2024 PGA Champion Xander Schauffele Opens with 68 at Aronimink

Coming off a T60 at last week’s Truist Championship – his worst finish of the year – Xander Schauffele wasn’t exactly sure what to expect this week in the 108th PGA Championship at Aronimink.

He did hint in Wednesday’s pre-Championship presser that he might have found something but didn’t want to “jinx it.”

Good thing.

Whatever he found worked beautifully on Thursday as the 2024 PGA Champion opened with a 2-under 68 that had him one shot out of the early clubhouse lead held by the foursome of Aldrich Potgieter, Stephan Jaeger, Min Woo Lee and Ryo Hisatsune.

“It's always nervy playing in a major, so nice to get off to a good start for sure,” Schauffele said. “I made three birdies in the first four holes and was feeling pretty good. Then started to play a lot worse golf for the next six holes. Then got a little bit better again. So I got the full experience today.”

Schauffele started on the back side and his three birdies came at Nos. 10, 11 and 13, all on putts inside of 11 feet.

It was a hot start to be sure, but Schauffele knows better than to get ahead of yourself in a major.

He said with a lot of cross-wind holes, you need to pick out where to hit the gas pedal and where to be conservative.

“If you are a few under par and you are between clubs and the pin is tucked on a cliff, maybe hitting it to 25 feet isn't the worst shot in that particular moment,” he said. “Yeah, it's Thursday. You're just trying to get in a decent position and kind of feel out how you're playing.”

Schauffele’s first bogey of the day came at the par-3 14th. He tugged his tee shot left into the rough and couldn’t get up and down from the gnarly stuff. A birdie on 16 was canceled out by a bogey on 17, but he made the turn with a 2-under 33.

Schauffele kept the ship steady on the front side. He erased a bogey on No. 3 with a birdie at the par-3 fifth after hitting his tee shot to 7 feet.

But the shot he’ll remember most from the opening round was a chip at the par-3 eighth.

Schauffele admitted he was struggling to bring it to the house and his tee shot at the 245-yard hole sailed long right. Electing to putt, Schauffele lagged it to 2 feet allowing him to save a valuable par.

“I had some good shots,” he said. “I was actually pretty happy with my putt -- ESPN would never show this, but internally I hit it over the green on 8, and I was leaking some oil, and I was able to lag that to two feet up and over and around and down with a cross-wind. So in my mind, that was a really big moment for me.”