The X Factor

Why the meteoric rise of young Californian Xander Schauffele shows no signs of slowing down

- Evin Priest

If only his junior football coach had played him as a striker, golf may never have been gifted with the excitement machine that is Xander Schauffele. The 5-foot-10, 79-kilogram American was perhaps better built for the world game than the game he ended up choosing.

Schauffele – the son of a German-French father and a Chinese- Japanese mother – was a prodigious football talent. Aged six, he could juggle with both feet. He was a tremendous competitor. And the sport was in his blood, with both his great grandfathers playing professional football in their home countries of Austria and Germany. But in Scripps Ranch – a city suburb of San Diego, California – Schauffele was toiling as a sweeper for his local junior team. He made his desires to play attacking football clear to his coach, who promised as much to Schauffele for the next season. But when the manager didn’t deliver, a 12-year-old Schauffele packed up and walked away. Schauffele, now 26, never played organised football again.

“I’m not kidding you,” his father, Stefan, told a San Diego newspaper last year. “The next day, this is exactly what I said: ‘Let’s get you on the PGA Tour. Let’s go’.”

Raising a champion

There was one problem with Schauffele’s aspirations to make it to the PGA Tour – golf wasn’t considered ‘cool’ in southern California. Not even after Tiger Woods – a native to that part of California – had overhauled the sport’s image globally. Schauffele did not even tell friends and peers that he played golf.

“I think, as an individual growing up, golf wasn’t always the coolest thing to play,” said Schauffele at the recent Tournament of Champions in Hawaii. “In high school, in college, as a semi-pro or young man, I didn’t tell anyone I really played golf when I was younger.