enough to play Tampa next week?

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: I'm actually supposed to decide that before 5:00 p.m. today.

Q. That's why I asked.

XANDER SCHAUFFELE: That's a great question. I don't know.