Better ball speed helps Schauffele keep pace on tour
XANDER Schauffele has 12 top10 finishes at the majors, and while he may not have a win on the resume this season, he is third in the Fedex Cup standings and in with a chance at the PGA Championship this week.
Indeed, Schauffele, who has seven top-10 finishes already in 2024 and is knocking on the door of his first victory, said he’s already achieved one of the goals he set for himself this season: increasing his ball speed.
“I can’t really pin it on one thing,” Schauffele said ahead of the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“I started working with a new trainer. He’s definitely helped me feel a lot stronger, just my baseline strength is probably better.”
He brought up a swing tweak he and his coach made as another factor.
“I think it’s a combination of the two. I don’t know how to weigh the situation between them, but those two things have helped me pick up some speed,” the World No. 4 said.
Club speed is only one part of the equation. A golfer’s club speed, the club he’s using, and the quality of impact with the ball all determine ball speed, and ball speed determines distance.
Schauffele, who ranked No. 34 on the PGA Tour last season with a 288.1 km/h average ball speed, is currently 10th on the tour with an average of 294.6 km/h.
In explaining the importance of the stat to him, Schauffele contrasted himself with the sport’s current standard bearer, Scottie Scheffler.
“Scottie is an outlier in many ways currently,” Schauffele said. “He’s actually dropped speed, which is just mind-blowing. I haven’t really done too deep of a dive, I just saw that his average ball speed was down.
“I played with him a couple years ago, and he was sending it past me, so at that time I felt like I needed to pick up some pace. And now that he’s dropped back, he’s just doing Scottie things.
“But in general, if you look at the sort of top-10, 15, 20 players in the world, there’s sort of a threshold that you need to hit if you’re not sort of a crazy elite iron player or crazy scrambler or things of that nature.
“So I figured any edge I can get on the field, if it’s flying the ball 15 yards further and being able to take out a bunker on a hole that other guys can’t, that will help me over the span of a season.”
If it works, it works. Few golfers have reached Schauffele’s level of consistency in recent years. The 30-year-old has the longest active streak of made cuts on tour at 45. Scheffler is a rather distant second at 35.
Schauffele’s streak is not in danger this week at the pre-pga Championship signature event, which will feature 69 players and no cut after 36 holes.