Xander Schauffele calls out media ahead of BMW Championship

Xander Schauffele says all the media wants to talk about is money in a ‘negative’ way before the BMW Championship. 

Schauffele discussed the thorny topic of cash in an unusually lively pre-tournament news conference ahead of the second of three playoff events on the PGA Tour.

The two-time major champion also spoke of who he believes should win the player of the year race, how he has matured over the years and his worst loss to date.

But money was at the top of the agenda given the FedExCup playoffs dishes out an astronomical $100m over three weeks in August.

Schauffele has amassed $17.6m in earnings on the course this year alone, thanks to his stellar performances on Tour and his two major championship wins.

It’s a lot of cash – and he knows as much – but it’s important to put it all into context given its nowhere other sports, according to Schauffele.

“The media has been an interesting thing to me the last two or three years,” Schauffele said.

“There’s a reason behind inflated purses and a lot of people have been talking about money about money

“The news that I do read, it’s funny, it’s really negative. It’s painted really negatively in golf, which is fine.

“I think people like to hate on anything these days.

“But when I look at other sports, when someone gets a $300 million contract, there’s all these positive comments about how someone got their bag or they’ve worked so hard to get this and they deserve it, things like that.

“It’s interesting to me. I think maybe golf is a gentlemen’s game and you’re not supposed to talk about money, but all the media wants to do is talk about money.”

He added: “Us players, I think the players that make the most money don’t think about money because it’s just not the most important thing.”

Schauffele said that winning this year’s FedExCup bonus of $25m would be ‘really cool’ but it wouldn’t change his life.

“I can tell you, if I lose and play bad, I’m going to be pretty upset about playing bad and not being able to peak at the right time more than losing money.”

To illustrate his point further, Schauffele also talked about how much NFL players earn.

Rory McIlroy has used the analogy in the past as well.

“You look at the top-10 quarterbacks,” Schauffele said.

Scottie [Scheffler] has won seven times, I think that’s including Olympic gold. And he’s made significantly more than everyone else

“If you look at how much 10th has made, the 10th-best player in the world has made, it’s not going to sniff how much Scottie has made.

“That just shows you how well Scottie has played in these big tournaments.

“You look at the number one quarterback, he’s getting $60m and then the number 10 quarterback is getting 52, and then No. 15 is getting 39 or 40.”