Scottie Scheffler arrived at the 2026 CJ Cup Byron Nelson with a Wanamaker still in the rear-view mirror, a few short putts from Sunday at Aronimink still fresh in the memory, and a determination not to make a story out of either. The world number one is defending the eight-shot wire-to-wire victory he produced at TPC Craig Ranch a year ago, and he reframed the only line of questioning that has dogged him through the major season.
"You know, I've actually putted the best that I have in my career so far this year," Scheffler said when asked whether the missed short putts at the PGA Championship were preying on him. "I just kind of get a reset, get on some new greens, work on my reads, make sure I'm checking all my fundamentals. I actually went through something similar last year after the Scottish Open. I had a tough week on the greens and showed up at the Open Championship and I talked to Phil, my putting coach, and our discussion was basically like, I just want to make sure I'm starting the ball in line, and I want to make sure I'm lined up where I think I'm lined up. And that's what we did, and I went on to have a great putting week and a great tournament."
That tournament was The Open Championship at Royal Troon in July 2025, which Scheffler won to complete a four-trophy stretch that also took in the Memorial and the PGA Championship. He has built his entire 2026 season around the same routine: short corrections, no overhaul.
The golf course itself will not be the one he conquered a year ago. World Golf Hall of Famer Lanny Wadkins led a renovation that started the day after Scheffler lifted the 2025 trophy, with bulldozers rolling onto the practice putting green within hours. The seven-month rebuild reshaped every green and every bunker, lengthened the par-four twelfth into a 540-yard par five and shortened the eighteenth from 552 yards to 458. Scheffler had played the layout a few weeks earlier and offered a positive review.
"I think tee to green it is definitely better than what it was before," he said. "I think it's a more interesting test. The greens have a significant amount of slope to them and some are a bit aggressive but overall I think you did a really good job of creating some nice pin locations and you definitely have to think your way around this place a lot more than you did before."
Scheffler was less sanguine about the schedule that has stranded a chunk of the tour without individual stroke-play events between the Masters and the PGA Championship. He stopped short of policy comment but used the question to make a broader observation about what he can and cannot control. "A lot of that stuff's out of my control," he said of the tournament's future tier status. "But this tournament means a lot to me. Mr. Nelson means a lot to a lot of us from the Dallas area, but I think especially myself. He's a guy that I've looked up to. The way he approached the game for a long time and he was a family man."
The most generous moment came when he was asked about Tom Kim, the 23-year-old Korean who has dropped sharply down the world ranking since the Paris Olympics. Scheffler had been a vocal supporter of Kim through the slump and made clear that the support has not changed.
"Golf, I believe it's the hardest game in the world," Scheffler said. "And so there's always ebbs and flows to how you feel. Tom's a young guy still. I think people forget I think he's 23 years old and if you looked at where I was at 23 years old I definitely wasn't a multiple time tour winner. Tom is a guy that has a ton of talent, but I think life out here on the PGA Tour can be challenging at times, especially when you look at, you start thinking about your results and your ranking starts to drop a little bit. Every time I see him, he seems to be in good spirits, which is great. That's been his strength from the beginning, his attitude and the way he approaches things. He'll sure be back competing for trophies very soon again."
Scheffler will play the opening two rounds with Brooks Koepka and Korean major champion Si Woo Kim. He goes off early Thursday, just north of Dallas, with severe weather already disrupting the Wednesday pro-am and a tournament forecast that may suit a new drainage system more than the field.
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*Originally published on [Golf News Global](https://golfnews.global/article/scottie-scheffler-putting-cj-cup-byron-nelson-2026-best-of-career-tom-kim-mentor). Visit for full coverage.*
