Xander Schauffele 2017 vs 2024: How PGA Champion Has Improved In Almost Every Category Since PGA Tour Rookie Season

Xander Schauffele has cemented himself as the world's second-best male golfer right now after finally capturing his maiden Major title at the 2024 PGA Championship.

The American has consitently been a world's top-10 player for a number of years now but his game has been elevated in 2024 after joining up with renowned coach Chris Como towards the end of last year. 

He has nine top-10 finishes in 12 starts this season on the PGA Tour, including a Major win, a runner-up at the Players Championship and another runner-up at the Wells Fargo Championship.

We obviously knew he was a better golfer than when he joined the PGA Tour in the 2016/17 season, when he won the Rookie of the Year honors and became the first rookie to win the Tour Championship, but just how has Xander's statistics improved in those seven years?

He arrived on the PGA Tour as a very complete player already after making it through the Korn Ferry Tour Playoffs. He managed four top-10s in 23 starts on the PGA Tour's feeder circuit but recorded a stand-out season in his debut year in the big league.

As well as capturing the Tour Championship, he also won his maiden title at The Greenbrier and became the highest-ever rookie finisher in the FedEx Cup at 3rd.

In terms of his statistics, he was gaining strokes in all areas of the game barring around the greens. He ranked 138th around the greens and was also outside the top 100 in Strokes Gained: Approach. 

The best part of his game was his driving, where he gained over half a stroke vs the field to rank 17th.

Fast forward to 2024 and Schauffele now ranks 2nd off the tee, and he's also gone from 34th to 2nd in SG: Total, too.

Around the green remains his weakest statistic but he is no longer losing strokes vs the field and has gone from 138th to 36th. That 36 number is also his lowest ranking in all categories of the game - so the weakest part of his game is still the 36th-best on the PGA Tour.

One area has become weaker since his rookie season though, but only just. In his rookie season he gained 0.402 strokes on the greens but now only gains 0.398. It's almost identical and luckily hasn't harmed his total SG number of 2.265.

That means he gains 2.265 strokes vs the field in every single PGA Tour round he plays, and that's gone up by 1.384 since his first year on tour.

Xander Schauffele Strokes Gained stats: 2017 vs 2024

So how is Schauffele managing to rank so highly in these crucial statistics?

There's a couple of clear improvements in 2024 vs his rookie season, which are his driving accuracy and his greens in regulation percentage.

His clubhead speed has increased but driving distance hasn't, albeit that is only measured on two holes each round so that's one to take with a healthy pinch of salt.

What is important, though, is the fact that he is now finding over 68% of fairways vs just under 59% in 2017. If a course has four par 3s and 14 par 4s and 5s, that means he's finding an average of 9.57 fairways per round vs 8.23 in 2017, which is an increase of 1.34 each day and over five more in every tournament he plays.

More fairways equals more greens, right? In Xander's case, that's correct, with his greens in regulation percentage rising from an impressive 68% in his rookie year up to 70.41%. He was already a very strong ball striker, ranking 26th as a rookie but he's now up to 11th.

But when he missed greens back then, he 'only' got it up-and-down 57.55% of the time, which left him down in 125th on the PGA Tour. Seven years later and he's up to 3rd with an incredible total of 71.18%.

In 2024, Schauffele finds more fairways, hits more greens, scrambles MUCH better, makes more up-and-downs from bunkers, has fewer putts per round, makes more birdies and takes an average of more than 1.5 fewer strokes per round.

The stats show a supremely impressive improvement and a sign that Schauffele is one of the game's true all-round players.

It's important to note that these 2024 statistics are only based on 13 events vs 28 in 2016/17, and the ever-increasing money in the game, along with his improved play, has meant he has earned a massive $6.7m more already.

The Olympic gold medallist now has a very well deserved Major title to his name as well as seven other PGA Tour victories and a huge 14 runner-up finishes.

His earnings stand at $50m on the PGA Tour with 152 cuts made from 175 starts. More wins, and potentially Majors, are sure to follow.