Xander Schauffele during the first round of the 2024 ZOZO Championship. | Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
Xander Schauffele called himself an “idiot” after compounding errors on the 9th hole at the ZOZO Championship.
Whenever you are in trouble on the golf course, the best thing to do is to take your medicine, get the ball back in play, and avoid the big number that could ruin a day.
A bogey here or there does not destroy a round, especially if your ball came to rest in quite a predicament. Take your bogey and move on. You can survive. But you will struggle by making a double or worse, let alone a quadruple bogey, which Xander Schauffele carded on the 9th hole during the first round of the ZOZO Championship in Japan.
Schauffele’s tee shot on the 9th, a dogleg left par-4 measuring a shade over 500 yards, ducked left and settled next to a tree root. His predicament would force anyone to shake their head in disbelief. But instead of taking an unplayable and trying to play for a bogey-five, Schauffele tried to play hero-ball.
“I wanted to take a photo of it almost, how bad it was,” Schauffele said afterward.
“Thinking I can do anything definitely got me in a hole there. I should have just taken an unplayable, but I was an idiot and tried to hit it. Then I was stubborn and then tried to hit it again, then finally took an unplayable. I was going to hit it a third time, too, just because, but yeah, it was a bad spot.”
After finally taking his unplayable, Schauffele hit his fifth shot back into the fairway. He still had 100 yards to the hole for his sixth shot, which he then left about 14 feet above the hole. Then, to make matters worse, Schauffele, the now two-time major champion who ranks 10th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting, rocketed his triple-bogey attempt nine feet past the hole. A quintuple bogey loomed, but luckily, Schauffele poured in the comebacker to save an eight.
“I thought at worst I would hit the ball, hit the tree, and go somewhere. The worst thing happened. The worst thing that could have happened happened twice,” Schauffele added.
“Just a combination of being overconfident and being really stubborn, and it sometimes pays off for me in tournaments, and today it bit me in the ass.”
Schauffele did have a cheeky smile about it, though. In situations like that, there is not much else one can do.
“Making an eight on a par 4, I think I led bogey avoidance this last season. It’s not something I’ve done in a really long time,” Schauffele said.
“It’s probably been like a year since I had a meltdown like that. All you can do is laugh at it because it’s just terrible.”
The Champion Golfer of the Year then went on to play the back nine in 1-under par, making one birdie and eight pars the rest of the way. His par-breaker came on the par-3 13th, where he stuck his approach to seven feet. It was his lone birdie of the day.
He now stands at 3-over par, 10 shots back of leader Taylor Moore, who carded a 7-under 63. Despite that, it’s only Thursday, so Schauffele has time to get back in it. He’s also lucky that this is a no-cut, limited-field event.
“If [this happened on] Sunday, I would be pissed. Today, I’m just trying to brush it off. I’ve got three more days in front of me,” Schauffele said.
“Depending on what the leaders do tomorrow, it might be hard to get back into it. I’m going out in the morning, and the greens should be a little less bumpy. If I can shoot seven, eight, or something even lower, that would be incredible, or string together a bunch of 3 to 5 under par rounds, and I could be right there.”
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
