Xander Schauffele gets Key to City from Las Vegas mayor
Xander Schauffele may or may not leave the CJ Cup this week with the winner’s trophy, but he will be going home with some hardware.
Schauffele was presented with the Key to the City by Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman prior to the start of the tournament. The honor came in recognition of Schauffele’s gold medal performance this summer in the Tokyo Olympics.
“Apparently it gives me all the power in Vegas, so I’m pretty excited about it,” Schauffele joked, showing off his key to the gathered golf media. “The mayor was telling me all the perks of it, so feeling pretty powerful as of right now. It’s been cool.”
He joins baseball stars Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant, Property Brothers Jonathan and Drew Scott, and Panic! at the Disco lead singer Brendon Urie as recipients in recent years.
Schauffele said he chose to move to Las Vegas after getting married earlier this year. His in-laws live in Las Vegas.
“It’s a place I visited a lot prior to living here, and I feel quickly adopted by the state of Nevada and happy to call myself a Nevadan,” he said.
Schauffele tees off in the first round Thursday at 12:06 p.m., playing with Dustin Johnson and Viktor Hovland.
Slipping ranking
Rory McIlroy has been in the top 10 in the world rankings almost every week since he first reached the plateau in 2009. But 2021 saw that run come to an end when he fell out in July and hasn’t made it back.
McIlroy, who has spent 106 weeks at No. 1 over the years, currently stands 14th.
“I think when I play my best, I’m the best player in the world,” he said Wednesday. “I haven’t played like that for a while, though.”
His fall has coincided with the pandemic — he was No. 1 at the time golf shut down — and with becoming a father for the first time. It has also happened with increasingly strong competition.
“There’s a ton of great players now that play obviously really, really good golf,” he said. “I feel like the talent pool is just getting deeper and deeper every year, so you have to strive to keep trying to get better to stay where you want to stay.”
Adjusting goals
Sungjae Im arrives at the CJ Cup having won last week at the Shriners Children’s Open, the second win of his PGA Tour career in his 100th start.
Thanks to Shriners, Im said he needs to reassess his goals for the new season.
“My goal in the beginning of the season was to win this year, and to do that in my second start, obviously I achieved that goal already,” he said. “So I’m pretty happy.”
Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. He can be reached at grobertson@reviewjournal.com.