Scottie Scheffler and Tom Kim had a fun night Tuesday.
The duo celebrated their birthdays in Hartford, Connecticut, site of the 2023 Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands. On Wednesday, Scheffler turned 27 and Kim 21. They went out and got pizza and then had dessert.
Scheffler posted a story on his Instagram account with Kim and a pizza in front of them, saying happy birthday. Kim also posted pictures and a video later, which included giant cookies and a sparkling candle.
That’s right, a sparkling candle. And it was hilarious watching the top-ranked golfer in the world and Kim, a two-time PGA Tour winner, act like kids again as they freaked out over the sparkles.
CROMWELL, Conn. — Connecticut has a reputation for being a quiet little part of the United States, but there were plenty of interesting things happening on the range before the start of the 2023 Travelers Championship. First, Collin Morikawa, Kurt Kitayama and several other TaylorMade staffers started testing the brand’s yet-to-be-released MG4 wedges. Then, Golfweek spotted a prototype Callaway Apex CB 4-iron in Adam Svensson’s bag on Tuesday evening. At the same time, several Titleist staffers are continuing the brand’s seeding process and testing the new T100, T150 and T200 irons.
Take a look at those clubs and many others spotted on the range and near the practice green at TPC River Highlands:
During Sunday’s final round of the 123rd U.S. Open, Wyndham Clark escaped with just one dropped shot at the par-5 eighth hole after his second shot bounced left and into a dry barranca. On his first attempt to dislodge the ball from the underbrush, his club slid underneath the ball and didn’t move. He hacked at it again and this time the ball screamed over the green. At that moment, Clark said his mind started racing and it looked as if his dream of winning a major might unravel like a spool of thread. Fortunately, caddie John Ellis stepped in to set his player at ease.
“He said, ‘Hey, Dub, we’re fine. We’re just going to get this up-and-down and we’re fine,’” recalled Clark.
Clark, 29, and Ellis, 43, are back at it this week at TPC River Highlands for the Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Connecticut. The duo first teamed up at Oregon in 2016 after Clark transferred there from Oklahoma State for his senior year. Oregon had just won the national title and its star player, Aaron Wise, turned pro, freeing up enough financial aid for men’s head coach Casey Martin, who had recruited Clark in high school when he played in the Pacific Coast Amateur in Eugene, Oregon, to bring him on board. At the same time, Ellis’s pro career was fizzling out.
He had turned pro in 2003 after being named a two-time All-Pac-10 player at Oregon and bounced around golf’s minor leagues, winning the Canadian Tour’s Order of Merit in 2008 and twice qualifying for the U.S. Open in 2008 and 2011. Between 2004 and 2011, “Jelly,” as the other caddies call him, played in nine PGA Tour events, missing the cut in seven of them, and made just 16 Korn Ferry Tour starts between 2005 and 2015. With his playing career stalled, Ellis turned to coaching, returning to his alma mater as an assistant to Martin.
Clark, who lost his mother at age 19 and was prone to emotional outbursts on the course, was in need of a fresh start. Martin looked to Ellis to help rebuild his confidence on the course.
“I put a plan in place to get him get him back to where his talent could come out. I just kind of connected the dots,” Martin said. “At our first event, I said, ‘You’re going to be watching over this guy a lot. I want you to caddie for him and play a big role in his life and just be with him all the time and make sure he’s mentally and emotionally in a good place.’ John did an unbelievable job for a guy that’s never coached before. He and Wyndham hit it off. He has an amazing ability to kind of tease Wyndham and to get his point across without being overly serious. He absolutely nailed it.”
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Under Ellis’s watchful eye, Clark blossomed into the 2017 Pac-12 Conference individual champion and was named Golfweek’s Collegiate Player of the Year.
Unfortunately, for Martin, Ellis did such a good job that when Clark turned pro, he took Ellis with him to be his caddie. Ellis had played enough at the highest level to realize Clark had all the tools to be a star on the PGA Tour.
“I mean, he is a huge talent. I mean, he’s not a medium talent. He is a massive, massive talent,” Martin said. “I mean, top 10 player in the world talent wise, for sure. If he just, you know, doesn’t get in his own way, which is easier said than done.”
Strangely enough, Ellis had a reputation for being a hot-head too, the type of player who didn’t hesitate to snap a club in half if it was misbehaving. But as a caddie for the past five years, he’s been a calming influence for Clark.
“He was Tyrrell Hatton as a player and Tony Robbins as a caddie,” CBS analyst Colt Knost said.
In what he described as an intervention, Ellis was a prominent voice in convincing Clark to begin seeing mental coach Julie Elion, which has paid quick dividends. Last week, Clark described Ellis, who was awarded the first-ever U.S. Open Caddie Award, as a friend, mentor and coach, too.
“Our relationship has been so close and John has been kind of my rock out here. He’s a great caddie, and he’s had opportunities to caddie for other people and he turned it down because he wanted to be there for me,” Clark said. “I owe a lot to him. I feel like John is meant to be my caddie, but it’s so much more than just a business relationship. We’re really close and good friends, and I’m close with his family and he’s close with mine. This just makes it so much more special that we have that bond and relationship.”
