Friends Schauffele, Cantlay together again at PGA Zurich Classic
AVONDALE, La. — For defending Zurich Classic champions Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, teaming up in New Orleans — and elsewhere — has been as much about how well they get along as whether their golf games complement one another.
“We don’t have friendship bracelets yet,” Schauffele began, inducing laughter. “Maybe we’ll get those worked out after this week.”
The PGA Tour’s only team event resumes Thursday at the par-72, 7,425-yard TPC Louisiana.
The New Orleans event is not among the PGA Tour’s newly “elevated” tournaments; the Zurich Classic purse is $8.6 million. It also has a somewhat unfavorable spot on this year’s schedule, just two weeks after the Masters and just days after the conclusion of the elevated, $20 million RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
But that hasn’t stopped a number of top players from showing up in the Big Easy, including RBC champion Matt Fitzpatrick. The Englishman’s teammate is his younger brother, Alex, who plays professionally in Europe.
“Obviously, this was an opportunity to play with my brother, and you don’t know how many of those you’re going to get,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, who also is the defending U.S. Open champion. “It was a nobrainer for me.”
The Fitzpatricks don’t necessarily see themselves as favorites in a field that also includes teams such as two-time major winner Colin Morikawa and sixtime PGA Tour winner Max Homa; or former Zurich winner Billy Horschel and last month’s WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play winner Sam Burns.
Missing from the Zurich are some past championship who’ve joined LIV Golf, including Australians Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman, who teamed up to win two years ago. For now, LIV players are barred from competing on the PGA Tour.
But for Homa, the event remains compelling, even without a slew of big names.
For one, he said, there is drama in seeing lowerranked players capitalize on opportunities to climb. But it’s also a chance for some top golfers to team up with friends or colleagues against whom they usually compete.
“A lot of people don’t know who’s friends out here, you just see us play,” Homa noted. “So, now you get to kind of see that.”
Morikawa added that what the Zurich offers “is something very different” from the rest from the schedule.
“When you have a week like this, they’re fun,” he said. “We get to have team dinners. We get to go hang out. There’s a different vibe.”
The first and third rounds of the Zurich are played in a best-ball format, while teammates play alternate shots in the second and final rounds.
Last year, Cantlay and Schauffele — who also have been partners at the Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup — opened with a 59 to take a lead they would not relinquish en route to a recordsetting 29-under 259 — two strokes better than the Burns-Horschel tandem.
This year, the winners take home $1.24 million each. And Schauffele will be among the least surprised if the team cashing the winner’s checks happens to be comprised of players who are also friends.
“At the end of the day, the players competing that are on the same team need to like each other,” Schauffele said. “That’s a really big part of the chemistry.”
TIGER WOODS HAS ANKLE SURGERY, REST OF MAJORS IN DOUBT
Tiger Woods had fusion surgery on his right ankle Wednesday morning to alleviate arthritis from a broken bone, putting in doubt whether he plays any more majors this year.
Woods disclosed the surgery on Twitter and said it was a subtalar fusion procedure to address posttraumatic arthritis from when he broke his talus bone in February 2021.
“He’s resting now and will start the recovery process,” Mark Steinberg, his agent at Excel Sports, said in a telephone interview.
The surgery took place in New York, and Steinberg said Woods has returned to his home near Jupiter, Florida, to begin rehabilitating.
As for when Woods could return to playing golf, Steinberg said there was “no timetable on this.”
“The first goal is to recover and lead a much more enjoyable day-to-day life,” he said.
Woods shattered multiple bones in his right leg and ankle in February 2021 when the SUV he was driving crashed off a suburban coastal Los Angeles road at about 85 mph and tumbled down the side of a hill. The injuries were so severe, Woods said, that doctors contemplated amputation.
Woods has had multiple surgeries on his leg as a result of the car crash. The ankle has been causing most of the problems of late, including a noticeable limp when he played four of the last five majors, most recently the Masters two weeks ago.
The talus is the secondlargest of a group of bones known as the tarsus, which forms the lower part of the ankle joint and transmits the weight of the body from the lower leg to the foot. The subtalar joint allows for side-toside movement needed for walking, especially on uneven surfaces.
Most estimates put recovery from subtalar fusion at eight to 12 weeks. That would all but rule out the PGA Championship next month — Woods was doubtful, anyway, given it will be at Oak Hill in Rochester, New York, with likely cold temperatures.
The U.S. Open is June 15-18 at Los Angeles Country Club, and the British Open is in three months (July 20-23) at Royal Liverpool in England.