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Meet the Schauffeles — the most eccentric father-son team in sport

Meet the Schauffeles — the most eccentric father-son team in sport

Times12-07-2025
'T he Ogre', as Xander Schauffele lovingly refers to his father, didn't want to go to Royal Troon last year. Stefan had been 'living the dream' in a 20-foot-long shipping container without hot water or electricity, spending his days clearing dense patches of jungle with a chainsaw on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. For a while, he had been a 'complete hermit', but his family forced him to buy a mobile. Standing in a safari hat behind the 18th green as Xander reduced the final round of the Open to a procession, Stefan dabbed at the tears streaming from his blind left eye.
'He was a mess,' Xander, 31, says, laughing. 'He was the guy who was still wearing sunglasses when it's completely dark out.'
Back in the warmth of the clubhouse, Xander offered his father, who has been his lifelong coach, the first sip out of the Claret Jug. 'We drank red wine and quickly learned that we shouldn't because we looked like absolute drunkards,' Stefan, 60, says. 'It's not easy to drink from it, so then we switched to clear liquors. It smelled bad but at least it wasn't visible.'
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