StrackaLine offers hole-by-hole maps for TPC River Highlands and the Travelers Championship.
TPC River Highlands – site of this week’s Travelers Championship on the PGA Tour – features a design by Bobby Weed that opened in 1989 in Cromwell, Connecticut.
The current layout was built on the site of a former course, Middletown Golf Club, that opened in 1928. It then became Edgewood Country Club in 1934. The site was reworked by famed architect Pete Dye in 1982 as TPC of Connecticut before Weed became involved. Weed most recently worked on the course in 2016, remodeling bunkers and updating the strategic demands.
Short by modern Tour standards, the private TPC River Highlands will play to 6,852 yards with a par of 70 this week.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week at TPC River Highlands.
Everything you need to know for the first round from TPC River Highlands.
After a week in L.A. for the U.S. Open, the PGA Tour is in Cromwell, Connecticut, for the 2023 Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands.
World No. 6 Xander Schauffele is the defending champion thanks to his two-shot win over Sahith Theegala and J.T. Poston last year. Schauffele, fresh off a top 10 at Los Angeles Country Club, is joined by U.S. Open champ Wyndham Clark, who will play the first two days with Max Homa nad Justin Thomas.
Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, U.S. Open runner-up Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland and Matt Fitzpatrick in the field for the final designated event of the 2022-23 regular season.
Scheffler is the betting favorite at +600, followed by Rahm and Cantlay at +1100 and McIlroy at +1200.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for the first round of the 2023 Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands.
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CROMWELL, Conn. — It has been almost two years since TaylorMade released the Milled Grind 3 (MG3) wedges, so it should not be a surprise that the Carlsbad, California-based equipment maker is ready to come out with new short-game tools for staff players like Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Nelly Korda and Tommy Fleetwood.
Tuesday in the practice area at TPC River Highlands, site of this week’s Travelers Championship, Golfweek spotted Morikawa hard at work with several TaylorMade PGA Tour reps. When the two-time major winner wasn’t testing with Stealth 2 driver heads, he was trying new Milled Grind 4 (MG4) wedges that TaylorMade has brought to the PGA Tour for the first time.
TaylorMade representatives are not sharing details about the wedges yet, but in-hand photos and observations reveal a few things.
At least three sole grinds.Golfweek saw wedges marked S, LB and HB, which typically stands for standard, low bounce and high bounce.
New surface roughening. The MG3 wedges were designed with a series of raised micro-ribs in the raw steel hitting area, but the MG4 wedges do not have them. Instead, there are microgrooves running at a 45-degree angle to the main grooves. If a golfer opens the face of the MG4 wedges, the microgrooves square to the target line and likely provide extra friction for added spin.
Lots of milling. As the name implies, the MG4 wedges have a milled sole from the toe to the heel. Milling requires a computer to direct a fast-spinning bit to pass back and forth across the club, shaving off tiny pieces of material to create the exact shape that designers request. It is the most-precise method of manufacturing and helps TaylorMade ensure that the sole configurations are the same on every club.
Below are in-hand images of TaylorMade’s yet-to-be-released Milled Grind 4 wedges:
The next designated event on the PGA Tour schedule is here as the best players in the world are in Cromwell, Connecticut, for the 2023 Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands.
The best field in tournament history is set to battle for a $20 million purse with $3.6 million going to the winner. World No. 6 Xander Schauffele, fresh off a T-10 at the U.S. Open, is the defending champion thanks to his two-shot win over J.T. Poston and Sahith Theegala last season.
Scottie Scheffler is the betting favorite +600, followed by Jon Rahm and Patrick Cantlay at +1100 and Rory McIlroy at +1200.
Despite the plethora of superstar power in the field, there are a few names to keep an eye on further down the odds list.
Here are five sleeper picks for the 2023 Travelers Championship.
Kim seems like the perfect course fit for TPC River Highlands.
The third men’s major championship of the year is now in the rearview mirror and it’s time to head to New England.
TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut, hosts the 2023 Travelers Championship, the next designated event on the PGA Tour schedule.
Eight of the top nine players in the Official World Golf Ranking are set to tee it up come Thursday: Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland, Xander Schauffele, Matt Fitzpatrick and Max Homa. This will be the strongest field in the tournament’s history.
Schauffele enters the week as the defending champion after his two-shot win over J.T. Poston and Sahith Theegala last season.
Golf course
TPC River Highlands | Par 70 | 6,852 yards
Course history
Course history at TPC River Highlands for the #TravelersChamp going back to 2015.
-Includes average finish position and Strokes Gained per round in each category. Players are sorted by SG: Total.
A loaded field is headed to TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut, for the 2023 Travelers Championship.
This designated event is set to host defending champion Xander Schauffele — who used a final-round 62 to win last year — Scottie Scheffler, Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland.
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Scheffler tied for 13th in 2022, while McIlroy finished T-19.
Jordan Spieth, the 10th-ranked golfer in the Official World Golf Ranking and 2017 Travelers winner, is not in the field. Tour members are allowed to skip one designated event this season. The players will battle for a $20 million purse.
Here is the full field for the Travelers Championship in the Constitution State.
Xander Schauffele, who recorded a record-tying 62 in the first round of the U.S. Open, will defend his title at next week’s Travelers Championship.