Cantlay, Schauffele eye win in season ruled by unknowns

MIAMI: Nine tournaments into the new PGA Tour season, the headlines haven’t been dominated by a bunch of household names.

Only one player who was top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings entering the week, Wyndham Clark, has gone on to lift a trophy. Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama made a long-awaited return to the winner’s circle, but there have also been four first-time winners: then-amateur Nick Dunlap, France’s Matthieu Pavon, Jake Knapp and Austin Eckroat.

Top-10 players such as Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay don’t have a firm answer as to the reason. “Nine events isn’t a really big sample,” Schauffele said on Tuesday ahead of this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational. “I think there’s still a lot of golf to be played, and we’re kind of getting into what I would call sort of the thick of the season. I imagine you’ll start seeing some of the higher-ranked players winning.”

Schauffele liked what he saw out of Dunlap, with whom he played at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am after Dunlap had broken through at The American Express and consequently turned pro. “I always think it’s impressive to pull through and win. I was fortunate enough to play with Nick at Pebble, to see kind of what his game is like,” Schauffele said. “He, unfortunately, didn’t play very well, but I can see why he won, to say the least.” Schauffele himself has had a strong start to the season, with four top-10 finishes in five starts. Yet he’s still searching for his first win on tour since the summer of 2022, when he picked up the Travelers Championship and Scottish Open titles a few weeks apart.

Schauffele said Tuesday he’d been missing the “comfort factor” on Sundays. “I think the times you see guys win by six to eight shots coming down the stretch, they’re pretty comfortable. I haven’t had that moment yet ...” he said. “Just not entering the week feeling pretty good, but not amazing, and then putting myself in really good space, and then old habits seem to kick in in my swing that I’ve been fighting off, and, as soon as I feel comfortable, some old things will peel back in, which I don’t need. So, just some small stuff I need to clean up.”

Schauffele’s friend Cantlay had a great opportunity in his last start, when he took a five-shot lead into the weekend at the Genesis Invitational. But he shot a 1-under 70 and a 1-over 72 on the final two days and settled for a T4 behind Matsuyama.