Masters champion Scheffler joins Spieth as Nelson hometown star
Jordan Spieth remembers coming to his hometown Byron Nelson a few weeks after winning the Masters for his first major seven years ago.
Now the three-time major champion will get to watch Scottie Scheffler do the same thing Thursday in their pairing at TPC Craig Ranch, the second-year home of the Nelson, in McKinney, Texas.
“I’m kind of interested to almost be a little bit of a bystander in that situation and watch kind of the extra craziness surrounding Scottie’s return here home after winning,” Spieth said.
The top-ranked player and winner of four of his past six individual events capped by the Masters, Scheffler is now the co-headliner with Spieth. Both grew up in Dallas and starred at the University of Texas.
Scheffler said he and Spieth, who contended as a 16year-old high schooler in his first pro event at the 2010 Nelson, talked recently about the possibility of playing together near home as fellow major winners for the first time.
“It should be a pretty fun environment for both of us,” Scheffler said. “Jordan’s an easy guy for me to play golf with and he’s fun to watch as well. Hopefully, we’ll draw a little bit of a crowd and make some birdies for them.”
There’s one difference from Spieth’s experience in 2015. The PGA Championship was at the end of the summer then. Now it’s the next event, at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Four days in the Texas heat, humidity and wind, just a couple of hundred miles south of a similar climate in Tulsa, should help Scheffler, Spieth and the rest of the 10 players among the world’s top 30 in the Nelson field.
The par-72 Craig Ranch layout, designed by Tom
Weiskopf, won’t be nearly the test of Southern Hills in a week. Still, world No. 8 Justin Thomas has his mind on prepping — along with winning.
“If it’s easy then it doesn’t get you ready for hard, but then if it’s too tough then you beat yourself up and you’re exhausted going into next week,” Thomas said. “So I would like to say this is kind of a perfect balance and a good mixture.”
Spieth reminded reporters that he and Scheffler played together at the Nelson last year, when Spieth tied for ninth for his best finish in a tournament he badly wants to win after such a remarkable debut as a teenager.
Scheffler finished 47th, and was still just another name in the field nine months later — until the victory at Phoenix that sparked a remarkable eight-week run.
PGA returns to Colorado
The PGA Tour is returning to Colorado for the first time in a decade with the redesigned course at Castle Pines Golf Club in Castle Rock serving as host to the 2024 BMW Championship. It’s the first big-time professional golf tournament at the Jack Nicklaus- designed course 30 miles south of Denver since The International’s 21-year run ended in 2006.
Nicklaus said every hole has been modified over the past five years, highlighted by the addition of several lakes on the mountainside course carved through natural rock and Ponderosa pines that opened in 1981. The undulating layout that features narrow fairways and elevated multilayered greens plays over 8,000 yards with a par of 72.
Movable Founders Cup
For the third time running, the $3 million Cognizant Founds Cup, honoring the 13 founders of the LPGA Tour, is being played on a different course. When Jin Young Ko won in 2019 it was at Wildfire Golf Club in Phoenix. After the pandemic canceled the 2020 edition, the world’s top-ranked player defended her title at Mountain Ridge Country Club in West Caldwell, N.J.
This year, the 26-year-old South Korean will have limited course knowledge when the field of 144 golfers tees off at the Upper Montclair Country Club, about 10 miles from New York City. Seven of the top 10 players in the world are in the 72-hole event, with Nelly Korda, Hyo Jin Kim and In-Bee Park not here.
Bjorn assistant for Europe
Thomas Bjorn will be one of European captain Henrik Stenson’s assistants at next year’s Ryder Cup in Italy. He is the first vice captain announced by the European team, which will look to regain the trophy from the Americans in Rome. It will be the Dane’s fifth stint as a vice captain, while he was also captain when Europe beat the United States in France in 2018.