The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
X marks the spot
Schauffele wins by two shots following wild finish
CROMWELL — Xander Schauffele trailed by a stroke heading to the final hole of the Travelers Championship. The 17th hole was the first time Schauffele had trailed in the golf tournament since Friday afternoon.
Then Schauffele watched the leader’s misfortune unfold from that 18th tee.
Sahith Theegala, who had taken the lead with a birdie at 17, hit his tee shot into the left fairway bunker. It settled right next to the lip. His second shot ended up in almost the exact same place. The end result was a double bogey.
Schauffele refocused, made a birdie and won the Travelers Championship by two strokes over Theegala and J.T. Poston.
“I’ve been out here long enough, this is my sixth year on tour, and you just know that no one’s going to give it to you, not out here on the PGA Tour. No one is going to hand you a win.,” Schauffele said. “I was very aware of that and ready to birdie the last and I thought that was going to be to get in a playoff. So just lucky it was to make me on top.”
This is Schauffele’s first PGA Tour victory since the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions and sixth overall. Schauffele won a two-man event with Patrick Cantlay at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans in April.
He was also the U.S. Olympic gold medalist at the 2021 Summer Olympics. His ability to close out the win there helped him Sunday when things started to get away from Schauffele, who had not converted a 54-hole lead into a win in five previous tries on the PGA Tour until Sunday.
Theegala, a PGA Tour rookie, birdied the 17th hole to take a 1-shot lead. He holed an 11-footer to move to 19-under. But his drive on 18 found the left fairway bunker. In fact, it stopped right in front of the lip.
“Just a high cut over the tree. I hit that a thousand times this year,
… Just didn’t cut. Maybe it was adrenaline, squared the face a little sooner than normal,” Theegala said.
Theegala wasn’t expecting the ball to be that close to the lip. He and his caddie were trying to figure out the best way to make a par. His attempt didn’t clear the lip.
“I knew exactly where we stood. Never in a million years did I think I would allow myself to blade it. All I had to do was chunk it,” Theegala said. “We even said, like, ‘This is a 50/50 ball.’ In terms of I got to try and just basically hit it just a hair behind it. Somehow my body just, I just straight bladed it. I had room there. I don’t know how it looked, but I had room there.”
Schauffele watched this all unfold from the tee,
“And to sit there and watch sort of what happened was a bit of a shock obviously,” Schauffele said. “I really
had to try and focus on the task at hand. And sitting there waiting, sort of watching, not really knowing what’s going on, but kind of having an idea is a strange thing.”
So after Theegala was able to hit his third shot short and pitch on from there, Schauffele pounded his drive on the downwind hole. He hit his second shot to 3 feet, then made the birdie putt to win by 2. Schauffele finished at 19-under 261. Amateur Michael Thorbjornsen, playing on a sponsor’s exemption, placed fourth, 4 shots behind Schauffele. He was bidding to become the first amateur to win a PGA Tour event since Phil Mickelson at the 1991 Northern Telecom Open.
It was the best finish by an amateur in the history of this tournament. The previous best was a tie for sixth place by Jim Grant in 1966, when the tournament was played at Wethersfield CC. Thorbjornsen will be a junior at Stanford University.
“It gives me some confidence. I think the thing is that I played well, I
felt like I played well, but I didn’t feel like I played like incredible out there. Definitely left a couple shots out there, had some miscues, mental errors throughout the week. But it feels good,” Thorbjornsen said.
Cantlay, Schauffele’s playing partner the final two rounds, shot 63 Saturday to trail by 1. But he faltered with a 75 on Sunday.
Neither the No. 1 and 2 players in the world were factors over the weekend. Scottie Scheffler tied for second at the U.S. Open, but could never get into contention at TPC River Highlands. He shot a 70 on Sunday to finish in a tie for 16th place.
As for world No. 2 Rory McIlroy, it really all went south for him on Friday at the 12th hole when he made a quadruple-bogey. He was the leader at the time.
McIlroy shot 67 on Sunday to finish in a tie for 19th along with Harris English, the defending champion.