Xander Schauffele suprised with where game is before Ryder Cup

Xander Schauffele, on paper at least, is a bit of an unknown.

He qualified for the Ryder Cup based on points, but last year carried his total. A rib injury forced him to miss two months this year.

Then, he didn’t qualify for the Tour Championship for the first time. And entering the weekend at Bethpage, he hasn’t golfed in a tournament since the middle of August — taking time off as his wife, Maya, gave birth to their first child and not attending Team USA’s tuneup in Napa two weeks ago that everyone else except for Bryson DeChambeau (LIV Golf ban) participated in.

But amid a challenging year of golf, Schauffele, actually, has shocked himself with how well he has played while ramping back up — which would provide a boost to Team USA.

“I feel like after these two days, surprisingly playing kind of nice,” Schauffele said Tuesday. “I know, I surprised myself when I came out.”

Keegan Bradley and his assistant captains checked in on Schauffele during his break as he supported his wife and their son, Victor. He took three weeks off after the BMW Championship and started getting into a rhythm around two weeks before arriving at Bethpage for his third Ryder Cup.

“I miss him a bunch,” Schauffele said of Victor. “I had to sort of rip the Band-Aid when I was leaving the house, just kiss him on the forehead and walk out before I started staring at him.”

Schauffele tasted a Ryder Cup win as a rookie at Whistling Straits in 2021. And this time, given his struggles on the course, another Team USA victory would help Schauffele “forget a lot about what happened in 2025,” he said.

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Harris English, Russell Henley, Collin Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler formed one Tuesday practice group for Team USA. DeChambeau, Ben Griffin, Justin Thomas and Cameron Young paired together in another. Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay, J.J. Spaun and Schauffele were the third group.

For Team Europe, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry, Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose were the first group. Rasmus Hojgaard, Viktor Hovland, Robert MacIntyre and Sepp Straka were together. And Ludvig Aberg, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm formed the final collection of golfers.

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Luke Donald knows NBA legend Michael Jordan will likely don Team USA attire this weekend and likely won’t dish out any advice to him this time, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t influenced Donald — and by extension the Team Europe group he’s captaining again — previously.

When Donald neared the end of his collegiate career at Northwestern in the early 2000s, he played golf with him in Chicago. They’ve remained friends since and reside near each other in Florida. And as Donald watched the “Last Dance” documentary in 2020, he observed that Jordan “was never going to do anything he didn’t ask his teammates to do” while also learning about the importance of a team setting from Jordan.

“You can be a team of champions but not a championship team,” Donald said. “You always need the people around you. You’re always stronger being a collective. I think that’s something that I certainly took from him and I’ve tried to implant on my teams the last two times, that we’re always stronger together. Those are strong values that we try and live up to.”

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Bradley (No. 13) will become the first golfer to captain a Ryder Cup team while ranked inside the top 20, according to Elias Sports Bureau.