Xander Schauffele is coming into The Open championship at Royal Portrush as the defending champion, but just don’t ask the two-time major winner to see his trophies
Xander Schauffele may be one of golf’s most recent serial winners, yet the star has confessed that storing all his silverware is actually an afterthought for him. Schauffele will take to The Open championship at Royal Portrush this week as the defending champion.
The 31-year-old claimed his second major at Royal Troon last summer, taking temporary ownership of the famous Claret Jug. As well as his two majors, which includes a PGA Championship also won in 2024, he also claimed the Tour Championship in his rookie season and even earned an Olympic gold medal at Tokyo in 2021.
Yet Schauffele is not a hoarder, even eschewing the temptation to hoist his trophies on display. He has even aimed a message at his wife, Maya, who chose to decorate their house with some of the golf star’s most valuable trinkets, claiming he would rather see exhibits of motivation around his home, rather than fossils of events he has already conquered.
“My wife hung up some pictures of me in my gym of me winning the Olympic medal, and she put it so high up I can’t reach it,” Schauffele recently said to The Washington Post.
Schauffele, who finished runner-up at The Masters in 2019, added: “I have to get a ladder now, and it bothers me. If anything, put up me in a Masters jacket, like that would p*** me off, you know what I mean? Something like that is more motivating.”
The PGA Tour star says that his parents are actually in possession of all his trophies, such is his indifference to them, and that his esteemed array of jugs and garlands are “probably in a bank vault.” On the prize every athlete dreams about, his Olympic gold medal, the golfer said: “I actually have no idea where that is, to be completely honest.”
If Schauffele’s resistance to celebrating himself seems self flagellating or even ungrateful, it’s far from it. It’s simply one of the game’s current greats engineering a way to get himself back onto the course, as hungry as ever.
“What am I going to do with it? [the trophies] I don’t really invite people over to my house. Am I just going to go look at it myself?” he said. “I don’t want to walk into a trophy room like, ‘Look how great I am.’ I was just raised to think that way, and it’s kind of stuck.”
Instead, Schauffele says he would prefer photos of his dog on the wall, or perhaps a clock, adding: “I’m always late, so maybe a clock would be good for me.”
Celebrating the wins is often the foundation of any sport, but there’s a fine line between dining out on your past to the point you forget to lay the table for your future, something Schauffele is keen to underscore. “I really want to keep my head down and keep charging,” he added.
There’s no doubt that 2024 was a banner year for the San Diego-born star. Yet while he opened major season this year with a top-10 finish at the Masters, he has been pretty anonymous ever since – with Augusta representing his only top-10 finish in any event all year.
He now looks to banish half a year of frustrating form and niggling injuries to make a mark at Royal Portrush. “I’ve never successfully defended any tournament that I’ve won in the past, so I’m very much looking forward to it,” he said.
“If I could do it at a major, especially The Open, it would be really incredible. I was just told we have a record attendance in Portrush, and for obvious reasons. If I can use it to my advantage to sort of cruise along and fly under the radar, that’s exactly what I’ll do.” The Open Championship gets underway on Thursday, July 17.
