Imagine a long road trip that is best approached in segments. Get from where you started to a particular town or road along the way and the journey turns in a new direction.
On the PGA Tour, that’s called leaving the West Coast and arriving in Florida for a four-week run of tournaments that have spring break vibes with the Masters’ Emerald City coming into focus on the horizon.
It’s West Coast to East Coast. Poa annua to Bermuda. Tiger’s event to Arnie’s event.
Six weeks into the 2026 season and the PGA Tour is on a roll.
Brooks Koepka is back. Scottie Scheffler hasn’t gone anywhere. Collin Morikawa is back. Justin Rose hasn’t gone anywhere.
Young stars Chris Gotterup and Jacob Bridgeman are travel buddies and now they can compare trophies. Jake Knapp has five top-11 finishes in five starts. Pierceson Coody is trending.
Justin Thomas will be back any week now and Tiger Woods is teasing the possibility of teeing it in Augusta in six weeks.
Yes, please.
Seasons, whether it’s football, baseball or professional golf, have their own cadences. The longer the season, the more teams or individuals tend to break them down into smaller pieces. A four-game road trip. Getting to the bye week. Trading California for Florida.
The most surprising trend to develop out West was Scheffler’s first-round funk. Three weeks in a row, Scheffler played himself into a hole, shooting 73-72-74, forcing himself to play from well behind.
The tour’s West Coast swing (we’re counting Hawaii too) came off like a good pre-dinner cocktail, satisfying and setting the tone for what’s to come.
It tends to identify new faces and if Gotterup and Bridgeman weren’t exactly strangers beforehand, they have established their bona fides. In the process, they have reinforced the tour’s model of producing its own new stars, a perpetual process undeterred by LIV Golf’s efforts to entice some of the game’s top young talent.
Gotterup is up to sixth in the world ranking (four of the tour’s 2026 winners – Scheffler, Morikawa, Rose and Gotterup – are ranked among the top six) and appears to be making himself comfortable in his new orbit.
Some players find it for a time – Wyndham Clark won three times in 10 months and now hasn’t won in two years – and maybe that’s where Gotterup is. Or maybe he’s built for the long haul with a homemade swing he trusts and an attitude that feeds his success.
Bridgeman smiled Sunday evening at the fact that he’s now done something Woods and Jack Nicklaus never did – win at Riviera. He’s been on a steady climb and one of the tour’s secrets to success is consistently being at least on the edge of contention.
Playing toward something rather than away from it is what Bridgeman is doing these days even if oxygen got hard for him to find late Sunday afternoon when his lead was melting. He woke up Sunday with a six-stroke lead and rather than pretend it wasn’t there, Bridgeman did his best to embrace it because that’s who he is.
“Yeah, I thought about it. I’m not going to shy away from that,” Bridgeman said.
The most surprising trend to develop out West was Scheffler’s first-round funk. Three weeks in a row, Scheffler played himself into a hole, shooting 73-72-74, forcing himself to play from well behind.
As head-shaking as the first-round trend has been, Scheffler’s response has been noteworthy. He has played the final three rounds in those three events a combined 51-under par. With a week at home before he turns up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational next week, take the under in the first round at Bay Hill.
“You look at three tournaments in a row, I haven’t started off that good. When you look at it like from a macro view, it’s such a small sample size.
“I played now 11 rounds the last few weeks and I had eight pretty solid ones and three I’d like to have back,” Scheffler said Saturday at Riviera before tacking on a final-round 65.
Arnie’s place, with its ankle-deep rough and crusty greens, is where par bites back. The Stadium Course, particularly if the course gets firm and fast, can be as frenetic as a Jason Bourne movie.
While the Florida swing starts without many stars playing the Cognizant Classic, it nevertheless kicks off a new chapter in the tour season with the Players Championship just two weeks away.
In much the same way the signature events at Pebble Beach and Riviera felt like big weeks, it will be that way at Bay Hill and the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. It’s when the season fully finds its rhythm.
After six weeks of scorched-earth scoring (even in soggy Los Angeles), getting to Bay Hill is like hitting the brakes in a hurry. Scheffler won at 27-under in Palm Springs, the winning score at Torrey Pines was 23-under and it was 22-under at Pebble Beach.
Arnie’s place, with its ankle-deep rough and crusty greens, is where par bites back. The Stadium Course, particularly if the course gets firm and fast, can be as frenetic as a Jason Bourne movie.
It’s that time of year when the California dreaming has been packed away, the afternoons are stretching out and all roads lead to Florida.
On the way to Augusta.