An Inside Look at Xander Schauffele's PGA Championship Win With Caddie Austin Kaiser

Last year saw Xander Schauffele come through in the clutch to hoist his first major championship at the 106th PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club.

From the outside, it looked like Xander had ice water running through his veins. Nothing seemed to startle him as he closed out his maiden major win with a memorable up-and-down birdie on the finishing par-5 18th. But what was he like inside the ropes that day? How did he seem, considering what was at stake?

“Man, he was calm, in fact the calmest I'd ever seen him. That's when I knew he was in complete control,” close friend and long-time caddie Austin Kaiser said. “There was no second-guessing anything, it was like ‘let's just execute.’ That was the difference. He just had this calm mindset about him. We made a bogey on [No.] ten the par 5, and when you bogey a par 5 out here-you’re just usually kicking yourself. But he just kept his head down and went birdie, birdie on the next two. Those were some game-changing holes to me.”

Before the duo even got on the course at Valhalla that day, Kaiser noticed a confident move from Schauffele on the range. He felt his grip was too strong, so he made an adjustment.

“Xander was like, 'My grip is too strong, I need to go weaker.' His coach, Chris Como, kind of looked at me and was like 'Is this normal?' And I was like ‘'trust me, he does this all the time, he games it. He's a gamer. It's just something that he does. And if it doesn't work, he bails on it.’

Como had only been working with Schauffele for four months at that point, and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of this fourth quarter change up.

Kaiser continued: “Chris is like 'let's just chill on this strong grip. I think everything's fine. You're leading the tournament.' And Xander was like, ‘I just can't have a left miss.’ So he changed it, and it paid off. That's just something that Xander does, he just games it. So he went with it, and he won. It's one of those things where you look back and say, good thing we did that.”

So, coming down the stretch on the back nine, trying to win your first major, what was that like to caddie for Kaiser? Obviously, he knows his player as well as anyone, but he also knew that they’d been tantalizingly close to winning majors in recent years, including at the Masters in 2019 and 2021 in the final pairing. Schauffele amassed 12 top-10 finishes in majors before breaking through last year.

“It was definitely nerve-wracking out there,” Kaiser said. “You see Bryson there, and he birdies 16, and you're like 'oh boy’ because that's probably one of the hardest holes on the course. We were in the lead, and after that, I think we were one back. So we told ourselves that we needed to make something happen. And we did.”

Another test presented itself on the last hole at Valhalla, as Schauffele found the rough just on the edge of the left fairway bunker. With the ball above his feet, had to come up with a game plan to combat that precarious position with a major title on the line.

“Coming down 18, we got that bad break there in the rough, but he didn't say anything about it,” Kaiser said. “He didn't put his head down, didn't cuss, didn't complain or do anything like that. He just said, 'Alright, where do we need to hit this?' And he went through the process and he executed.”

Schauffele chalked it up to tunnel focus as he was trying to stay as present as possible.

“You’re on a mission, and that’s to win. I think when you're in a position to win, you sort of forget-you don't really hang your hat on anything that can kind of bring you down,” Schauffele said in Tuesday’s presser.

Once Schauffele executed and captured the clinching finishing birdie to win the Wanamaker, the emotions poured out of both Kaiser and Schauffele as they embraced on the 18th. Schauffele then raised both arms to acknowledge the roaring Valhalla crowd.

“It was chilling to be quite honest. All of our friends were there on the last hole, so walking right past them, everyone was just crying. So, wow, it was just an awesome moment to be a part of,” Kaiser said. “Our friends are part of what makes him great too. They're part of the team in that moment and it's great to be a part of it and see everyone's emotions. That’s to me what made the moment amazing.”

There were two friends that both Kaiser and Schauffele know really well together who stood out most in that moment. “Both of them caddies," Kaiser said. "Joe Greiner, who now loops for Collin Morikawa, and David Pelekoudas, who loops for Taylor Moore. They actually cancelled their flights so they could see us finish. They saw where we were at in the leaderboard and thought they couldn't leave. It was awesome. I didn't expect them to do that, but I saw them there and I was like 'holy smokes’.”

For Schauffele, seeing his friends and family off the final green resonated that Sunday as well.

“It was cool to see everyone sorta huddled up,” Schaufflele said in Tuesday’s presser. “My wife was there, my uncle was there, my brother. It was nice to be able to share that sort of emotion with everyone that's close to me.”

Schauffele finished solo second in the Tour event held at Quail Hollow the past two years. Kaiser thinks the course fits his man for a couple of different reasons.

“It’s the kind of course that Xander can pick good targets off the tee. He likes the doglegs and also he feels comfortable on and around the putting surfaces,” Kaiser said.

Schauffele sees a combination of his driver and iron-play as being a critical factor to playing well at Quail Hollow.

“I think it's a really tough golf course. I think everyone knows what they need to do. There's no sort of trick to play this golf course,” Schauffele said in his Tuesday presser. “A lot of people will hit it to the same spot. A lot of people will miss it to the same spot as well. It’s not bad because it's like who can get up-and-down better when they're out of position, and who can capitalize when they're in a good position.”

He’ll get his chance to capitalize starting at 8:22am ET on Thursday morning in that Rolex featured group with the top 3 players in the world rankings with Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler.