Brooks Koepka had told the media room on Wednesday that his round one at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson would be the first competitive look at his latest putter switch. By Thursday evening at TPC Craig Ranch, he had his answer.
Koepka shot a bogey-free 8-under 63, sitting briefly alone at the top before Taylor Moore birdied his last to finish a stroke clear. Six birdies and an eagle came on a course that has been described by half the locker room as the most aggressively re-sloped greens complex on the PGA Tour, after Lanny Wadkins's $25 million renovation of TPC Craig Ranch. The five-time major champion is still in only his third week back inside PGA Tour ropes after accepting the tour's returning-member penalty, and the round was, by his recent standards, a release.
The story of the day was not the ball striking. Koepka has, on his own assessment, been hitting it well for months. The story was the putter.
The new club in the bag is a Scotty Cameron Phantom 1.5, a hybrid between a mallet and a blade, swapped in after a frustrating PGA Championship at Aronimink where Koepka had bagged a Scotty Cameron Spider only days earlier. CBS Sports golf analyst Patrick McDonald, watching from the tower, explained why this particular model could stick.
"The crux for Koepka this year has been the putter and everyone knows it, including himself," McDonald said. "He had a new Spider in the bag last week at the PGA Championship if you wanted something with a little more toe hang so the face would rotate a little bit more. Put a new Scotty Phantom 1.5 in the bag — something that he used a handful of years ago."
The selling point, McDonald argued, is that the Phantom 1.5 carries the visual cues of a blade — and Koepka's five majors all came with a blade in his hand — but the head shape behaves like a mallet on mishits. "It has the feel of a blade which he has gained throughout his career. You think about all five of his major championships all coming with that gamer, that blade in his hands. But it also has the benefits of a mallet style putter."
The results were almost immediate. Koepka made a birdie at the par-4 11th, then a 13-foot eagle putt at the par-5 12th to move to 4-under on his front nine. He converted from inside 15 feet at the next, stuck a 95-yard wedge to three feet at the par-4 sixth, and ran his round out cleanly. The on-course commentary captured the shift in tone the moment the eagle dropped: "This putt goes in, a lot of people are going to be switching to this putter."
What that finish does not show is Wednesday's mood. Koepka had openly conceded after the PGA Championship that his stroke and his head had both gotten ahead of him, particularly down the stretch at Aronimink. He told reporters this week that he had spent an entire day alone in the small putting studio at his Florida home, dropping his son at school in the morning and only stopping when the school pick-up window arrived.
The round-one 63 is one data point against four years of cumulative LIV reps and one chaotic month back on tour. Koepka was teeing it up alongside world number one Scottie Scheffler and Si Woo Kim in what he had called "a measuring stick" group. He out-scored both. Scheffler signed for a 5-under 66, his best opening round since the American Express in January.
Koepka now sits one shot back of Taylor Moore heading into a moving day on Saturday where Craig Ranch's redesigned greens are likely to firm and the pins are likely to migrate closer to the new slopes. The blade-mallet hybrid will get the harder test it has not yet faced.
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*Originally published on [Golf News Global](https://golfnews.global/article/brooks-koepka-scotty-phantom-1-5-putter-8-under-63-cj-cup-byron-nelson-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
