An open-book test

 This isn't Scottie Scheffler's fault. Let's get that out there right off the hop.

It is not Scottie Scheffler's fault, nor Erik van Rooyen's, nor any of the other golfers who turned the TPC Craig Ranch course in McKinney, Tex., into TPC Chalk Outline over the weekend. And it's not TPC Craig Ranch's fault, either, although the groundskeepers might think about installing a few windmill holes to gin things up for the next visit by the PGA boys.

You say Scheffler was a ridiculous minus-31 over 72 holes to run away with the CJ Cup Byron Nelson over the weekend?

Yeah, well, let's see him put up that kind of baroque number when he has to drop a gap wedge into the clown's mouth on No. 17. Or something like that.

Instead, the Byron Nelson was just normal golf on a normal course. And it says here that's a problem, or at least perhaps is becoming one.

The players, see, have become so good, and their weaponry so advanced, that your average Greater Velveeta Open track increasingly has become an open-book test for them. St. Andrews or Turnberry when the gales blow still can put up a decent fight, as can the usual  tricked-up U.S. Open course. But when the weather's right and it's Whispering Drought Golf Club that awaits ...

Well. Then it's no fight at all. Then it's the CJ Cup Byron Nelson.

In which Scheffler, as noted, finished 31-under and won by eight strokes. Van Rooyen was second at 23-under. Sam Stephens was another three shots back at 20-under. On Sunday, 11 golfers shot 65 or better; across four days, Scheffler put up rounds of 61, 63, 66 and 63.

And while his 253 total tied a PGA record, it wasn't particularly an anomaly. Earlier this season, Hideki Matsuyama shot 35-under on the par-73 Plantation Course in Hawaii.

This does not, of course, imply that golf is becoming far too easy. It's not. It's still, as a friend once called it, an evil game that will grab Bud Light Joe's Titleist when  heleast expects it and deposit somewhere in Outer Mongolia. Also, Bud Light Joe is no Matsuyama or Scheffler; both are terrific players, Scheffler is the best player in the world right now.

 He's also a native Texan who, when he was 6-years-old, got his picture taken with Byron Nelson himself. So this was special for him.

Not so much for TPC Craig Ranch, however. 

Which perhaps really does need a few windmills and clown mouths to slow these guys down.  Or maybe, considering the tournament's namesake, institute a new rule for next year.

Make 'em play with ol' Byron's clubs. That'll fix 'em.