Xander Schauffele has been here before, but not in a while. Max Greyserman was in this position last year at this tournament. He was also in a similar spot at the Rocket Classic, where he finished T2 in a playoff.
After three rounds of the 2025 Baycurrent Classic at Yokohama Country Club in Japan, Schauffele and Greyserman sit atop the leaderboard, tied at 12-under.
Schauffele won two majors last season but hasn’t put himself in contention much this season. A rib injury cost Schauffele a month of the early part of the season, and he has spent the rest of the year trying to rediscover his major-winning form. Schauffele scuffled after returning from injury. He battled to make the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and an 81 at the Players Championship led to a lengthy range session with coach Chris Como. That range session, which included a number of one-handed finishes and exasperated reactions, would come to define a frustrating season for Schauffele — one that he spent trying to iron out bad habits that found their way into the swing he won with in 2024.
“I’d say bad habits,” Schauffele said at the Genesis Scottish Open in July. “It was still new — the way I was moving the club last year was still new, and the bad place I got the club to this year was new. So I’ve played plenty of — or hit a lot of bad shots from a certain place, but it was home for me. I’ve been playing from that, call it short and laid off and shut. I’ve played a lot of golf from there. So I was, you know, playing at home with it, missing my shots at home with it. So as soon as I come out to a tournament, I already know, it’s like my DNA. So plug in how I’ve overdone the club getting too far across and getting short. This is a spot I’ve never played from. It’s hard to create some sort of learning curve in a season that you’re trying to get back into. So just a bad matchup for me.”
Xander Schauffele’s interview after Round 3 of Baycurrent Classic
Schauffele went T8-T7 at the Scottish Open and Open Championship before going T22-T28 in the first two legs of the FedEx Cup Playoffs to miss the Tour Championship for the first time in his career. But he appears to have found something during Team USA’s Ryder Cup loss at Bethpage Black. Schauffele went 3-1-0 across four sessions, including beating Jon Rahm in singles on Sunday. His improved play has continued this week in Japan. Schauffele opened with an even-par 71 but fired a 63 on Friday and backed it up with a Saturday 67 to tie Greyserman atop the leaderboard and put himself in position to snap a winless drought that is now more than a year long.
“This is the first time I’ve been in contention all year, I believe, so it’s nice,” Schauffele said after his round Saturday. “Been playing pretty good golf. The weather’s been tricky, so proud of the fight today.”
For Schauffele, after a year spent in search of the major killer he had become, it’s nice to start feeling like himself again. But he knows that feeling can be fleeting in golf. The confidence stays and grows as long as the arrow is pointing up. But it can evaporate in a hurry.
“It’s growing,” Schauffele said of his confidence. “It’s a tricky thing. It takes a while to grow and it goes away quickly. I’m just trying to put one block after the other and slowly grow that confidence, like I said before, and so far we’ve been doing that.”
Schauffele hasn’t been in contention this season, but he has nine PGA Tour wins, two majors and an Olympic gold medal under his belt. A win Sunday would give Schauffele an exclamation point on what would otherwise be a lost year. Hoisting the trophy on Sunday would also be especially significant for Schauffele, given his familial connection to Japan. His grandparents are on-site watching him this week. His mother grew up in Japan. It would also be Schauffele’s first win as a father.
“That’s far away from now, but yeah, to think into the future, it would be an incredible feeling,” Schauffele said.
On the other end of Sunday’s duel in Yokohama is the 30-year-old Greyserman, who is still looking for his first win on the PGA Tour.
At last year’s Baycurrent Classic, Greyserman grabbed the lead on the back nine on Sunday, but Nico Echavarria stuffed his approach shot on the 72nd to make birdie and beat Greyserman by one shot. It was one of the three runner-up finishes for Greyserman in 2024. He added another one this year at the 2025 Rocket Classic. Greyserman has been knocking on the door. He is certain it’s a matter of when, not if, he becomes a PGA Tour winner.
“Anytime you don’t win or you fall short of maybe your goal, I don’t think that’s a failure,” Greyserman said on Sunday of his loss last year. “When I look at last year, I look at: Was I in the final group on Sunday? Was I playing with a premier player [Justin Thomas] like I’m playing with tomorrow? I was. And how did I handle that? I thought I handled that really well. I played a good round last year on Sunday and I got beat. I don’t think I gave up the tournament by any means. I put a good round together and Nico birdied two of the last three holes to clip me by one. So I think what I can look back at last year is when I was in the same exact position as I was last year, I thought I handled everything well and competed well and executed well, so that’s the plan for tomorrow.”
Greyserman knows he won’t be the crowd favorite on Sunday at Yokohama Country Club. The Japanese crowd will surely try to will Schauffele across the finish line. But that won’t faze Greyserman as he looks to finally enter the winner’s circle.
“I played with him today so there’s one thing I can draw from, but whether I play with Xander or, I don’t know, Tiger in his prime or any other guy out here, it’s the same golf,” Greyserman said. “So I do think the crowd is rooting for Xander a little more than other people, I could sense that a little bit today. But plenty of past experience. Final group on a Sunday, I’ve done that before, done that probably a couple times. Just go out there and do the same thing I do every day.”
Schauffele and Greyserman will duel on Sunday with the former looking to prove he has finally found himself while the latter hopes to secure a dream that he has let slip through his fingers several times before.
