Xander Schauffele led the PGA Tour in bogey avoidance last season.
But on Thursday during the Zozo championship he became a bit stubborn.
After his tee shot nestled near a tree on the ninth hole, the world No. 2 compounded the mistake by making two swipes in the space of five seconds, barely advancing the ball before finally deciding on an unplayable lie to take. He walked away with a quadruple-bogey 8, his only missed shots during an opening round of 3-over-73 that matched his highest score on the Tour since June.
Schauffele is tied at 70e in the limited field of 78 players.
“If it were Sunday, I would be angry,” he said afterwards. ‘Today I’m just trying to put it aside. I still have three days ahead of me.”
Schauffele had made eight pars in a row before starting the ninth. As he approached his ball, he said the lie was so bad, sitting in a “crack,” that he even thought about taking a picture to laugh about it later. At worst, he believed his shot would simply ricochet off the tree in front of him.
“If I thought I could do anything, I was definitely in a hole,” he said. “I should have just taken an unplayable one, but I was an idiot and tried to hit it.”
Not once, but twice – all in just a few seconds.
“Then I was stubborn and tried to hit it again,” he said. “I wanted to hit it a third time too, just because, but yeah, it was a bad spot.”
Schauffele, widely praised by his peers for his steadfastness between the ropes, said it had probably been more than a year since he had “had a breakdown like that.” He was still laughing it off at that moment.
“Just a combination of being overconfident and being very stubborn,” he said. “Sometimes it pays off for me in tournaments. And today it bit me in the ass.”
