Xander Schauffele has 2 majors and still a long way from No. 1 in the world

KAPALUA, Hawaii (AP) — Winning two majors only made Xander Schauffele that much more eager for the next one. The only downer about winning the claret jug at Royal Troon was knowing it would be more than eight months until the next one.

Also on his agenda is reaching No. 1 in the world.

That might take a little longer.

The PGA Tour embarks on a new season without Scottie Scheffler, who cut open his right hand on broken glass preparing Christmas dinner. Even without the No. 1 player at The Sentry, Schauffele eels a lot further away than his No. 2 ranking might suggest.

“It's a wild time,” Schauffele said. “Winning two majors and being closer to the 30th-ranked player than the first ... hat's off to Scottie. He's a beast.”

Schauffele, of course, is no slouch. Both put together a season of remarkable consistency. Schauffele had 15 finishes in the top 10 out of his 21 starts in individual play on the PGA Tour. From May until the end of the season, he went 11 straight events no worse than 15th.

That included a birdie on the last hole to win the PGA Championship at Valhalla, and a command performance in the rain and wind of Royal Troon to win the British Open.

It was the latter that got the attention of Chris Kirk, the defending champion at Kapalua.

“You cannot accurately describe how horrible it is to play golf in that conditions,” Kirk said. “That was one where — obviously, I have a lot of confidence in myself, I believe in my game, I'm a top-50 player — I watched that and was like, ‘There’s no way in hell I could do that.'”

The difference in seasons was Scheffler converted more of those top 10s into titles — seven on the PGA Tour, Olympic gold, and the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, all of them boosting his lead at No. 1 to the largest gap since Tiger Woods in his peak years.

“It's one of my goals that will just have to stay on the calendar for a few more years,” Schauffele said with an easy smile. “If I get there I'll be very happy. But just based on looking at the numbers, yeah, it's going to take some time and patience.”

Now he's on island time, where no one is in a rush.

The 60-man field gets started on the mountainous Plantation Course at Kapalua, which is playing longer than ever with a steady dose of overnight rain.

The Sentry also starts a new structure on the PGA Tour in which only the top 100 players in the FedEx Cup keep their full cards, and the size of fields is shrinking to make sure those who have cards get into more tournaments.

This is the second year that a tournament once limited to only winners has been expanded to include anyone who finished in the top 50 in the FedEx Cup. Of the 60 players, 29 of them failed to win a tournament last year.

That includes Justin Thomas, who at least would appear to be on the upward trend. He missed out on the postseason in 2023 and made it back to the Tour Championship. It was a better year, but not enough for him to be picked for the Presidents Cup.

Consider that to be a big motivator this year with a Ryder Cup on the horizon. The first step is winning, which Thomas hasn't done since the PGA Championship in 2022. Before that, he piled up 15 wins on the PGA Tour in a seven-year stretch.

“I truly felt like I was going to win multiple times every season pretty much, until I lost it a little bit,” Thomas said. "It's just so hard to win out here. Naturally, the better player that you are, you can get away with more mistakes, but come the end of the week on Sunday, you have to win the golf tournament.

“I was fortunate where I was doing it quite often and I still feel like I’m fully capable and expect to do that more,” he said. “But I definitely felt like it should have happened regularly.”

Schauffele can appreciate the feeling. He also had gone two years without winning until he ended that drought in the best way possible — not one major, but two.

It starts with chances, and that has become his hallmark, much like it is for Scheffler. Schauffele comes into Kapalua with the longest active cut streak on the PGA Tour at 56 in a row, which will increase because there is no cut this week.

The record is 142 in a row by Woods. That might be even further away than his goal of replacing Scheffler at No. 1 in the world.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Hideki Matsuyama, of Japan, hits from the 10th tee during the pro-am round of The Sentry golf event, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, at Kapalua Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Max Homa reads the 12th green during the pro-am round of The Sentry golf event, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, at Kapalua Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Sam Burns hits from the 12th fairway during the pro-am round of The Sentry golf event, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, at Kapalua Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Hideki Matsuyama, of Japan, watches his shot from the 13th tee during the pro-am round of The Sentry golf event, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, at Kapalua Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Xander Schauffele walks off the 11th green during the pro-am round of The Sentry golf event, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, at Kapalua Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Xander Schauffele lines up his shot on the 11th green during the pro-am round of The Sentry golf event, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, at Kapalua Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Xander Schauffele follows his shot on the 11th green during the pro-am round of The Sentry golf event, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, at Kapalua Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Xander Schauffele hits from the 10th tee during the pro-am round of The Sentry golf event, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, at Kapalua Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Matt York)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The highly decorated Special Forces soldier who died by suicide in a Cybertruck explosion on New Years Day confided to a former girlfriend — who had served as an Army nurse — that he faced significant pain and exhaustion that she says were key symptoms of traumatic brain injury.

Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was a five-time recipient of the Bronze Star, including one with a V device for valor under fire. He had an exemplary military record that spanned the globe and a new baby born last year. But he struggled with the mental and physical toll of his service, which required him to kill and caused him to witness the deaths of fellow soldiers.

Livelsberger mostly bore that burden in private but recently sought treatment for depression from the Army, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public.

He also found a confidant in the former nurse, who he began dating in 2018.

Alicia Arritt, 39, and Livelsberger met through a dating app while both were in Colorado Springs. Arritt had served at Landstul Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest U.S. military medical facility in Europe, where many of the worst combat injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan were initially treated before being flown to the U.S.

There she saw and treated traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, which troops suffered from incoming fire and roadside bombs. Serious but hard to diagnose, such injuries can have lingering effects that might take years to surface.

“I saw a lot of bad injuries. But the personality changes can happen later,” Arritt said.

In texts and images he shared with Arritt, Livelsberger raised the curtain a bit on what he was facing.

“Just some concussions,” he said in a text about a deployment to Helmand Province in Afghanistan. He sent her a photo of a graphic tattoo he got on his arm of two skulls pierced by bullets to mark lives he took in Afghanistan. He talked about exhaustion and pain, not being able to sleep and reliving the violence of his deployment.

“My life has been a personal hell for the last year,” he told Arritt during the early days of their dating, according to text messages she provided to the AP. “It’s refreshing to have such a nice person come along.”

On Friday Las Vegas law enforcement officers released excerpts of messages Livelsberger left behind showing the manner in which Livelsberger killed himself was intentional, meant both as a “wakeup call” but also to “cleanse the demons” he was facing from losing fellow soldiers and taking lives.

Livelsberger’s death in front of the Trump Hotel using a truck produced by Elon Musk’s Tesla company has raised questions as to whether this was an act of political violence.

Officials said Friday that Livelsberger apparently harbored no ill will toward President-elect Donald Trump, and Arritt said both she and Livelsberger were Tesla fans.

“I had a Tesla too that I rescued from a junkyard in 2019, and we used to work on it together, bond over it,” Arritt said.

The pair stopped talking regularly after they broke up in 2021, and she had not heard from him in more than two years when he texted out of the blue Dec. 28, and again Dec. 31. The upbeat messages included a video of him driving the Cybertruck and another one of its dancing headlights; the vehicle can sync up its lighting and music.

But she also said Livelsberger felt things “very deeply and I could see him using symbolism” of both the truck and the hotel.

“He wasn’t impulsive,” Arritt said. “I don’t see him doing this impulsively, so my suspicion would be that he was probably thinking it out.”

Arritt served on active duty from 2003 to 2007 and then was in the Army Reserve from until 2011. With Livelsberger she saw symptoms of TBI as early as 2018.

“He would go through periods of withdrawal, and he struggled with depression and memory loss,” Arritt said.

“I don’t know what drove him to do this, but I think the military didn’t get him help when he needed it.”

But Livelsberger was also sweet and kind, she recalled: “He had a really deep well of inner strength and character, and he just had a lot of integrity.”

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Friday that it has turned over all Livelsberger's medical records to local law enforcement, and encouraged troops facing mental health challenges to seek care through one of the military's support networks.

“If you need help, if you feel that you need to seek any type of mental health treatment, or just to talk to someone — to seek the services that are available, either on base or off,” Singh said.

When Livelsberger struggled during the time they were dating, Arritt prodded him to get help. But he would not, saying it could cost him his ability to deploy if he was found medically unfit.

“There was a lot of stigma in his unit, they were, you know, big, strong, Special Forces guys there, there was no weakness allowed and mental health is weakness is what they saw,” she said.

Livelsberger seeking treatment for depression was first reported by CNN.

Associated Press writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed.

This undated photo, provided by the Las Vegas Police Department shows an ID belonging to Matthew Livelsberger, found inside a Tesla Cybertruck involved in an explosion outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. (Las Vegas Police Department via AP)

This undated photo, provided by the Las Vegas Police Department shows a passport belonging to Matthew Livelsberger, found inside a Tesla Cybertruck involved in an explosion outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. (Las Vegas Police Department via AP)