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A $25 million renovation made TPC Craig Ranch exactly one shot tougher for the winner of The CJ Cup Byron Nelson.
$25 million for one shot
Wyndham Clark won The CJ Cup Byron Nelson — five words that don’t make sense together — with a closing 60 on Sunday at TPC Craig Ranch to win by three shots over fellow 60-shooter Si Woo Kim on 30-under 254. That was one shot worse than the total of 253 that defending champion Scottie Scheffler posted to win by 8 in 2025.
(Scheffler, for his part, shot 25 under for the week, made just one hole score higher than 4 all week, and finished alone in third place.)
Clark’s gobsmacking total came the year after the property’s owners, Invited Clubs, spent an eye-watering $25 million on a Lanny Wadkins-led renovation. The conventional wisdom was that the renovation would toughen up the place. While the winning shot was one shot worse, the course, on average, actually played easier for the week. The average score in 2025 was 69.128, and it was 68.553 in 2026. That’s a big difference over the course of four rounds.
So, in a sense, it feels like this was a massive waste of money, and Invited admitted to overpaying for the work as a bit of a show-me statement to the PGA Tour about being serious as a host venue for this event. Still, I’m going to defend the changes and the tournament.
The changes made the golf course better, certainly aesthetically and also legitimately made several holes more difficult. Tom Weiskopf had some silly stuff on the original design that was meant to be more of a resort-style club course than a stiff PGA Tour test. Wadkins actually made the course some 200 yards shorter and introduced more challenging shots.
It’s OK to have a few tournaments on the PGA Tour schedule that are pure birdiefests. Go out there, make as many birdies and eagles as possible, and hope that’s good enough. An occasional go-low event can be a lot of fun, but it has to be embraced and promoted as such.
What this week revealed is that no amount of money can stop the wind. So many Texas courses rely on the wind to make them difficult, and architects have long considered the Lone Star breeze in designs. If they design a course without considering how strong the wind can blow down there, they can render a course practically impossible in the wrong conditions. When the wind doesn’t blow, though, many courses can be exposed — especially by the best in the world.
This week, more than anything, was a word of warning about the PGA Championship next year. The PGA of America is hosting at Fields East at their PGA Frisco headquarters, just down the road from TPC Craig Ranch. If there’s no breeze like there wasn’t this week, the players will light it up. If the wind does flex its muscle, like it did there for last year’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, then it may embarrass the players and make them angry. It feels like a no-win situation from afar, so let’s hope for something better for next year’s PGA.
For more on 19-year-old Blades Brown getting special PGA Tour status, scroll down!
2 Off the 1st: Scottie and Jordan might not play in Texas anymore
On this Tuesday episode, Ryan Ballengee looks back at The CJ Cup Byron Nelson, where Wyndham Clark won with a 60 and a winning total that was one shot worse than last year — before the $25 million renovation. Also, the PGA Tour will have some trouble with its new schedule if they don’t want top players to ever compete in B-tier events.
Blades is cutting through the tape
Wyndham Clark was the champion of The CJ Cup Byron Nelson on Sunday, but Blades Brown might be just as much of a winner. The 19-year-old Brown finished T-14 at TPC Craig Ranch, and that earned him enough non-member FedEx Cup points to get what’s called Special Temporary Membership. With it, Brown can take unlimited sponsor exemptions for the remainder of the season — and who wouldn’t want an up-and-coming good kid in their event? — in pursuit of a PGA Tour card by finishing in the equivalent of the top 100 in the FedEx Cup standings.
Brown is also thriving on the Korn Ferry Tour, where he’s 12th in the standings despite playing a variety of PGA Tour events this year. In fact, he flew from a Korn Ferry Tour event in The Bahamas right to the American Express in California, only to find himself in the final group on Sunday with Scottie Scheffler. The Nashville native has a ton of talent, and now he has to thread the needle to get a PGA Tour card.
At the end of the Korn Ferry Tour season, the top 20 players in points get PGA Tour cards. He can certainly achieve that with another 14 events on that schedule. A win at any Korn Ferry Tour event probably gets him the points he needs to get a card.
He’ll also have as many as eight PGA Tour events he can play using Special Temporary Membership. Many weeks, there will be a conflict between the PGA Tour and the Korn Ferry Tour, as the latter’s schedule becomes more consistent starting now. He clearly has the game to compete at the PGA Tour level, as he would be in 84th place on the FedEx Cup points list were he a member. But he teeters on the edge of the best path to go.
Hopefully he picks the right path, and he has a full PGA Tour card in 2027.
The Links
We have the Charles Schwab Challenge this week on the PGA, and the fantasy section of the site already is populated with a bunch of content (the field, rankings, betting odds, one and done picks). Colonial is one of my favorite courses on Tour, and it usually asks some great questions.
The LPGA is in the Atlantic City area for the ShopRite LPGA, with the Donald Ross-designed course at Seaview Resort proving a great host. The DP World Tour is in Austria for the Austrian Alpine Open, and LIV Golf is in South Korea. The Korn Ferry Tour is in Raleigh for the UNC Health Championship.
I was out at Mount Pleasant Golf Course in Baltimore last week for a video shoot, and the clubhouse basement (but not the clubhouse itself) dates back to the 1700s! We checked it out.
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