Xander Schauffele opens up frustrating 8-week layoffs

Xander Schauffele calls it “the perfect storm” and he spent eight weeks on golf in his favorite part of the season.

Schauffele, who will return to the game this week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, has not played for a rib injury since the season, said he actually felt himself for the first time before Christmas.

Last year’s PGA and Open Championship champion told reporters Wednesday at Bay Hill that his coach renewed his visa in mid-December before he began to notice pain on the right side of his ribs. However, he insisted on preparing for the first game this season in Hawaii.

“I’m alone and obviously I’m still a kid,” Schauffele said. “I keep training, playing golf, training and playing golf, and I’m used to someone holding my hand or doing something as simple as soft tissue. I’m not getting any help, and I think that’s what makes me back.”

Schauffele said the pain never really became troublesome, and there were no moments when he knew the injury had happened, but in overtime, he knew something had happened.

When he got the Sentinel, he thought reunited with his coach and the rest of the team would help him correct the damage, but the losses had been done.

Schauffele was diagnosed with a small tear of intercostal strain and cartilage.

He tried to prepare for the West Coast swing and the unique opportunity to play Torrey Pines South twice in this year’s Genesis Invitational due to the Los Angeles wildfires.

“I was sitting at my home on the West Coast and it made me suck,” he said. “One of my dreams was to play Torrey South with long rough, cold, southern earlier this year. So, really sucking Torrey twice.

“I tried. On Monday before Torrey Pines, I bumped into some drivers and it felt fine. Then I tried to punch nine holes and things started getting worse. And the doctor was like, “Nothing worse than hitting a wedge from a rough roughness, everything stops completely and you can make it worse.” “So, it was an easy decision for me to consider long-term goals.”

Schuffle didn’t have much to do to speed up his recovery, but it wasn’t that he noticed that he had been hurt all the time. Schauffele said he wouldn’t usually suffer unless he tried to do a golf swing.

“I’m not sitting there, oh my god, I’m in pain. Do you know what I mean?” he said. “It’s kind of sudden, like I wake up and roll over and grab my phone, or grab something, or sneeze if I want to sit on the couch in a weird position. Something like this is something I want to remind myself of, oh well, I’m not good right now.”

Ultimately, before this week, Schauffele got good news in the form of CT scans, ultrasound and MRI, all of which were “clean”. He said his discomfort was minimal and the doctors didn’t think he would get worse by the game.

Schauffele watched Scotty Scheffler’s return with injury earlier this season and used it as a guide for his own expectations this week. He said it was the first real injury he had encountered in his golf career and thought he was lucky for it.

This will be the first time Schauffele has played golf continuously since her injury. He played 18 holes at home before leaving, Tuesday at Bay Hill and 18 holes on Wednesday.

“I’ve been practicing the psychology to convince myself that I’m still in a crazy good state,” he said. “I think Scotty is back and he’s not close to winning, but he plays well and gets himself back in the mix, so I don’t understand why I can’t do that.”

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