Who’s better since the restart than Daniel Berger?
By Bill Felber
2. Xander Schauffele, -0.97
Schauffele is notoriously winless since walking away with the Tournament of Champions a year or two ago. That notoriety is due to the number of brushes he’s had with ultimate success, and with his failure to close any of them.
Let’s look on the bright side, which is considerable. Since the restart, Schauffele has competed in 17 events. He has four runner-up finishes – in the Tour championship, the CJ Cup, the Farmers and the Waste Management – a tie for third at the Schwab, a fifth at the US Open and a tie for fifth at the TOC.
Throw in a pair of top 10s and you have Schauffele in contention nine times in those 17 starts. So perhaps we could back off a bit with that criticism about not winning.
His average score for the restart period is 68.69 strokes. He’s only finished outside an event’s top 25 once, that being a tie for 64th at the RBC Heritage last June.
His 68 official rounds include 19 of 66 or better as opposed by just eight above 72.
His defeats can have the quality of brilliance to them. Begin with his tie for second at the Tour Championship, an asterisked result because Schauffele actually had the week’s best four-round score. He shot 265, four strokes better than Johnson, whose victory was assured by the tournament’s handicap system. He was also four strokes better than Thomas, who technically tied him for second.
Schauffele beat the field average by 2.12 standard deviations that week. He was 2.13 standard deviations better than the field in his runner-up finish at Cantlay at the Zozo.