Xander Schauffele Called A Cheater After Getting Free Relief From Penalty Area

Golfers and golf fans take the rules of golf very seriously. On Thursday, it’s PGA Tour star Xander Schauffele getting the wrath of the golf world for what they claim was an unjust ruling.

Schauffele came to the par 4 8th hole, his 17th hole of the round, in first place at -6 in the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow Country Club in North Carolina. But, he sprayed his drive way right into serious trouble up against a fence.

That’s when things got weird. This video is a little hard to follow, but watch where Xander Schauffele is standing at the beginning, presumably over his ball up against the fence. Then, he gets some relief from the fence, as is normal. At the end of the clip. he’s seen getting even more relief out of the trouble and into the edge of the pine straw and rough.

Apparently, he got the second bit of relief due to interference in his line from a Shotlink tower. Here is where he ended up playing his second shot from.

I don’t think this is cheating, per se, like some are calling it on Twitter. But, it does seem ridiculous that he was able to get free relief from being absolutely dead to a spot where he could easily make par. That’s what he did, as his second shot found the green, he lagged a putt up close, and tapped in for par.

Here is what Xander Schauffele had to say about the whole ordeal.

Yeah, I hit it in the trees. My ball was probably like a foot, two feet from the fence. If I — ball was here, fence was kind of here, hitting back this direction. If I went towards the green, the fence kind of worked this way so I had what I could hit, a 4-iron or something low and just kind of run it through. If it gets stuck, I’ll just kind of hit my next one out. But I brought the rules official in there with me because I was like, you’ve got to be OK with this because this is literally the only shot I can hit. So Austin and I moved two massive rocks that weren’t embedded and then I got relief out of the junk and then hit a pretty good shot on the green from there. What was a very stressful moment turned into a pretty stressless par.”

Golf Twitter is fired up, to say the least.

I think the issue people have is that Xander did not have to take relief the second time after initially moving his ball from against the fence, where he couldn’t hit a shot. I think some feel that the honorable thing to do was hit a shot from the penalty area he hit it into instead of squeezing the rules to his advantage.

That being said, Xander Schauffele is out there playing for a living. The rules are the same for everyone. Why shouldn’t he take advantage of the rules?

Xander birdied the final of hole his round, and leads by 3 at -7 over a host of players at -4.