Xander Schauffele has a crucial goal in Valspar. He may win, too

Xander Schauffele’s Valspar Championship was held on the 11th hour of last week and he is praying for a layoff at the Players Championship. He checked the scores all night, waited for the cuts, and hit by the whiskers before hitting 77-81 on TPC Sawgrass over the weekend.

Suddenly, Valspar is not a last-minute addition, but more absolute demand, which is an important place to find his life at the last start before the Masters. In Innisbrook’s 36 holes, it looks like he’s found something. Schauffele recompetes – In his words, he is “staying in touch with leaders”, second only to two shots on the weekend, a positive sign that it is the beginning of a roller coaster in 2025.

Those weekend rounds of the players passed very quietly when everyone except Schauffele himself, who then jumped to Palm Beach Gardens for a night of TGL golf before appearing at Valspar, having a long grinder at Valspar on Wednesday night. His team tried to keep the number of balls as he returned from a rib injury, but he blew on the player and did it again on Wednesday.

How many balls?

“Probably more than most people on my team want,” he said.

He is very important in Sawgrass and is obviously not ready to apologize for it. But he realized he was playing golf more than he did golf, and he was too focused on the technical moves of all the water hazards he caused in Pete Dye’s chaotic home.

“This week is going to go back to playing golf, not playing golf,” Schauffele said Friday after a three-pointer under the age of 68. He is not the only player searching for it in Valspar. Viktor Hovland is better than Schauffele, but does it in a different way. Hovland ranked third in strokes: putters, a more turbulent statistic, while Schauffele led by stroke: close to green. If he can match the short match of No. 78 this week and pair it with a hit putt (he is No. 95), he will continue to stand out on the rankings.

Schauffele is touring the only way professionals really know how: to go through the form by competing for reps. And he actually only has a lot of them. Friday was his 10th round since January, part of the reason he spent so much time on the range and simulated the extra rep. He likens it to a plug for testing, and now his round feels like he’s still learning. But there are some efforts currently that attract Schauffele. As long as his body clamps tightly with the grinding, he will inspire his abilities.

“I want to be smart about my own things, and I definitely feel like a kid,” he said. “I feel like I want to play a million golf balls and sit here until 8 o’clock every night, but I have to feel smart about it.”

Thanks to his 60th straight promotion (currently the tour leader in that statistic), he will receive two more delegates this weekend, a full blowout course. Sawgrass is full of dangerous areas of double bogey, while Innisbrook is brave, with tree-lined fairways, with only a few dangers. This is more about throwing the ball into certain parts of the fairway to get it into the green at the right angle and making a bunch of good standards. As Friday’s wind blew, its tests were as strict as sinister sawweed. He also sees this way.

“It’s one of the places you can get away from you quickly, ending his press time on Friday night,” Schauffele said, “or you can hang out there and your name will appear on Sunday, later in the day.” So I just want to play golf. ”