Courtesy of San Diego State Athletics
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Former San Diego State men’s golfer and reigning Olympic champion Xander Schauffele will represent the United States in the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris, USA GOLF announced on Tuesday. Schauffele will be joined on the USA team by Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa.
Schauffele is one of 60 men’s golfers who will compete in the 72-hole stroke-play format, Aug. 1-4, at Le Golf National. The men’s qualification period for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games ended following Sunday’s U.S. Open with the top-15 world-ranked players being eligible for the Olympics, with a limit of four players from one country. Schauffele, who won the PGA Championship last month, is ranked No. 3 in the Official World Golf Ranking. USA is the only country with more than two qualifiers for the 60-man field.
In his first Olympics in Tokyo, Schauffele carded an 18-under-par 266 on the par-71, 7,447-yard Kasumigaseki Country Club in Kawagoe, Japan, to finish one stroke ahead of Slovakia’s Rory Sabbatini. Schauffele became just the fourth men’s golf player to capture a gold medal in Olympic history and the second American, joining Charlie Sands in 1900. The other gold medal winners in the event include George Lyon (Canada) in 1904 and Justin Rose (Great Britain) in 2016.
Schauffele has eight career PGA Tour victories to go along with his gold medal, including the 2017 Greenbrier Classic, 2017 Tour Championship, 2018 WGC-HSBC Champions, 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions, 2022 Zurich Classic of New Orleans, 2022 Travelers Championship, 2022 Scottish Open and the 2024 PGA Championship. A member of the winning U.S. teams at the 2019 and 2022 Presidents Cup, and the 2020 Ryder Cup, Schauffele is also second in the Data Golf Rankings and the FedExCup standings this season.
A two-time PING All-West Region honoree, Schauffele received All-America recognition following a brilliant senior campaign at San Diego State in 2015, garnering third-team accolades from the both the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA) and Golfweek.
In his three years on Montezuma Mesa, Schauffele amassed 21 top-10 finishes, 16 top-five performances and two individual titles before graduating with a degree in social science. He also ranks second in program history with a 71.50 career scoring average in 118 rounds played, as well as the program’s single-season standard of 171 birdies set in 2014-15.
