Xander Schauffele stood in the middle of the 9th fairway with tremendous pressure on his shoulders. Sitting at even par, the World No. 2 needed to birdie his final hole of the day to earn a Saturday tee time and extend his consecutive made cuts streak to an impressive 59 in a row.
After watching his playing partners Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler each misfire, with McIlroy going into the trees and Scheffler pushing his shot to the right of the green, it was finally Schauffele’s turn to play. He needed to end up around the green on this par-5, and then get up-and-down for birdie to get to 1-under.
“I was thinking about the cut line for sure,” Schauffele said.
“Knew I needed to make birdie.”
Schauffele then uncorked a towering high-draw, his best shot of the day. His ball landed hole high, settling 50 feet away from the pin on the green. From there, he calmly two-putted for the birdie he needed to post 1-under and earn a Saturday tee time at The Players.
“[Wind] was luckily helping off the right, so just turned over a hybrid, aimed on the right side, 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,” Schauffele said.
“Luckily, I hit the green.”
Outside of that clutch shot, the two-time major winner has looked nowhere near the player that won the PGA Championship and Claret Jug a year ago. He missed two months earlier this season to a rib injury and returned to competition at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational.
He called his performance thus far “really bad,” adding that “everything” has been poor. The stats reflect that too. Schauffele has lost 1.374 strokes on approach and has made only seven birdies through 36 holes.
“Not hitting it close enough, to duffing chips, to missing every fairway, to hitting fairways to missing greens,” Schauffele explained.
“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.”
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.
