Horses for Courses: Can Jordan Spieth put another low round together in Texas?

As last week’s PGA Championship showed, it is pretty amazing how quickly superintendents can change a golf course's entire identity. A similar thing is happening this week at TPC Craig Ranch, home of THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson.

Through five editions at TPC Craig Ranch, this event has been a birdie fest. The record for the winning score before last year was 23-under, posted by Jason Day in 2023 and Taylor Pendrith in 2024. Then Scottie Scheffler went nuts last year, winning at 31-under.

But I would be very careful about assuming we are getting the same version of TPC Craig Ranch.

Why? Because the golf course has undergone a facelift.

This is the first major redesign since the course opened in 2004, and Lanny Wadkins made significant changes to the property. The first and most noticeable change is the playing surface. The greens are now 777 Bentgrass, the fairways and approaches are Zoysia, and the tees and rough are Bermuda.

The goal was pretty clear. Make the greens firmer. Make them faster. Improve the putting surfaces. Add more strategic pin locations. Force players to think and plan more.

I’m not saying TPC Craig Ranch is suddenly going to play like a U.S. Open. It still has the bones of a scoreable PGA TOUR course, and birdies are still going to be out there. But the renovation should be noticeable—firmer greens and better pin placements.

Outside of the greens, they also completely redid the bunkers and moved quite a few. Why? Because they wanted more strategic bunker placement. The redesign introduced new shots, new decisions, and more risk-reward opportunities throughout the golf course. We have heard players say for years that they like courses that reward good golf shots. Golfers do not mind difficulty when the course is fair. They want to feel like great shots are rewarded and poor shots are punished.

That is the balance that TPC Craig Ranch was trying to find.

This change makes the course more fun for the members, but it also adds a dynamic difficulty that is needed as technology and the game continue to evolve.

The first and most notable challenge at the 7,381-yard par 71 should be the greens.

Anytime a course has new green complexes, especially greens less than a year old, there will be some added firmness. They can get bouncy. Balls will not hold as easily as they do on softer, more mature greens. That is becoming even more important here because TPC Craig Ranch upgraded its drainage and irrigation systems.

If the course gets rain, the new system should help the greens stay firm and avoid getting waterlogged.

Right on cue, the weather isn’t great this week. It calls for thunderstorms throughout the week. Right now, it’s difficult to suggest whether you should stack a.m. or p.m. wave this week. With the

forecast that we have now, there is a chance play gets suspended. That could derail the entire wave stack plan.

That said, breaking down this golf course and figuring out where we can find value throughout the week should be a lot of fun.

Best value on the board

Jordan Spieth, First Round Leader (+3300) | First Round Top 10 (+360)

I am not ready to declare Jordan Spieth (+1750) all the way back, but his game has shown real flashes of resilience. It also looks like there is a chance he is finally getting healthy after an injury derailed much of his 2025 season.

Earlier this year, Spieth finished T12 at The Genesis Invitational and T11 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. He also added top-25 finishes at the Valspar Championship, the Masters, the Cadillac Championship, and the PGA Championship. The T12 at the Masters and T18 at the PGA Championship might be the biggest indicators that Spieth is ready to rock and roll again.

The Dallas native has done nothing but play this golf course well since the tournament moved to TPC Craig Ranch in 2021. Spieth has three top-10 finishes in four starts here, including a runner-up finish in 2022 and a solo fourth in 2025.

I like Spieth to finish inside the top 10 for the full tournament, but I really think he has the most value in the first round.

The problem with betting Spieth to win a golf tournament at this stage is that you almost know one of the four rounds is going to make you question every decision he is making on the golf course. That one round is usually what takes him from contending to fighting for a top-five or top-10 finish.

But his first-round metrics are really strong.

Spieth ranks second in this field in first-round SG: Total over the last 12 months. He is also second in average first-round finishing position over that same span.

At the PGA Championship, Spieth gained +9.7 strokes tee to green and was basically phenomenal everywhere except on the greens. If we go back to the idea that players can drive and approach their way around this golf course, we do not need to lean too heavily on Spieth’s putter.

That makes his first-round price really interesting. Given the course history, the first-round success, and the way he struck the ball at the PGA Championship, I think Spieth has tremendous value in the first-round markets.

Despite the changes made to TPC Craig Ranch, there is still a very real chance this turns into a birdie fest. Through five years at this course, the average winning score has been around 26 under par. The redesign should make it more challenging, but I have a tough time believing this suddenly becomes a tournament that produces a 10-under winner. Birdies will still be important.

That leads me to heavily weigh Birdie or Better percentage in my model. It is the first place I want to look because even with the added difficulty, I still want the classic birdie makers.

Here are the top players in birdie or better gained percentage over the last 36 rounds, via BetspertsGolf:

• 1) Scottie Scheffler
• 2) Trace Crowe
• 3) Taylor Montgomery
• 4) Hayden Springer
• 5) Paul Peterson
• 6) Lanto Griffin

Scheffler (+135) is probably going to run away with this golf tournament much like he did last season, when he posted a winning score of 31 under and won by eight strokes.

Last year was pretty amazing for him across the board. He was first in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking, sixth in putting, first off the tee, and first tee to green. It was a complete tee-to-green master class.

He makes a lot of sense to repeat, right?

His game has been really good over the past month and a half. He is a Dallas native. He is playing at a golf course where he is defending his title. The odds also indicate that this should be another runaway victory for Scottie Scheffler. At +135, he is going off at one of the shortest pre-tournament prices we have seen for any golfer in a full-field PGA TOUR event in more than a decade.

This feels like the kind of week where the golf community will naturally try to beat the favorite. Even if you think Scheffler is going to win, I still do not know how you can wholeheartedly bet a golfer at +135 to win a full-field event. So, this week is about finding value outside of Scheffler. We need someone whose number is good enough to justify going to battle against the best golfer in the world

To do so, I will look at SG: Tee-to-Green.

Since 2021, every winner at TPC Craig Ranch has finished inside the top five in SG: Tee-to-Green for the week. Three of the five winners were no worse than second.

The putting numbers have varied quite a bit, which is important because of the new green complexes. We do not know exactly how these greens will play. We also do not know if SG: Putting will be a predictive model.

Here are the top golfers over the last 36 rounds in SG: Tee-to-Green

• 1) Scottie Scheffler
• 2) Ben Kohles
• 3) Brooks Koepka
• 4) Si Woo Kim
• 5) Cameron Champ
• 6) Jordan Spieth

I took Brooks Koepka (+3000) to win this golf tournament.

I will warn you. Koepka is not confident with his putter right now. He made changes because he wanted to putt better, and in the first round of the PGA Championship, it was dreadful. But there were at least signs of improvement as the week went on. He gained strokes putting in two of the four rounds and was neutral in another round.

He’s a wildcard this week. If he can get to neutral with the putter this week, his approach numbers should be good enough to win this tournament.

Koepka is second in this field in SG: Approach over the last 36 rounds. He is an absolute birdie maker, ranking fourth in birdie or better gained percentage. As the table above shows, he is also one of the best players in the field tee-to-green.

If Koepka continues to be a massive gainer tee-to-green, he has a path to overcoming those putting inefficiencies and winning this week.