How 5 words from his father inspired Xander Schauffele’s breakthrough

turday night, before yet another final pairing of yet another final round of yet another opportunity for an undeniable, I’m-as-good-as-everyone-says-I-am victory, Xander Schauffele’s father sent him a text.

“Steter tropfen höhlt den stein,” was the message, in Stefan Schauffele’s native German, umlaut and everything, no punctuation required. Xander asked for a translation.

Chris Como, the world-famous coach who has been working with Xander for six months, allowing Stefan to — in Xander’s words — “take his hands off the wheel,” received the same message from Stefan, who was chiming in from Hawaii.

Steter tropfen höhlt den stein. A constant drip wears away the stone.

To talk with Xander’s old man — affectionately known as The Ogre, for his imposing size and boisterousness — is to hear phrases like that one. He was a reader growing up, his son says, and is a walking list of sayings. This phrase, though — a greek proverb that dates back to the 5th century — is the most fitting Stefan-ism as it embodies the current moment in Xander’s life, as he plays the very best golf he’s ever played.

That constant drip is great, they think, so long as it breaks that damn stone.

IF SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER IS THE CURRENT STANDARD for brilliant golf, then Xander Schauffele is the current standard for steady golf. He hasn’t missed a cut in two years. Eight top 10s this season alone. (Nine, now.) The leading golf analytics site, DataGolf, even ranks tournament fields by a metric of X-Score, named in his honor — the likelihood that a perennial top-5 player like X (Xander) would win.

Steadiness is good, and his version of steady is great. It pays the bills and puts you on Ryder Cup teams and even earns you equity in the PGA Tour, but it doesn’t guarantee you any trophies. He’s been winless for 22 months, a fact he volunteered out loud all week. He has finished in the top 20 of the last eightmajor championships, but never inside the top 5. Often the bridesmaid, never the bride, questioning if that stone is ever gonna break, just like a lot of other great pros.

“I always say this about people who haven’t won a Tour event before, or just a major professional event,” Max Homa said this week. “You could have all the people in the world tell you It’s possibleand You can or whatever, but it kind of almost takes you doing it once to truly be able to confirm that to your own mind.”

Schauffele admitted as much to himself. After turning 30 and completing seven damn-good years on the PGA Tour, he had become the undisputed Best Player Without a Major. The BPWAM — a perfect backhanded compliment the golfing world hands out to different players at different times, only when they deserve it most.

“I thought I was [that],” Schauffele said Sunday night. “Not that people saying it made me think that. I just felt like I’ve done enough work, I’m good enough to do it. I just needed to shut my mind up and actually do it.”

But doing it in this sport is unlike any other. To do it in this mind-numbing arena is to beat 155 others all at once. To do it in this sport is to stretch brilliance across 72 holes and four days, with everyone demanding you look ahead to the finish line. “There’s nothing else to do but keep doing what you’re doing,” Como said five days ago, from the Valhalla locker room. He was putting himself in Xander’s head, rationalizing what the next step was after Rory McIlroy drubbed Schauffele at the Wells Fargo Championship.

What are you gonna do?” Como asked rhetorically. It was a 99th percentile day — a final-round 65 — from a 99th percentile player. Don’t get bothered by variance.

He didn’t. Even his own. Two days later, when Schauffele shot a record-tying 62, he told the press: “It’s just Thursday,” with a “slow your roll” grin.

On Friday afternoon, his message was: “It’s just 36 holes. It’s a really good start to a tournament.”

On Saturday night, no change: Tomorrow is “just another Sunday.”

Keep plugging away, let the water drip, and don’t say a thing about it. That’s his modus operandi. You’re more likely to receive a knowing smile from Schauffele than a thoughtful sentiment. He keeps things in. Rather than share what he’s thinking with the world, Xander types ideas into the notes app on his phone. Things his wife doesn’t see. Things his caddie is curious about. It’s a lot of positive self-talk. Commit, execute, and accept is a phrase that he thinks of constantly. Another Stefan-ism.

THERE’S A THIRD TELLING PHRASE that kicks around in Schauffele’s head, which he shared earlier this year, after a near-miss at the Players Championship, in March.

“I tell myself all the time,” he said, “if you’re trying to win you’ve got to walk through the fire. And if you’re able to walk through unscathed, then you’re going to win the tournament.”

At Valhalla, fire-breathers were two groups ahead. Viktor Hovland and Bryson DeChambeau, two of the best in the world, trading birdies and pulling the crowd in their direction. Hovland punched first, with birdies at 5, 6 and 7, before another trio at 10, 12 and 13. DeChambeau found his birdies more liberally, splayed out across his round, never dropping a shot. Schauffele fended off both with two of the prettiest irons of his week — a 210-yard dart into 11 (birdie) followed by a 205-yard, soft fade into 12 (birdie). He reached 20 under on the walk to 13, but his goal all day was 22. “Someone was going to shoot seven under,” his caddie, Austin Kaiser said, and he was right.

Hovland had a 10-footer on 18 for exactly that, 64, but it slid by. DeChambeau also had a 10-footer on the 18 for 64, and unlike Hovland he made it, sending echoes of uncertainty into the air. Golf fans speak with their cheers first, but also their feet, and the majority of spectators at Valhalla were with that third-to-last group, following the game’s greatest entertainer. Schauffele’s walk through the fire required getting there first, because DeChambeau had pulled everyone to the 18th hole.

After a scrambling par on 17, Schauffele needed 5 for a playoff and a 4 to win outright. He had been staring down leaderboards all day — a habit he doesn’t like to do, but exactly the kind of change you might implement as the BPWAM. When his final tee ball trickled into the first cut, a ring of soft turf around the fairway bunker, he chuckled. “I was like, if you want to be a major champion, this is the kind of stuff you have to deal with.”

Xander dug his toes into the sand and swung at the teed up Callaway like a baseball player, catching it clean and drawing, just short left of the green.

For a player who considers the short game one of his “trigger stats” as in, when he’s lost, that’s been the reason, it was a scary place to chip from. He’d be working up the same hill that killed Rory McIlroy’s bunker shot in 2014. But Xander liked it, and for a player so good that data scientists fawn over his skillset, sometimes liking it all that matters. We know he liked it because his caddie, Austin Kaiser, was still gawking at the shot an hour later, victory drink in hand.