"Golf is different from other sports because it was out of the Olympics for a long time. Our parents didn't see Jack [Nicklaus] or Arnie Palmer win an Olympic gold, and we didn't see how Tiger did it. We grew up watching majors; that was the only important thing. But as the years go by, I am sure that the Olympics will gain importance. It is a special tournament that cannot be explained," proclaims the American Xander Schauffele at the bucolic Golf National in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, 40 kilometers from Paris. He could say it out of interest, as he is the current Olympic champion, having triumphed at the last Tokyo Games, but he truly says it out of love. Specifically, love for his father.
His father, Stefan Schauffele, dreamed of being an Olympian, was close to achieving it, and a tragedy denied him that, but he instilled in Xander that there is nothing greater than the Olympics. Not a PGA Championship or a British Open, the two majors that Schauffele has won this year in an incredible streak.
"Everything that happened to my father allows me to appreciate what I have and what I can do in this tournament," says the current world number two, who will start his first round on Thursday (starting at 09:00) along with the other favorites, like Jon Rahm. But what happened to his father? From his great-grandparents, Johann and Richard, both footballers, one an international for Austria and the other a player for the German Stuttgart, his family had always had a great sports culture, and his father, Stefan, continued the legacy. A standout decathlete in Germany, he had the necessary mark to compete in the 1988 Seoul Games when he had an accident.
While driving to a training session in Stuttgart, a drunk driver hit him head-on and ended his career. "It was a very hard blow; he was completely blind in his left eye and spent two years in and out of the hospital," Schauffele explained to CNN, whose career somehow began as a result of that tragedy.
Because what happened prompted his father to go study in the United States, at the University of San Diego, where he ended up working as a golf instructor and met another student, Ping-Yi-Chen, of Japanese descent, who was studying Aerospace Engineering. Together they had Xander and his older brother, Nico, and together they raised both as elite athletes. Lots of exercise, attention to diet and sleep, and a lot, a lot of discipline. "When a friend came over, they would say: Hands on the table! Sit up straight!" Schauffele recalls, and he assures that for things like that, even on the professional circuit, his father, Stefan, is known as "The Ogre."
From the beginning, Stefan was Xander's coach and guided his steps: in 2015, he turned professional, in 2017, he made a name for himself with a fifth-place finish in the US Open, in 2018, he was second in the British Open... until his gold in Tokyo and the PGA/British double this year. "I wouldn't know what to choose, the Olympics or the majors. The Olympics connect me with my father," he says before the start.