Xander Schauffele's 15-Month Fight Back to Form

Professional golf runs on momentum. One year, you're winning majors with surgical precision. The next you're rehabbing an injury, trying to find the form that used to come naturally. Xander Schauffele's 2025 has been about perseverance. A complete reversal from the dominance he showed just months before.

Look back at 2024. Schauffele owned the golf world. Without Scottie Scheffler's transcendent season, he might have been called the game's best player. His résumé that year: two major victories (PGA Championship, Open Championship), zero missed cuts, three second-place finishes, ten more top-10s. The most impressive stat? He finished in the top 25 in twenty of twenty-two events. That's the consistency that defines elite players.

When the Body Breaks Down

Then the offseason arrived, bringing an injury that would wreck what looked like another stellar year ahead. Schauffele suffered an intercostal strain and cartilage tear in his ribcage. Not the kind of injury that makes headlines, but devastating for a golf swing.

The intercostal muscles control the rotational power and stability needed in modern golf. Damage there affects everything. Distance. Accuracy. Feel on the greens — all of it.

Schauffele attempted to play through it at The Sentry in January 2025, finishing tied for 30th. Respectable, but the signs were there. For the first time in his professional career, he had to accept something new: his body had failed him. Shutting down to focus on rehabilitation wasn't only a physical decision. It meant fighting the competitor inside who refuses to quit.

The Struggle to Return

The months that followed were brutal. When Schauffele returned at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, the results disappointed. T40 there, then 72nd at THE PLAYERS Championship. This wasn't just rust. Something deeper was wrong.

The confidence that carried him to major glory looked shaken. He later admitted he felt "probably just as nervous or more nervous" down the stretch at the Baycurrent Classic than players hunting their first win, simply because he'd been away from contention so long.

Signs of Life

Champions don't stay down forever.

Real progress showed up at the Genesis Scottish Open in July. Schauffele finished T8 with rounds of 68-66-71-66. A week later at The Open Championship (where he'd won in 2024), he posted T7 at 10-under. Not victories, but proof the 2024 version still existed somewhere inside.

Then September's Ryder Cup arrived. Schauffele was one of the few bright spots for a struggling American team. His 3-1-0 record, capped by crushing Jon Rahm 4-and-3 in singles, showed he could still perform when pressure peaked. Those moments, as he called them, rebuilt the confidence that had been slipping all season.