CROMWELL, Conn. — Two days of rain gave way to a clearing sky Wednesday at TPC River Highlands, a reminder that this week’s Travelers Championships could be a soft reentry into the post-U.S. Open world.
Top-ranked Scottie Scheffler said that doesn’t make it any easier, just different.
Scheffler, who won this PGA Tour signature event two years ago, joins U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, runner-up Sam Burns and most of the best players on the PGA Tour at a course that tends to produce birdies even without being weakened by rain.
“I really do enjoy kind of harder tests, and sometimes the battle is fun as well,” said Scheffler, who tied for fourth Sunday at New York’s Shinnecock Hills Golf Club as the 30-year-old Texan missed his first shot at completing the career Grand Slam. “This golf course, I think, is interesting in a sense of you hit some different clubs off the tee, there’s some strategy involved, but you’ve got to show up and make birdies.
“When you look at the closing stretch on this golf course, especially if you’re in contention on Sunday, you’re not going to be able to just limp in. You’ve got to go out there and you got to make birdies and hit some really, really great shots in order to win this tournament.”
That’s what New England player Keegan Bradley did last year, when he rallied over the closing stretch to overcome England’s Tommy Fleetwood — a two-shot swing on the final hole — to win the Travelers Championship. It was a victory that put Bradley squarely in the conversation of whether the Ryder Cup captain should pick himself for the U.S. team that was facing Europe last September. Ultimately, he didn’t.
Fleetwood was crushed making a bogey on the final hole as Bradley made a birdie, particularly because he had yet to win on U.S. soil. He took care of that in much grander style two months later by winning the Tour Championship for the 2025 FedEx Cup championship.
“As disappointed and gutted as I was, I felt like I got a lot of support from it,” Fleetwood said of the runner-up finish last year at TPC River Highlands. “I’ve seen Rory (McIlroy) talk about it before, like you go through those upsets and you wait for the next day, and you realize maybe it’s not as bad as you think, and you have to get back to work no matter what.”
McIlroy, who tied for 32nd in the U.S. Open, headed back home to London instead of playing the Travelers Championship, the third time this year he has chosen not to play a $20 million signature event.
That’s not a requirement, and it won’t be in 2028, when the PGA Tour embarks on a bold, new competition model that essentially divides the tour into two circuits — the Championship Series of some 24 events (including majors) and $20 million purses, and the Challenger Series for players to try to earn their way into the top tier.
Key to the change is the Championship Series will be 120 players on average, instead of 72 players who now compete at the Travelers Championship and other signature events. That appeals to Scheffler as much as anything else.
“I think what people want is to get the best players playing together more often,” he said. “I’m not sure if the smaller fields were a huge fan favorite, so getting fields back to 120-man fields, getting a cut back, I think it’s a good change.”
Eight of his 20 victories on the PGA Tour have had smaller fields, including the 64-man Match Play Championship he won in 2022, when he first rose to No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking. That includes a pair of postseason events and five signature events.
“I think when you look at larger fields, it will be much harder to win tournaments,” Scheffler said. “It will be different than the old days on tour where you could win a tournament where there wasn’t many of the top players playing.”
Scheffler said winning any of the tournaments on the Championship Series in 2020 will be significant.
“You’ll have beaten pretty much all of the best players in the world in order to do it,” he said. “So I’m excited about it.”
Scheffler is the only player to go from a major title to a signature event victory in consecutive weeks, doing so in 2024 at the Masters and the RBC Heritage. That task now falls to Clark, who is coming down from the high of winning at Shinnecock Hills to add a second U.S. Open title to his 2023 victory at Los Angeles Country Club.