Career Year leaves Xander Schauffele working on swing ahead of new season

Golfers are crazy. It’s always hard to believe that players who have won two majors in a season are working on making improvements in their games, but, as with many golfers over the years, Xander Schauffele has parts of his game he wants to make better. Unfortunately, the only person who can make the changes he wants to make is Schauffele himself. 

However, he has a swing guru’s guidance in Chris Como. They are still working to groove the new swing adjustments that helped Schauffele win the PGA Championship and the British Open in 2024.  

“Everything I was working on with Chris last year is still not, you know, it feels like my swing, but it's still something that's a little bit uncomfortable,” he explained about the state of his game starting 2025. “Old habits die hard, so I start to shift back into sort of old swing patterns, and it feels equally as weird to get back to what he wants me to do versus the first time around, so just a work in progress.”

When anybody changes a movement, golf swing or dance stroke, whatever it is, the first thing is learning the new moves. Then there’s making the new move work in different environments. Then there’s having the new move become repeatable, automatic. It’s not an instant fix. That’s one reason golf is so frustrating for so many people.

Xander Schauffele believes he is making improvements because he is “producing good shots.”

Last year’s success was also a massive positive reinforcement that he was heading in the right direction.  However, there were some downsides to making swing changes.

“It's a wild time. Winning two majors and being further away, or closer to the 30th-ranked player than the 1st,” he quipped calling world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler a beast. “He just kept winning, even in sort of his down time, he won another event, which pushed him even further away.”

Schauffele compared his best season to Scheffler’s 2024 by saying that he’d won three times in a season, but had not come close to Scheffler’s mark of seven, plus the Olympics plus the Hero World Challenge.

The other problem area is his wedge play.

“It's ( the swing change) great for driver, great for long irons, the stats show that -- then, with wedges it's, you know, the club's moving around a little bit, it's not ideal for hitting like a distance wedge,” he added. “It's something I'm trying to work on, still working on it now, still trying to figure it out, get the right feel for it.”

In his old swing, he explained, the club was more laid off and shut. 

“I was a really, really good wedge player, really good inside 150,” he admitted. “Now all of a sudden I can, you know, smoke my driver and a 4-iron, but all of a sudden, like a 90-yard wedge is a little bit (iffy), at times.”

Many players in the past have found they have a slightly different swing for their longer clubs than for the scoring clubs, or they just fight either the longer clubs or the shorter clubs. If he was a good wedge player at one time, he can be again, if he can call up his old swing when he needs it.   

“Maybe I just need to practice my wedges a lot more,” he concluded.

Other changes for 2025 are new versions of Callaway irons that he has used in the past. He has added the Elyte woods.

“I've been testing the Elyte driver for two months, and I literally have the exact same driver that they gave me in Vegas,” he said.

The transition has been so easy for him that he really has not felt like he made a change at all.

With two majors won, he was asked which of the remaining two he thinks would be easiest for him to win. He thinks probably the Masters.

“The redesign has gone more distance bias, too, so that could sort of pair into me hitting it a little bit further, giving me some edge,” he noted, adding that he does love U.S. Opens. “Every day at a U.S. Open feels like you're on the cut line. That's just the beauty of that tournament, it's an absolute monster.”