Xander Schauffele: No. 1 rating is motivator, not inflated purses

Whichever golfer wins next week’s Tour Championship will also hoist the FedEx Cup — and he will go home with a combined $25 million for his trouble.

A few years into the LIV Golf-prompted era of massive earnings in men’s professional golf, players like world No. 2 Xander Schauffele don’t have to worry about having enough money to pay their teams and support their families.

Schauffele said Tuesday ahead of the BMW Championship in Castle Rock, Colo., that there’s a different motivating factor on his mind at this stage of his career — turning that No. 2 into a No. 1.

It won’t happen anytime soon because Scottie Scheffler has built up an unimpeachable lead in the Official World Golf Ranking’s points system. In almost any other situation, Schauffele — who won his first two career major championships this year — would have done enough to ascend to No. 1.

“Becoming No. 1 in the world? It’s a very big goal of mine, yes,” Schauffele told reporters, “and I’ve been told, yes, that Scottie is an outlier in several years, and I would be (No. 1). But it’s not really good enough, is it?

“That doesn’t take away from what I’ve done or how I feel. I’m proud with the work that I’ve put in and with the people that are around me and that have helped me. … I’m just going to keep knocking. That’s what I do.”

Schauffele continued his high praise for Scheffler, who added an Olympic gold medal to his six PGA Tour victories this season.

For the second straight week, the two Americans were paired together for the first two rounds of the BMW, the middle of three legs of the FedEx Cup playoffs. Schauffele was asked if he ever gets caught up in the battle between them; they’re competing not only for FedEx Cup points and world ranking points, but also the PGA Tour Player of the Year award.

“I feel like we kind of look at it in a similar fashion. We’re really just playing against ourselves and the golf course,” Schauffele said. “The score — I’ve said this several times in the media — the score really is just a result. Some days you play really well and shoot 69 and some days you kind of play crappy and shoot 66. … So I think sticking to your process, what’s gotten us this far, is going to be important and not really getting too emotional about what’s happening around us.”

Schauffele did have some pointed critiques for how sports media has covered the explosion in golf purses at both LIV Golf and the PGA Tour.

“The media has been an interesting thing to me the last two or three years,” he said. “There’s a reason behind inflated purses and a lot of people have been talking about money. The news that I do read, it’s funny, it’s really negative. It’s painted really negatively in golf, which is fine. I think people like to hate on anything these days.

“But when I look at other sports, when someone gets a $300 million contract, there’s all these positive comments about how someone got their bag or they’ve worked so hard to get this and they deserve it, things like that. It’s interesting to me. I think maybe golf is a gentlemen’s game and you’re not supposed to talk about money, but all the media wants to do is talk about money.

“Us players, I think the players that make the most money don’t think about money because it’s just not the most important thing.”

Schauffele pointed out that Scheffler has earned every bit of the $29.1 million he has won this season because he has been that much better than the field. (Schauffele ranks second on the money list this year at a cool $17.6 million.)

“If you look at how much 10th has made, the 10th-best player in the world, it’s not going to sniff how much Scottie has made,” Schauffele said. “That just shows you how well Scottie has played in these big tournaments.

“You look at the No. 1 quarterback, he’s getting $60 million and then the No. 10 quarterback is getting 52, and then No. 15 is getting 39 or 40. So it’s like, obviously there’s way more money in football with TV and everything that’s surrounding it. It’s hard to compare the one-v-one because Scottie has just been that much more elite, and I think he deserves everything that he’s getting.”

–Field Level Media