Xander Schuaffele, life coach? In 1 short answer, pro articulates on … joy at work

At press conferences, questions come from all directions, from left and right and up and down — room configurations vary, you know — and from all walks of life. Even from ballplayers. Or at least from folks who play them on screen. 

Wednesday, for example, one day ahead of the Players Championship, Justin Thomas had this exchange with Patrick Renna. 

Who you may know best as the actor who wonderfully portrayed Ham Porter in the “Sandlot” movie.

Said Renna, from the back of the media center at TPC Sawgrass: “Oh, hey, J.T., handsome, curly haired guy in the back. Big fan. Would you consider, in the offseason, of course, giving like a 15-handicap just, I don’t know, one lesson maybe at TPC? Just play 18 quick, I don’t know. Just spitballing here. You don’t have to answer now. Give it some thought, sleep on it.”

Said Thomas: “OK. Yeah, we can maybe do like a home-and-home, like where you come here, maybe we’ll spend some time on the baseball field, or I don’t know. What do you think?”

Said Renna: “I’ll give you some baseball lessons, you give me some golf lessons you, got it?”

Said Thomas: “My dad’s the coach, by the way, so anything bad that happens, that’s on him.”

Said Renna: “You bring your dad, I’ll bring mine. I’ll see you here, TPC. We’ll talk later. We’ll figure it out.”

Said Thomas: “Perfect.”

Good stuff. 

Of course, there’s been heady discussion this week, too, as these are heady times. The future of the PGA Tour’s fight with LIV Golf, now in its third season? The status of a proposed deal struck last June with the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, the backer of LIV? Specific details on how the Tour will spend a billion-plus dollars from its deal with a group of sports owners? How can pros best return these owners’ investment? Is Jay Monahan right for his role as Tour commissioner?

In short, there’s a lot going on, though little of it actually involves the goings-on on the course. All of which spurred a short, toward the end-of-the-press-conference query of Xander Schauffele on Tuesday. 

Pulling back the curtain, I’m a consumer of life thoughts like the one that I’ll share in a sec. I won’t say whether it was right or wrong; I’ll leave that to you. But it got me thinking, which is sometimes a scary thing, but mostly good, as you collect enough insights, and eventually you form an outlook. So I thought I’d share, in the hopes that it triggers something for you. Or not, and I apologize for wasting your time, and as penance, here is the link to our Players Championship betting guide, with the hope you can make a few bucks this week. 

OK, the question came from Golf Digest’s Joel Beall, who asked:

“Xander, I know you said you’ve tried to keep your head in the sand and decouple yourself from what’s going on. That being said, though, given that so much is going on, has it been challenging to find joy coming to work given all these weighty things being discussed?”

Schauffele smiled and nodded, as if to say, yeah, no kidding, man. 

But no, it hadn’t been hard. For him, at least. 

But he was fully aware of how easily it could be. 

“Actually that’s not a terrible question,” Schauffele started. 

“I love my job. I love playing golf. So for me to come and work and mess up and then try again or hit a good shot and try and validate it, to me, it’s the best job in the world.

“So if you start poking around and you can’t get any answers, I can imagine you can make your working environment pretty terrible, so I think it’s sort of how you go about it, and fortunately for me, you know, I have trust in some of the people that are leading us and hoping for a good outcome, and in the meantime, just trying to play the best golf I can play.”

At the least, it was one person’s view of things from 10,000 feet, as they say. 

And one person’s thought on how easily some things can get lost. 

Editor’s note to any of his bosses who may be reading this: Don’t worry, the author is perfectly fine with his job.

Nick Piastowski

Golf.com Editor

Nick Piastowski is a Senior Editor at Golf.com and Golf Magazine. In his role, he is responsible for editing, writing and developing stories across the golf space. And when he’s not writing about ways to hit the golf ball farther and straighter, the Milwaukee native is probably playing the game, hitting the ball left, right and short, and drinking a cold beer to wash away his score. You can reach out to him about any of these topics — his stories, his game or his beers — at nick.piastowski@golf.com.