Justin Thomas attributed his win at the RBC Heritage last week to his good friend Xander Schauffele.
Thomas ended his three-year PGA Tour winless streak with a victory at the RBC Heritage on Sunday, whilst Schauffele ended up in a tie for 18th place, eight shots adrift of the winning score.
After his victory on Hilton Head Island, Thomas became the first player this season to win having held the lead after day one.
Interestingly, Schauffele described how hard it was to catch Thomas, after the two-time major champion fired a 10-under par 61 around Harbour Town Links on day one.
The 31-year-old, who won The Open and The PGA Championship last season, will be looking at Thomas for inspiration now.
Dan Rapaport has said that Schauffele is a ‘no-brainer’ for US Ryder Cup team selection.
However, he will be desperate to rack up at least one win before the season ends in order to officially seal his spot on the team.
Xander Schauffele disagrees with what Justin Thomas said about him
After lifting the RBC Heritage trophy, Thomas explained how Schauffele deserves huge credit for helping him out with his putting, as quoted by the PGA Tour’s official website:
“I called Xander at the end of last year because I think he’s one of the best putters in fundamentals and not just putting but everything and I was just like, ‘Can I just pick your brain for like two or three hours, just talk to you about putting?’” Thomas said Sunday evening. “So he came out with me, and he just was asking me a bunch of different questions. … He doesn’t leave any box unchecked. Like he said that day, he’s like, ‘If it has anything to do with you potentially improving in golf, I’ve probably done it or tried it.’
“So I just was talking to him about this process and how he reads greens and how he sees things and his practice and everything, and it honestly was just being with him, and he would kind of ask something and I was like, ‘Yeah, I used to do that’. And then he was like, ‘Well, how about something like this? Like, I used to use the string line here.’ Okay. The more I was talking, I’m like, ‘I don’t do any of the things that I used to do in my best putting years.’ (In) 2017-18, I was very, very regimented of the things that I did, and how he said it is: I had a home base and I had no home base. I had things that I did, but it was a very vague bag of thingsf and there was no consistency to it. I feel like I used to have a very good home base of fundamentals and things that I did.
“So it honestly, while he helped, it was more of the questions he asked me made me realize that I’m trying basically too hard and I’m trying too many different things versus I think it’s a serious, serious, serious skill to continue to work on the things that you do really well and not doing it differently, and I think that’s been more of what it is. I have my fundamentals and things that I do and checkpoints, and I’m sticking to them.”
So does Schauffele really deserve as much credit as he’s getting? He doesn’t think so.
The two-time major champion responded to J.T’s comments on Monday, as quoted by Golf Digest Australian:
“Yeah, J.T, he played great. I don’t think I really have anything to do with him winning. He maybe gave me too much credit.
“He was pretty up front and asked if I could kind of tag along for practice one day. When I’m in town here [in Jupiter], J.T. is a very familiar face that I compete against. It’s one of the ways us folks here in Jupiter like to sharpen up before a tournament. It was simple. He started asking me questions, and it ended up me being the one asking him all the questions, sort of how he thinks about putting, what he’s done in the past.
“You know, I think more than anything, it was just sort of he was searching and maybe trying too hard, and he’s done so many good things in the past that it was sort of like maybe an eye-opening, sort of like, ‘I used to do, three, four, five of the things we were talking about, and I stopped doing them because I was down this crazy rabbit hole of trying to get better.’ Felt like all the answers were right in front of him. J.T. is so good that he figured it out pretty quickly.
“I’m the one that was there before asking him what he was doing, how he prepared, how he competed. So it’s a nice thing to be able to sort of play on teams with certain individuals and be able to sort of share notes.
“Golf is kind of tricky. We keep a lot of stuff to ourselves, and like you said, we try to get ahead of each other but every once in a while, you know, if someone is struggling or you feel like you need a little pick-me-up, you can always talk to any of the pros around the area, which is a nice feeling.”
Thomas should return the favour to Schauffele
Whatever Schauffele might say, he clearly helped J.T, even if it was in the sense of freeing up his mind.
Now the Californian needs to ask his friend for a favour in return.
He is ranked 160th in scrambling this season. Where did he rank last year? Top of the pile – and that’s the reason why he was so successful.
It’s little wonder why his fall-off this season has been so drastic. Schauffele is obviously still rusty having missed two months of the season through injury, but he will need to improve upon his short-game if he is to win in 2025.
Thomas is one of the best there is around the greens, and it would be no surprise at all if Schauffele picks the RBC Heritage champion’s brain regarding some chipping and pitching tips over the course of the next few weeks.
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