LA QUINTA, Calif. — Scottie Scheffler always keeps score.
His most recent competition before starting the 2026 PGA Tour season was at home in Dallas, where Si Woo Kim took some cash off the longtime No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking, only to have to give most of it back from a separate game.
Scheffler has been competing without big consequences during his long offseason. Now the score counts for 156 players — the largest domestic field of regular PGA Tour stops this year — at the American Express tournament when it tees off Thursday at three courses.
The practice range at PGA West was unusually busy Monday, and it only got more crowded the next two days. There is new equipment to try, but mainly it’s the final check on whatever tweaks or improvements have been made.
“I love playing this event to start,” Scheffler said. “You get a good gauge of where you’re at just based upon you’re not really playing in so many conditions, and you’ve got to be sharp around this place in order to make enough birdies to compete.”
Scheffler is golf’s best current player for a reason. Along with two major championships among his six PGA Tour victories last year — winning the British Open and the PGA Championship, each for the first time, leaves the two-time Masters champion short of only the U.S. Open for the career Grand Slam — he hasn’t finished out of the top 10 since last March.
And yet as much as the 29-year-old Texan loves coming to the California desert, he hasn’t had a top-10 at this event since 2020, the first year what was formerly known as the Desert Classic took on its current name and the first time Scheffler played it. It was also two years before the first win of his PGA Tour career; he now has 19 of those when it comes to officially money victories, most recently at the Procore Championship last September in a Ryder Cup tuneup.
The largest field in a year when the PGA Tour is shrinking is a product of players being spread out over PGA West (at the Nicklaus Tournament Course and the Palmer Tournament Course) and La Quinta Country Club.
It’s also the strongest field in more than two decades for this tournament, highlighted by Scheffler and including 13 of the top 30 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
Except for those who came over from last weekend’s season-opening Sony Open in Honolulu, most players are looking to shake off a little rust. They have been practicing, yes, but not competing.
“It’s more tournament rust,” 2023 U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark said.
In 2023 and 2024, Clark’s season started in Hawaii at The Sentry with a winners-only field plus the top 50 from the FedEx Cup standings. It was a relaxing start to the year in Maui, with wide fairways, gorgeous views and a small field. It was canceled this year over a water dispute that burned out Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course in September.
“You prefer Kapalua because you’re playing the Tournament of Champions,” Clark said. “But I like starting here. You’re guaranteed three rounds, you have good weather, you kind of play in a dome, so you get to see where your game is at.”
Clark played twice last month against small fields, at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas and at the Grant Thornton Invitational, a mixed-team event in Florida. The last three months of the year, Scheffler played only the Hero World Challenge — the unofficial money event hosted by Tiger Woods where Scheffler is a two-time winner — spending more time in the gym to get healthy and to feel rested.
Justin Rose, the 2013 U.S. Open winner, can claim to have some form of competition, though in virtual golf; the 45-year-old Englishman made an albatross in Tuesday night’s TGL match in Florida.
Ludvig Aberg has gone two months since playing Dubai in the 2025 finale for the Europe-based DP World Tour — that circuit’s wraparound schedule is already into its seventh event of the 2026 season — working at his home in Florida with a brief trip to his native Sweden.
“It is different,” he said of starting the year among desert palms instead of Hawaii palms. “This golf course is a better indication in terms of where you are and the progress you made in the offseason. Kapalua is a great place to start the year. But the golf course, the elevation, is more about getting it forward. Here you get direct feedback.”
He is a newcomer to this tournament, but not the area. Aberg said the Nicklaus Tournament Course looked familiar when he saw it previously, perhaps from playing a casual round when Texas Tech was in town to compete in a college tournament elsewhere. Courses don’t often stand out in this oasis — manicured green grass, white sand, brown desert and dormant grass outside the ropes, blue water from all the various hazards — and great weather.
This is the 50-year anniversary of Johnny Miller being the last back-to-back winner of this tournament, which began as the Palm Springs Desert in 1960, when the inaugural champion was Arnold Palmer.
The reigning champion is Austria’s Sepp Straka, who turned out to just be getting started in what was a great golf year personally as he went on to win a PGA Tour signature event (the Truist Championship, held at Philadelphia Cricket Club because Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, was temporarily unavailable) and play in his second Ryder Cup (both European victories).
Aberg went the other direction after winning a signature event last February (the Genesis Invitational, held at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego because Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles was temporarily unavailable). He didn’t get another great result until he beat Patrick Cantlay in a pivotal singles match at the Ryder Cup.
“Last year was interesting,” Aberg said. “Somewhere between Torrey and Augusta, I started swinging it not very good. There were some technical tendencies I’ve been working on and tired to figure out. I’ve always just done it and then it happens, whereas now I feel like I have a lot more knowledge and understanding. So 2025 was great for that.
“But I’m excited to feel the adrenaline and the juices, and this is best place to do that.”