Xander Schauffle has an essential purpose in the Vlachspar. Well he can win

Xander Schauffle’s entrance to the Wallet championship this week was at 11 o’clock last week, while he was praying for a cut in the player championship. He checked the results throughout the evening, waiting for the cut, did it from a mustache -And then shot 77-81 on the weekend at Tpc saw.

Suddenly Valsspar was not an additional minute addition, but more of an absolute need, a place to find life in what is likely its end to the masters. Through 36 holes in the Innisbrook, it looks like he has found something. Schauffle is back in strife – in his words, he is “in contact” with leaders – following only two shots entering the weekends, a positive sign in what has been a bit of a rotation until 2025.

Those weekends rounds to players passed very quietly for everyone, but Schauffle himself, who then retired to Palm Beach gardens for A tgl golf night Before appearing in Valsspar for a long grinding session Wednesday evening. His team has tried to keep it in a ball number in its return from a rib injury, but he exploded to the players and did so again on Wednesday.

How many balls?

“Maybe more than most people in my team want,” he said.

He was hyper-critical to himself in Sawgrass, and he was clearly not ready to apologize for him. But he realized he was playing “golf shakes” more than he was playing golf, very focused on the technical movements he was making among all the water risks at the house of chaos Pete Dye.

“This week has to do with the return to play golf, not playing golf moves,” Schauffe said on Friday after shooting a three-nine year. He is not the only player who is looking for him in Valsspar and also in the quarrel. Victor Hovland is a shot better than Schauffle, but making it in a much different way. Hovland ranks third in the stroke field: setting, a much more volatile statistics, while Schauffle is leading the field in strokes obtained: green approach. If he can support his short game, which ranks 78th this week, and unite it with a hot vase (where he ranks 95th), he will continue to nick his way up to the manager’s table.

Schauffle is working in its form in the only tour of the tour they really know how: through competitive repetitions. And he really had just so many of them. Friday marked his 10th competitive round since January, which is partly the reason he is spending so much time in the range, simulating additional repetitions. He compared him to cramming for a test, and for now his rounds feel like he was studying. But there is something about that effort that calls Schauffle at the moment. Grinding, as long as his body holds up, is enlivening it.

“I’m trying to be smart for how I go to things, and I definitely feel like a kid again,” he said. “I feel like I want to hit a million golf balls and sit here until 8am every night, but I have to be smart for that.”

Thanks to the cutting for the 60th time – the current leader in the tours in that status – he will receive two more repetitions this weekend, in a coup packing a handful of all of his own. While the Sawgrass is filled with double risk areas, the innisbrook is bold, with good roads with trees and only a few risks. It is more to work your ball on certain parts of the road for the right angle in a green, and making a good gang. By swelling of the wind as if it were Friday, it is just as accurate of a test as the treacherous saw. He too sees it that way.

“This is one of those places where you can leave you quickly,” Schauffle said, closing his press time on Friday evening, “or you can hang there and your name will be there on Sunday, late during the day. So I’m just trying to play Golf.”