Xander Schauffele was able to play his first round on Thursday in Hawaii, at the Tournament of Champions (26th, -3), with his new driver Callaway Paradym Triple Diamond… yet he had white lines on the face added by the player.
Alignment marks made by Hideki Matsuyama on his 3 wood at the Memorial Tournament in June 2022 had earned the Japanese a disqualification.
Xander Schauffele, driver
For a very similar case the American Xander Schauffele was spared Thursday in Hawaii in the 1st round of the Tournament of Champions.
Difficult to find it. Winner of this tournament in 2019, on the Kapalua Plantation Course, Schauffele “wants to see the face of his club”, explained his caddy, Austin Kaiser, on the GolfWRX Instagram account, with supporting photos.
We can indeed see that the white, horizontal traces are obvious, but there is a nuance compared to the Japanese winner of the Masters 2021. In the photo above we see that the marks were made with white felt, while those observed on the Matsuyama fairway wood, last June in Ohio, had been made with white paint.
Another nuance, the traces on the driver of the Japanese delimited the shape of a ball, while those of Schauffele are all horizontal and spaced out, without revealing the impact zone of a golf ball. Like last year, it is Rule 4.1a of golf that is called upon.
The one who had decided Steve Rintoul to disqualify Matsuyama, guilty of having played his fairway wood from hole 1. Another determining element, if we rely on the explanations of Steve Rintoul in June, “helping the alignment (of the player), by placing a small mark on the face, is certainly authorized”.
What had been reproached to Matsuyama, it is that the white paint was not only present in the grooves (of the face of his club), which would have been tolerated, always according to Steve Rintoul, but was present in layer ” very thick”, elsewhere on the face, changing the specifications of the club and making it non-compliant.
Born in San Diego to a Franco-German father and a Taiwanese mother, he comes from a family of athletes and soccer players: his father Stefan was an aspiring decathlete, while his great-grandparents Richard (also discus thrower, weightlifter and multi-titled javelin thrower)[1] and Johann Hoffmann were decent soccer players success in Europe.
He attended California State University, Long Beach and then San Diego State University, where he successfully practiced the sport of golf. In 2014 he beat compatriot Hossler by winning the California amateur championship at the prestigious La Costa Resort & Spa, before being defeated by the same in the final contest of the Western Amateur a few months later.
The results at the amateur level earned him entry into the Top 10 of the world amateur ranking before his turn to pro in 2015. In 2021 he participates in Tokyo 2020 and wins the first American gold medal since the readmission of golf to the Olympics. He wins the Olympic tournament with 266 strokes in 4 days, 18 under par.
