After a wild weekend at Royal Troon, Xander Schauffele is the 2024 Open Champion.

Though this tournament might be most remembered for the wet, windy, and wild conditions on Saturday that bunched up the entire leaderboard, Xander’s round on Sunday should hold up pretty well going forward, as the reigning PGA champion fired a 65 to put the title to bed even with multiple groups still on the course behind him.

How did he do it? Well, with a pretty Xander formula: strike the hell out of the ball and make putts from lengths your opponents aren’t. Routinely leaving himself with reasonable birdie looks, Schauffele made six birdies and no bogeys, climbing from a one-shot deficit to start the day to a two-shot win that felt like an even greater margin. Bogey was really never even in play. Good luck beating that.

His shot of the day may have been his approach at 11, setting up a very rare birdie on one of Troon’s most dangerous holes.

From there Xander rattled off consecutive birdies at 13 and 14, which felt like they happened about 30 seconds apart in real time. (NBC’s “…and just a moment ago…” coverage style possibly contributed), before effectively putting the tournament away with a birdie on 16.

 

His entire back nine felt impossibly smooth, befitting a player who many felt just needed to break the dam at one major in order to win multiple. Xander himself said he felt much calmer coming down the stretch than he would have prior to the win at Valhalla, and it showed in his play.

 

Now Schauffele has won multiple majors in one year, the first man to do that since Brooks Koepka in 2018. Xander also finished in the top ten of every major in 2024, and he heads to Paris with a chance to defend his gold medal, as well.

As mentioned in yesterday’s leaderboard rundown, Xander’s win makes him perhaps the only golfer alive who wouldn’t trade years with Scottie Scheffler. An absurd season, and at 30, there’s a strong chance we see Xander have more big years to come.

We’ll have a lot more on the final round and this Open in general in tomorrow’s newsletter, plus the Shotgun Start and the Fried Egg Podcast, so stay tuned.

For more coverage of the Open Championship, visit the Fried Egg Golf Open Championship hub here.