PARIS – The first thing that went in the claret jug, the 152-year-old silver trophy awarded to the winner of golf’s Open Championship, was red wine.
Then some tequila.
“I don’t really drink much alcohol, so three days in a row drinking was quite a feat for me,” Xander Schauffele said. “The recovery was slow. I wear an Oura ring, tracking my sleep every day. It took me a while to get my scores back to where they normally are.”
Nothing has been normal for the San Diego native and Scripps Ranch High School and San Diego State alum over the past three months, going from the ignominious designation as the best player never to win a major tournament to winning not one but two of them.
Now, just two weeks after adding the Open Championship in Scotland to the PGA Championship from May, he tees it up Thursday in the Olympic tournament at Le Golf National outside Paris as the defending gold medalist.
For most, golf is an afterthought at the Olympics. It was part of the Olympics in 1900 and 1904, then gone for 112 years before returning in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro at a course patrolled by giant, snub-nosed tropical rodents called capybaras.
Most people believe the four majors, the Players Championship, the FedEx Cup playoffs and probably a half-dozen other tour events are more important.
Schauffele just isn’t one of them.
“It was more than just golf for me,” he said after sinking a 4-foot putt on the final hole to win gold in Japan three years ago.
His mother was born in Taiwan but moved to Japan at age 4 and grew up there. He has a set of grandparents who live in Tokyo.
But the real reason was his father’s side of the family. Stefan Schauffele’s grandfather qualified for a since-discontinued ball event in one of the original Games in the early 1900s, then hurt his shoulder two weeks before and didn’t go. Stefan himself was a promising decathlete in Germany four decades ago, only for a fiery car accident with a drunk driver to leave him with a shard of glass wedged into his left eye. Six surgeries couldn’t fix it.
So a father’s quest became the son’s, and moments after the 4-foot putt nestled into the cup at Kasumigaseki Country Club’s East Course on a steamy August afternoon, Schauffele walked across the green and broke pandemic protocol rules about outside interaction.
He hugged his father and wouldn’t let go.
“When I look back to being on the podium,” Schauffele said of the spectator-less Tokyo Games, “it would have been really cool with fans, but it was really intimate having my dad be the only person there with me besides (his caddie). You hear the anthem and come off the green and share the medal with him, it’s as cool as it gets for me, something I can deliver to him.”
Soon, there were photos and videos of Stefan partying in the back of a limo in Tokyo with the medal. Of him at his favorite sushi restaurant in San Diego after returning home, in between sake shots. Of him shirtless pointing to it around his neck at their backyard pool posted on social media with the message: “I might never give this one back to you!”
Xander replied: “I should have seen this coming.”
Stefan is here in Paris in his trademark straw hat. Just not multiple ones.
It is a metaphor he and Xander have used to describe their relationship.
“Starting off, just like every kid, you have the people who help you get to this point,” Xander said. “My dad was no different than any of those other parents. He was wearing 10 different hats. One was being a dad, another one was being a coach, another one was being a concierge, another one was being transportation, a mental coach, a swing coach, the list goes on.
“I’m 30 years old now. Once you have success, it was always my goal to have my dad be happy and do what he wants to do. He’s going to turn 60 this year. I don’t think he wants to go sit on the range in 95 degrees and watch me pound golf balls all day. I wouldn’t want to do that when I’m 60. As the years have gone on, I’ve been trying to take hats away from him just so he can relax a little bit and enjoy his life a little bit more.”
And he has … on Kauai.
Stefan bought a remote 22-acre plot overlooking the ocean and is building a dream home with architectural concepts rooted in sustainability. There are also plans for a working taro farm on the property.
In the meantime, there’s only a converted shipping container that he lives in when he’s on the island. There’s no television, and he had to drive down the hill to see Xander close out the back nine of the PGA Championships in May to win his first major championship after nine agonizing top 10s.
“I told him, ‘I’m only going to go when there’s a structure up,’” Xander said. “I’m not going to sleep in a container.”
Stefan Schauffele flew to Scotland to witness his son hoisting the claret jug. And he’s in Paris, too, attending events, soaking in the five-ring atmosphere.
He’s just not on the range in 95 degrees, watching his son pound golf balls.
Earlier this year, Schauffele confirmed he began working with Chris Como, a respected swing coach who counts Tiger Woods and Bryson DeChambeau among former clients. It was part of a planned succession, realizing that he and Stefan, a self-taught pro teacher who worked mostly with younger golfers, could go only so far.
“Chris changed a teeny thing and he found answers that Xander and I together couldn’t come up with,” Stefan told Golf.com in May. “We went trial and error, we went empirical, I couldn’t answer it. … Chris had the answer right away.”
Como tweaked elements at the top of Schauffele’s backswing and in his downswing transition. The 5-foot-10 Schauffele also gained nearly 5 miles per hour of clubhead speed, now over 183 mph and ranking in the top 10 in the world, attributing that to Como’s more fluid swing and a new fitness trainer.
He’s been on a tear ever since, the 54-hole leader at the Players Championship, three wins, two major wins, eight top 10s since March, a No. 2 world ranking behind Scottie Scheffler.
The Albatros Course at Le Golf National is an hour outside Paris, in rolling countryside away from most of the Olympic buzz. Schauffele planned to attend swimming Tuesday night to “get some more motivation and good vibes.”
He was asked where the gold medal ranks among his career accomplishments given its lukewarm reception by the larger golf community.
“The gold medal, it’s been marinating nicely,” Schauffele said. “Maybe in 30, 40 years, it will be something that will be very special as it gets more traction and kind of gets back into the normalcy of being in the Olympics. It’s still so young.
“But there are times it will be just my family and we’ll reminisce a little (about Tokyo). It’s always a warm feeling.”
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