Xander Schauffele can take a bow, even if this wasn't the encore anyone expected.
In contention for the first time all year — his final start of a PGA Tour season forgettable on so many levels — Schauffele played bogey-free on the back nine in Japan and produced a clutch birdie on the 17th hole that carried him to victory in the Baycurrent Classic.
A year that was never more frustrating ended with a victory rarely this satisfying, especially at what feels like a second home in Japan. His mother and his mother-in-law grew up in Japan.
“I’m sure when I look back on 2025 at the end of my career I’ll smile and think it was a great year,” Schauffele said.
Compared with last year? Maybe not. That was when Schauffele took his place among the elite in golf by winning the PGA Championship and the British Open, rising to No. 2 in the world and seen as the biggest challenge to Scottie Scheffler.
This was a different kind of year.
It never really got started because of a rib injury that was nagging in late December and became a problem in January, causing him to miss two months of competition that felt a lot longer. That was about the time he learned his wife, Maya, was pregnant with their first child.
Schauffele never did get his game on track. A testament to his grit and resilience was returning at the strong test of Bay Hill, along with four majors, and keeping in tact the longest cut streak since Tiger Woods. It's now at 72 tournaments dating to April 2022.
The key statistics will show sharp drops, particularly off the tee and on the green. But the one category without measure is strokes gained in attitude. That was as solid as ever.
“He makes no excuses,” swing coach Chris Como said Monday afternoon. “It probably was not a year most people expected him to have. But he stayed in his process. He had the best attitude. It was great.”
In the six months since he returned from the first significant injury of his career, Schauffele never did get his game on track. He had a pair of top 10s in the majors without ever challenging. But he failed to make it to the Tour Championship for the first time since his rookie season in 2017.
Perhaps more daunting was a five-week break — some of that time a clean break from golf after his son, Victor, was born — before the most high-stakes event of them all at the Ryder Cup.
Schauffele went 3-1 at Bethpage Black. His 4-and-3 win over Jon Rahm was the shortest of the Sunday singles matches. And two weeks later, he was holding a trophy from the Baycurrent Classic, his 10th career win on the PGA Tour.
If not a great year, then a great finish.
“Definitely had doubts. I think every player in any sport at some point you feel like you're on top of the world and then you feel like ... not that you've lost it, but you feel less confident," Schauffele said.
"This is really special for me. Sooner than I thought, to be fair. I was running out of events in 2025 to sort of put my mark on it.”
His 10 career PGA Tour wins have come at different tournaments, four of them out of the country. He also won a World Golf Championship in Shanghai and the Scottish Open, to go along with that claret jug he won at Royal Troon.
This wasn't his biggest win in Japan — he won an Olympic gold medal at the Tokyo Games in 2021, but without the cheering section because COVID-19 restrictions kept fans (and in his case, family) away from Kasumigaseki Country Club.
“The ties run deep for the Schauffele family in Japan,” he said.
Among his early childhood memories is how his father, Stefan, would speak German in front of him if he didn't want Schauffele to understand what he was saying. “But when my brother (Nico) came into the room, he would switch to Japanese,” Schauffele once said.
His older brother was born in Germany. Schauffele is the only one in his family born in the United States.
His father, an aspiring Olympic decathlete until he was hit by a drunk driver in Germany, became an assistant pro in Hawaii and was the only teacher Schauffele had until they both sought out Como for the final piece of the swing puzzle they couldn't figure out on their own.
It led to two majors. And then came the injury, and the hard work — with patience and a good attitude — to regain the groove. It took time.
“In 2024 the way he hit, that would be lovely to bottle that,” Como said. “Sometimes you drift away from your best motion. Whether that's injury, time off, it just got little out of sorts. Sometimes getting it back to where it needs to be isn't all that simple.”
Como said Schauffele began turning the corner in his last round of the regular season at the BMW Championship, where he matched the low score Sunday with a 66. It didn't get him to East Lake, but it put him on the path.
“He took time off, they had the baby, and we did some reset work before he went to the Ryder Cup,” Como said. “It's always nice to have a couple of days to work on stuff when you don't have a tournament right there, or you're not at a tournament.”
The Ryder Cup was promising. Japan was validating. And it brought out another side of Schauffele that had been missing.
“He loves the big moments,” Como said. “It brings out a little something extra he has.”
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