Two down, two to go - Schauffele eyes slam after Open triumph

On the final day of an intense Open Championship, played out in a glorious amalgam of wind and rain and sunshine from first thing on Thursday, Xander Schauffele carried himself with the kind of zen that could make Buddha look fretful.

The American said he got “chills” en route to the final green on Sunday, but it didn’t show. To the watching world he was impossibly cool and improbably collected.

He displayed a steely focus and a precision that laid waste to a pack that spent much of the day tightly bunched together, like a peloton awaiting a sprint finish.

There was no sprint, though. There was a breakaway and nobody could go with it.

“It's an honour,” he said, looking at his Claret Jug. “I've always dreamt of doing it.

"That walk up 18 truly is the coolest with the yellow leaderboards and the fans and the standing ovation. It really is one of the coolest feelings I've ever had in my life.”

He talked of “super stressful moments” but that was part of Schauffele’s brilliance. Whatever emotion he was feeling, he never gave any hint of it.

Where did this round rate in the thousands he has played? “At the very tip top.”

He called the back nine at Royal Troon the hardest nine holes he’s ever played and yet he mastered them in 31 shots. Four birdies and no bogeys on a stretch of holes that found out the greatest players on the planet all week.

When Schauffele won his first major championship, the US PGA at Valhalla in May, his parents and, you sense, his greatest influences were far away from Louisville.

When he won his second on Sunday they were right by his side.

His dad, Stefan, was in the media centre when his son did the winners’ news conference, standing away to the side and in a blindspot to the stage, so much so that Schauffele needed telling that his dad was present.

Another major, but a different vibe.

When Schauffele won at Valhalla, his folks were at their place on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, a cargo container that doubles as their oasis from life in San Diego. No running water, no air conditioning. Splendid isolation.

Not an ideal spot to be when your boy has just fulfilled his life’s dream of winning a major, though. They followed it on their phone, which presented its own challenges, but it was emotional all the same.

“Once he made that putt [to win the PGA]," said Stefan, “I started to melt like a piece of butter in a skillet.”

This time, there would be no long distance celebrations. Stefan and Ping Yi were here, as large as life.

Americans love their father-son stories in sport and the Schauffele yarn is up there with the best of them.

Stefan, who grew up in Germany, was a decathlete back in the day, an aspiring Olympian who had his own dream crushed when hit by a drunk driver at the age of 20. He lost the sight in an eye and experienced trauma in his life.

“There was some depression and alcoholism,” he said in a recent interview. “That’s what led me to moving to America.”

He had a son and from the age of nine, Xander was a player. Stefan coached him and, from time to time, argued with him. Madly, on occasion.

Everything paid off. A golfing machine was forged and we saw it in all its formidable glory at Royal Troon this past week.

“Now he’s got this first major,” said Stefan after Valhalla, “it’s the first one of the four [nobody in Team Schauffele is shying away from the target of a Grand Slam].

"I’ve got a good feeling he’ll get the second one of the four this year. With him being as consistent as he is now, everybody is on notice.”

Prescient words. For a number of years, Schauffele was deemed golf’s nearly man, a supremely talented player who couldn’t back up his excellence with titles.

This is his time now. Two majors in a single year is an other-worldly achievement in this era of the game, a period so full of established winners and thrusting young things who are utterly unafraid of winning.

Schauffele said he had a chip on his shoulder about some of the negativity thrown at him. He used it as fuel.

What’s he going to use for motivation now that he’s an acclaimed double major winner? “If you look hard enough, you can always find it,” he said.

“It's something, when you feel like you need an extra kick in the butt, there's several easy ways to motivate yourself.

"There's still a lot of things that I'd like to do in my career, and this is a very big leap towards that. The fire is still burning, maybe brighter than ever.”

He has the Olympics in Paris next, a gold medal to defend from his glory in Tokyo, another dream to chase before returning to the majors circuit next year.

That is terrain he will travel as a two-time champion and an increasing force to be reckoned with in the ferocious environment of elite golf.

Small in stature, for sure. But Schauffele is a colossus now.