How Xander Schauffele became elite in Scottie Scheffler's shadow with one of best seasons seen in 15 years

Scottie Scheffler's extraordinary, historic 2024 season is the eclipse that blots out nearly everything else in golf. This is deserved given his six wins, including a Masters, and an Olympic gold medal; the achievements to this point are legitimately unprecedented. However, as the FedEx Cup Playoffs roll on, Scheffler's accomplishments should not obscure another fact: Xander Schauffele is having one of the great seasons of the last decade.

Winning two majors in a year -- in Schauffele's case, the PGA Championship and Open Championship -- is obviously impressive, and victories of that caliber validate the exceptional stats that undergird them.

The numbers Schauffele has posted in 2024 are pretty astounding, particularly compared to his career up to this point.

Schauffele is having either his best or second-best season, statistically, in every meaningful category -- some (like overall strokes gained) by a wide margin. This is what it looks like to make a leap in the middle of an already-strong career, one transforms you from a star of your generation to a future hall of famer.

It doesn't stop there, though. Since 2010, few golfers have exceeded Schauffele's calendar-year numbers from 2024. In that span, there have only been 12 individual seasons in which a player has averaged more than 2.5 strokes gained per round, according to Data Golf.

Scheffler and Schauffele currently represent two of the top three, though their seasons are still in progress with two tournaments remaining.

This contextualizes what Schauffele has accomplished thus far in 2024. The only individual seasons better than his in the last 15 years have taken place over the last two years by the same guy who is the winningest player on the PGA Tour and the only person ahead of Schauffele in this year's FedEx Cup race .

So, why is this happening now? Why is this the year that Schauffele is breaking out?

For one, Schauffele added swing coach Chris Como to his team less than a year ago, citing that he and his father, Stefan, went about as far as they could go as a teacher-pupil duo. He instead enlisted someone who had previously tutored Bryson DeChambeau, Tiger Woods and Jason Day.

"I think, since I've been working with Chris, there's been a few answers that he's had," Schauffele shared recently. "My dad and I have talked about it. There's some answers that we need -- or some questions we had that we didn't really have some answers to, and Chris has got a really good background in biomechanics and has been coaching for a very long time. All really good coaches, I've seen a lot of different things, and they are more likely to have an answer."

Stefan confirmed this notion after The Open noting that Como has helped Xander with his "wrist position" and "release pattern."

The other shift in Schauffele's game is probably more under the radar, but he spoke about it in Memphis last week on his way to posting a T2 finish -- just his second top 10 on that golf course, which was hot and humid this week just as it has been in years past, across seven starts.

"I remember Rory has won the FedEx Cup so many times now, and I remember a few times when it was really hot in East Lake I was playing with him and I felt so overheated at times, and that really pissed me off," Schauffele explained. "He was just kind of cruising through, and I was like, 'Man, this guy is in much better shape than I am.'

"So, it was something I really tried to work on to get in a little bit better cardio shape so I'm not feeling like I'm going to explode at East Lake. You see guys look overheated all the time this week and at East Lake. It just happens when it gets hot."

It appears that shift, built for two weeks from now at the Tour Championship, is already paying dividends.

Schauffele has made over $17 million this season, third-most over a single season in PGA Tour history (Scheffler, of course, has the top two seasons -- each over the last two years). The only achievement left for the No. 2 player in the world would be winning his first FedEx Cup and the $25 million prize that goes with it.

Whether that gets folks to pay attention to one of the great performances in modern PGA Tour history, it would be a fitting end to the season for somebody who has eight top-five finishes and 14 top 10s in just 20 worldwide starts this year.

While there have been a lot of small tweaks that have allowed Schauffele to progress from good player to elite talent, he knows that, at the heart of it, competition is still competition. All the prep in the world means nothing unless you can go out there and take it, just like he's ben doing all year.

"My team is talking to me about managing things correctly, being smart about it," Schauffele explained. "To me, I'm just in my head, I'm sitting there thinking, 'If you're trying to win this thing, trying to be the best player over the course of this year, you're going to just have to do better and be better than everyone else.'

"I've got a really good team around me making sure I'm eating the right things, doing the right things to stay in good shape physically and mentally. But when push comes to shove, you're going to have to be a dog at some point."