Xander Schauffele craters towards worst finish in more than three years as Players Championship woes continue READ MORE: Shocking moment Jordan Spieth furiously launches his club By RIATH AL-SAMARRAI AT TPC SAWGRASS Published: 20:56 GMT, 15 March 2025 | Updated: 21:08 GMT, 15 March 2025 XANDER SCHAUFFELE will regain faith in his body and swing at some point, but such breakthroughs are unlikely to come before the end of this year's Players Championship. A missed two-footer at the last served as a neat summary for his season. Sitting on four over par after a third-round 77, the world No 3 and a double major winner in 2024 is currently tracking towards his worst finish in more than two years. His mitigation is a good one – this is only his second start since taking a two-month break to recover from a rib injury – but going back to October his string of results makes for jarring reading: 41st, 30th, 40th. When he got to the clubhouse after his third loop here he was dead last, with the sole consolation that 30mph winds for the later starters ensured a few names fell beneath his own. Schuaffele's personal low point came at the 18th. Given he had the benefit of calmer morning conditions, he was already less than impressed to be two over for his round at that stage, but a nightmare was to come – after dragging his drive into the water off the tee, he was on the green in four and proceeded to three-putt from 14 feet, the last of which was a tiddler. Xander Schauffele hits from the seventeenth tee during the third round at The Players Carnage at The Players as golf stars are forced to play off the driving range He had described his 71 on Friday as 'gross', citing 'duffed chips and missing every fairway', but this was a tougher experience altogether for The Open champion. He said: 'I've never dealt with this before. So I'm going through it and need to figure it out. I'm not doing a great job of that, so I just (have to) keep checking my drawing board until something nice shows up. 'At no point right now do I feel I need to take time away. Mentally, maybe. But I'm probably going to be pretty restless if I haven't figures out what's going on, versus just doing nothing. 'I had a really nice session yesterday on the range and it clearly didn't translate today. I'm not too sure exactly where it's going wrong but even before the wind picked up, I thought it was playing pretty easy this morning for us. 'We only played probably the last three or four holes in it (the worst of the wind) so there was a lot of pretty poor golf before the wind picked up.' Share or comment on this article: Xander Schauffele craters towards worst finish in more than three years as Players Championship woes continue Add comment