Xander Schauffele responds to JT's instruction praise: ''He maybe gave me too much credit'

Xander Schauffele was having none of it.

Justin Thomas gave his friend and Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teammate credit on Sunday for helping him to dramatically improve his putting this year and which led to his first victory in nearly three years at the RBC Heritage. Thomas holed a 21-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole at Harbour Town Golf Links to defeat Andrew Novak.

“As funny as it is, a huge help was when I called Xander at the end of last year,” Thomas said following his 16th PGA Tour title and first since the 2022 PGA Championship. "I think he's one of the best putters in fundamentals, and not just putting but everything, and I was just like, 'Can I just pick your brain for like two or three hours, just talk to you about putting?’”

Schauffele, the defending PGA champion after his breakthrough win last year at Valhalla Golf Club near Louisville, Ky., brushed off taking any credit for Thomas’ win, fueled mostly by ranking third for the week at Harbour Town in strokes gained: putting.

“Yeah, J.T., he played great. I don't think I really have anything to do with him winning. He maybe gave me too much credit,” Schauffele said on Monday during a zoom conference call ahead of this year’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C.

“He was pretty up front and asked if I could kind of tag along for practice one day. When I'm in town here [in Jupiter, Fla.], J.T. is a very familiar face that I compete against. It's one of the ways us folks here in Jupiter like to sharpen up before a tournament,” Schauffele continued. “It was simple. He started asking me questions, and it ended up me being the one asking him all the questions, sort of how he thinks about putting, what he's done in the past.

“You know, I think more than anything, it was just sort of he was searching and maybe trying too hard, and he's done so many good things in the past that it was sort of like maybe an eye-opening, sort of like, ‘I used to do, three, four, five of the things we were talking about, and I stopped doing them because I was down this crazy rabbit hole of trying to get better.’ Felt like all the answers were right in front of him. J.T. is so good that he figured it out pretty quickly.”

Now ranked fifth in the world, Thomas is 24th on the PGA Tour in putting after ranking 174th last year and 135th in 2023. In addition to his victory at Hilton Head, Thomas, 31, has a pair of runner-up finishes and has moved up to sixth in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings. He ranks second behind Rory McIlroy in the FedEx Cup standings.

Thomas said on Sunday exactly what Schauffele mentioned—that he had gotten away from the system that had proven so successful for him in 2017-18 when he won eight times, including his first PGA Championship in 2017 and that year’s FedEx Cup title despite losing the season finale, the Tour Championship, to a rookie named Xander Schauffele.

One of the most enduring traditions in golf is players helping one another, and in the case of Schauffele, he was merely repaying a similar kindness from Thomas a few years earlier.

“I'm the one that was there before asking him what he was doing, how he prepared, how he competed. So it's a nice thing to be able to sort of play on teams with certain individuals and be able to sort of share notes,” said Schauffele, 31, who also will defend his title in the Open Championship in July at Royal Portrush. “Golf is kind of tricky. We keep a lot of stuff to ourselves, and like you said, we try to get ahead of each other but every once in a while, you know, if someone is struggling or you feel like you need a little pick-me-up, you can always talk to any of the pros around the area, which is a nice feeling.”

Schauffele will attempt to join Tiger Woods and Brooks Koepka as back-to-back winners of the PGA in the stroke-play era when the 107th PGA is contested May 15-18 at Quail Hollow Club, and a rejuvenated Thomas and Masters champion Rory McIlroy have to be considered among the most prominent figures standing in the way. Thomas won the 2017 title at Quail Hollow, while McIlroy has won the Truist Championship formerly Wells Fargo), one of the tour’s signature events, four times at the venue.

Schauffele has finished runner-up the last two years in the tournament that this year has been moved to Philadelphia Cricket Club the week prior to the PGA. So he has a good track record at Quail Hollow, too—one that he obviously hopes to improve on.

“I guess writers call it horses for courses,” he said. “For us … golfers sort of play well in stretches and like certain courses for some reasons. I'm sure there's some analytics or statistics that could back that up. But, yeah, you just have to get on a property and you have to feel good, and the vibe has to be good, and I've sort of had that feeling when I'm on property there. So the hope is to sort of keep that going.”