You have to feel for Xander Schauffele slightly ahead of The Tour Championship after what has been the best year of his career to date.
In any other season, Xander Schauffele would have wrapped up the player of the year title after winning both the PGA Championship and The Open. However, he looks set to miss out on that particular award, with many players believing Scottie Scheffler has been the best this year.
But there would usually be a fantastic opportunity for Schauffele to end the PGA Tour year on a high, with the 30-year-old boasting an outstanding record at East Lake, having won The Tour Championship in 2017 while also finishing as a runner-up on three occasions. Given that, it is no surprise that some are tipping Schauffele to win the FedEx Cup ahead of Scheffler.
However, there has been a spanner thrown in the works, with East Lake undergoing major changes since the previous staging of the event. Schauffele himself, noted that East Lake feels like a new course. So any previous track record can perhaps be tossed out of the window.
What Xander Schauffele’s caddie expects the winning score at The Tour Championship to be
In fact, it seems that Schauffele’s camp are expecting it to be a tough week for the field. Speaking on The Smylie Show, Smylie Kaufman shared his verdict on the changes, while he also revealed what Schauffele’s caddie had told him ahead of the tournament.
“I’ve never seen the golf course in person and this is my first time on the grounds when we did our show on Monday. I’ve always watched East Lake over the years, whether it be The Tour Championship or when it was before that, growing up as a kid when it wasn’t The Tour Championship. I kind of felt like the golf course on TV just always felt like blah to me, it never really did anything for me, it seemed like a good golf course and one that I would enjoy playing. But it’s not picturesque holes like you’d have on the west coast, these signature type holes, it’s just good hole after hole,” he said.
“And every player that I talked to about the golf course, they all loved it. They loved playing it, they felt like there was good hole after good hole, so from my perspective, it’s like okay, watching it on TV, I never really felt anything crazy ever happened, beside that par three 15th hole, that seemed to be the drama of the golf course. Other than that, it seemed where guys were making birdies, but their bogies were boring because they hit it in the rough.
“Now from being on the course and walking it, obviously, I’m seeing these greens for the first time, I don’t know where they used to be, I’m just seeing it for what it is and I think it’s going to be very, very challenging. The number I got from Austin Kaiser was if it’s just a regular strokeplay tournament, everybody starting at even, he said single under par would win, even something close to even is what he felt.”
A massive opportunity for an outsider
Had this been a normal Tour Championship, it would have surely been a safe bet to assume that it would come down to Scheffler and Schauffele to decide the winner, with the world number one starting at least two shots clear of everyone, while his countryman is second on the leaderboard.
However, a lot of players will be eyeing an upset. Shane Lowry spoke about players complaining about the course in the locker room, so there are going to be some who cannot make peace with the changes and really struggle this year.
But some players further back may look to be a bit more aggressive in the hope of cutting the deficit and bringing themselves back into the event. For some, that strategy will backfire, but surely, one or two will get off to the kind of start which brings them into the mix.
Certainly, there will be so many eyes on that final group of Scheffler and Schauffele, with so much intrigue surrounding how they will fare as they both look to end their incredible seasons on a high.
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