Tournament: Genesis Scottish Open
Venue: The Renaissance Club, North Berwick, Scotland
Race to Dubai: Tournament 26 of 44
Closing Swing: Tournament 1 of 5
Prize Fund: US$9,000,000
Hashtag: #GenesisScottishOpen #DPWT #RolexSeries
World Number Three Xander Schauffele revealed he is in “full chase mode” in his bid to return to top form at the Genesis Scottish Open.
Schauffele, who was the first winner at the Renaissance Club since Scotland’s national open was co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour and PGA TOUR in 2022, is still on the comeback trail to recover the blistering form of 2024 that yielded two Major Championships.
The American sustained an intercostal strain and a cartilage tear in January, which resulted in an eight week injury lay-off, and has recorded just one top ten finish so far this season.
However, a top ten finish at the Masters Tournament – and tied 12th in the U.S. Open – shows he can contend for golf’s biggest prizes ahead of his return to the Genesis Scottish Open and his title defence at the Open Championship at Royal Portrush.
Meanwhile Connor Syme hailed the “invaluable” impact Scottish Golf has had on his career as the recent DP World Tour winner prepares to tee up at his national open, the second Rolex Series event of the year.
The 29-year-old claimed his maiden DP World Tour crown at the KLM Open last month and arrives on Scotland’s Golf Coast full of confidence as the Closing Swing begins on the 2025 Race to Dubai.
The Kirkcaldy native, who will play alongside Tommy Fleetwood and U.S. Open Champion J.J. Spaun in his first two rounds, was tied for 15th place during last year’s event, which was his best finish at the tournament, and he is yet to miss the cut in six attempts at his home open.
The top three players in the world – 2025 US PGA Championship winner Scottie Scheffler, 2025 Masters winner Rory McIlroy, and reigning Open Champion Schauffele – will be joined in the field by the most recent Major Champion Spaun.
Fellow Major winners Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa and European Ryder Cup stars Sepp Straka and Ludvig Åberg round out the eight members of the world’s top ten.
World Number 14 Robert MacIntyre returns to defend his title, with the home hero joining his 2023 Ryder Cup-winning teammates Viktor Hovland and Tommy Fleetwood and Americans Maverick McNealy and Harris English in ensuring 13 of the top 20 will tee it up at Scotland’s national open.
Player Quotes
Xander Schauffele: Yeah, it definitely is (an important part of my schedule). It’s important for me to get acclimated to the time. Important to get used to the grass, the way the ball rolling, all those good things. It’s definitely become a staple in my schedule.
It’s been a weird year for me, just from coming off the year I had last year into sort of what I did, just kind of disappearing and then playing bad coming out of it. So any expectation I had of whatever I thought I was capable of doing, you know, from a feel standpoint last year, has been sort of reset and I am in full chase mode.
I’m trying to do a lot of things and I think the best part of my game has probably been my mental fortitude, whatever you want to call it, just to try to stay positive and behave as if I am playing really well.
But coming off a year like last year, getting hurt, coming back, my expectations and playing ability have not cued up very nicely.
I haven’t really showed a lot of signs but when I’m playing really well, I believe I can win every tournament – that’s a separate belief. It shouldn’t be too attached to how you’re playing. I think that’s just how your mentality should be.
Connor Syme: I love this golf course. We’ve been coming here for obviously quite a few years now, and it always gets better every year. It gets more linksy, there’s something added to try and make it, enhance it each year. It’s one I like and hopefully I can kind of feed off the good performance last year and build on that.
Even when I won in Holland, it was like taking you back as a kid to when you’re putting to go try and win tournaments. That’s what I was thinking about to be honest when I had that putt to win.
It was like all the kind of reps you’d done to try and have a moment like that, and obviously for us, being Scottish, they are the ones you think about more; The Open, The Genesis Scottish Open, the Masters – they are the stuff you dream about. Obviously having got a win, it’s definitely given me a lot of belief that I can do that.
I think certainly from my point of view and, I guess I can only speak about it from my experience with Scottish Golf, I think I got it really, really good.
We had such amazing support, and if I’m honest, I didn’t go to college in America because of the support Scottish Golf offered us. From my point of view, being able to travel to places – we’d spent eight weeks in South Africa, and a four week stint in the Middle East.
In 2016, I won the Australian Amateur, four weeks there and four weeks in South Africa. I think that was a real exposure to what professional golf is like.
