The CJ Cup Byron Nelson

Scottie Scheffler made his PGA Tour debut at TPC Craig Ranch in 2014, a 17-year-old with his sister Callie on the bag. Eleven years later he came back and tied the all-time 72-hole scoring record — a 253, thirty-one (!) under par, eight shots clear of the field, 29 birdies and three eagles for the week. He opened with a 61. He hit 81.9% of greens in regulation. If you watched it, you remember the feeling: less a golf tournament than a controlled demolition of a par-71 layout that stood no chance.

A year later, Craig Ranch has been essentially rebuilt, perhaps to prevent that from happening again. McIlroy, Young, Fitzpatrick, Schauffele, Åberg, Rose: all sitting out after three Signature Events and two majors in six weeks. Can’t really blame them. Scheffler is the only top-15 OWGR player in the field. Si Woo Kim, at world No. 22, is the next-highest ranked. The market has priced this accordingly: Scheffler at +134 (yes, +134), Kim at +1050, then a canyon to everyone else. It is Scheffler’s tournament to lose, which is exactly what creates the vulnerability angle — three consecutive runner-ups before the PGA, a T14 at Aronimink, and a putter that may need to be replaced. He missed 10 putts from inside 6 feet at Aronimink (via @dogwood_maple). One of us!

Smaller greens, tighter bunkers, and a waste area called Hell’s Full Acre

Tom Weiskopf routed TPC Craig Ranch along Rowlett Creek in 2004. For five years of Tour play it was a birdie buffet: Zoysia fairways that held tee shots, bentgrass greens that accepted everything, Bermuda rough that wasn’t particularly rough. The previous five winning scores: −25, −26, −23, −23, −31. When Scheffler finished at −31, the course had nothing left to say.

The renovation started the Monday after Scheffler’s win and cost $22–25 million. Lanny Wadkins led the redesign; the course reopened to members December 12, 2025, a remarkably quick turnaround. The changes are specific. The par-3 4th now features a Biarritz design — a long green split by a central swale that forces precise distance control. The par-5 5th has been extended to 624 yards with a massive waste bunker dividing the landing zone from the putting surface; Wadkins named it Hell’s Full Acre. The par-4 3rd green was moved closer to Rowlett Creek with a new waste bunker guarding the approach. Bunkers throughout the course were repositioned to challenge players who routinely drive it past 320 yards.

The par-5 5th, before and after. The new waste bunker — Hell’s Full Acre — splits the landing zone from the green at 624 yards. Image via TPC Craig Ranch

Wadkins on the brief: the goal was to require players to change their shot quality, since the greens would be smaller and the corridors tighter. The turf is entirely new — Stadium Zoysia fairways, TifTuf Bermuda rough, 777 bentgrass greens — with 2,000 new sprinkler heads and a rebuilt drainage system. Craig Ranch is trying to evolve from pure birdie-fest toward something that still rewards aggression but punishes imprecision in ways the old layout didn’t. Whether it works under tournament conditioning for the first time is an open question.

Analytically, approach play still separates. Every Craig Ranch winner from 2021 to 2025 ranked top-10 in strokes gained approach for the week. Par-5 scoring is critical — three par-5s, all reachable, and the best players play them in four or five under. Birdies-or-better gained is the strongest correlator to finish position here. You cannot win grinding out pars. The renovation may add bogeys, but it won’t change the identity. This will be a very different golf tournament than last week’s.

The Scheffler Gap

First, a quick look at the model from the PGA. This was a great example of predictive models simply being unable to capture elements of the tournament that are genuinely unpredictable. Pin positions, firmness, rough lengths are extremely tough to quantify and measure against player skillsets. There wasn’t a model out there that had Rai even finishing top 10. With that said, the model identified a few outperformers. The Par+ top 10 for the PGA Championship was led by Scheffler (+2.35), Cameron Young (+2.22), and McIlroy (+2.02), with Rahm at No. 5 (+1.98). The model correctly flagged Rahm as a top-5 contender — he delivered a T2 — and identified the right cluster of names around the top of the leaderboard (McIlroy, Åberg, Schauffele all finished inside the top 15). (Full leaderboard)

This week, the gap at the top is even wider. Scheffler’s Par+ of 2.73 is the largest lead over a No. 2 (Kim, 2.01) that the model has produced this season. Koepka and Spieth sit at 1.85 ranking T3. Interestingly the market has Koepka at just 3.9% implied versus Spieth’s 5.4%. The model sees more course fit in Koepka’s profile than the market does. The rookie Blades Brown (1.67, Par+ No. 6) at 1.2% implied is the week’s biggest model-vs-market disagreement.

Par+ composite: course fit + current form + market pricing. Fit = course fit score (0–100). Market implied probability via sportsbooks as of May 19. Course fit weights: SG: OTT (20%) · Birdie% (20%) · Par 5 scoring (15%) · SG: Putt (15%) · Drive dist (15%) · SG: App (15%)

The question is not whether Scheffler is the best player in this field. He is, by a margin that borders on absurdity. The question is the putter. At the PGA Championship, he ranked top-10 in strokes gained off the tee and on approach — the best iron player at Aronimink all week — and lost nearly two strokes on the greens in Saturday’s third round alone, his worst single-round putting performance in almost a year. Craig Ranch’s bentgrass greens have historically ranked in the bottom half of Tour venues for putting difficulty, with short-range conversion rates above the Tour average. If the Aronimink struggles were about Ross greens, major-championship speeds, and heavy wind, Craig Ranch is the reset. If it’s mechanical, a softer putting surface won’t fix it.

Nobody has seen this course in tournament mode

Every analytical model that references TPC Craig Ranch is training on a venue that no longer exists. The Wadkins renovation touched the greens, the bunkers, the turf, the drainage, and the relationship between Rowlett Creek and at least three approach shots. The historical scoring data — 44th to 47th in difficulty, winning scores routinely past −23 — is from a different physical layout. The Biarritz 4th. The 624-yard 5th with Hell’s Full Acre. The moved 3rd green tucked against the creek. Bunkers recalibrated for the 320-yard driver. None of this existed in any prior Craig Ranch event.

That uncertainty cuts both ways. The renovation could genuinely toughen the course by three or four shots and compress the winning score into the −20 to −24 range. Or the Tour’s setup team keeps the greens receptive and the pins accessible in Week 1, the field goes low anyway, and the winning number lands where it always does. Thursday’s scoring average will be the single most informative data point of the week — for this event and for every future Byron Nelson at Craig Ranch. A course that averaged roughly 69.2 for four years is either gone or it isn’t. We’ll know by Thursday evening.

Each week, a bird native to the tournament’s corner of the country.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher  ·  Tyrannus forficatus

The open prairie north of Dallas — scattered oaks, fence lines, utility wires along Farm-to-Market roads — is core breeding territory for one of the most recognizable silhouettes in American birding. The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher’s tail can reach 15 inches in males, more than twice the body length, and it opens and closes like shears during a courtship flight that includes backward somersaults. They perch on wires and posts, launch after insects in a quick lateral burst, and return to the same spot.

Range  Breeds southern Nebraska to Texas and NE Mexico, April–September Habitat  Open prairies, ranches, roadsides with scattered trees and utility wires