Scheffler's bid for career slam and Koepka's search for new home among golf topics for 2026

This was always going to be a different year in golf with the PGA Tour trying to blow up a model that has been around longer than the sand wedge. So it only seems fitting that 2026 starts with a soggy piece of coincidence.

The Sentry, the season opener on the PGA Tour since 1999, was canceled because of water issues that include a dispute over how water is delivered to Kapalua. On what should have been the first official day of tournament week, Maui was under a flood watch Monday.

Go figure.

The PGA Tour season starts next week on a different island and a weaker field amid concern about the future of the Sony Open, in the final year of its title sponsorship and waiting to see whether The Sentry returns to Kapalua.

There's a lot of moving parts and still one central figure — Scottie Scheffler — whose latest run at No. 1 in the world began two weeks before the PGA Tour announced a framework agreement with Saudi-backed LIV Golf. Both seem a lot longer ago.

Here are key topics to contemplate as golf embarks another year.

Four days after Rory McIlroy won the Masters to become the sixth player with the career Grand Slam — and first in 25 years — Scheffler was asked, “Who's next?”

“I've only won one, technically,” he said of his two Masters titles. “I've been playing some pretty good golf and I'm not even close.”

Now he is. Scheffler won the PGA Championship (by five shots) and the British Open (by four shots) and suddenly looks more equipped to get the final leg than McIlroy did for a decade. His first opportunity comes in the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, the only U.S. Open for which Scheffler did not qualify in the last 10 years.

He already has had one close call. Scheffler had the lead going to the back nine at The Country Club in 2022, missed a 25-foot putt on the 18th and finished one shot back.

The chatter at the Saudi International last November was whether Koepka would be part of the LIV Golf League or if he would look at a schedule of some European tour events to go with the four majors.

Now that he is no longer part of LIV, the focus is on his path back to the PGA Tour.

In his favor is letting his PGA Tour membership expire when he joined the Saudi-funded league in 2022, and he was not among the LIV players listed on the antitrust lawsuit against the tour.

The PGA Tour bringing him back this season — before the one-year period since his last LIV appearance — could lead to a precedence that causes division among the loyalists, even though his return would only benefit the tour.

The European tour schedule is not appealing in the weeks leading up to three of the majors — South Africa and Asia ahead of the Masters, Turkey and Spain before the PGA Championship, the Dutch Open two weeks before the U.S. Open.

Nelly Korda became the first player since Tiger Woods in 2010 to go from seven victories one year to none the next, extremely peculiar considering Korda was without significant injury or personal drama except for getting engaged at the end of the year.

She was runner-up by two shots at the U.S. Women's Open, which seemed to take a lot of momentum away. Perhaps most alarming is how few chances Korda had to win after that.

Korda is not the first No. 1 women's golf who went from looking unbeatable to searching. Lydia Ko went through such a spell. Yani Tseng and Ariya Jutanugarn practically disappeared a year after they were No. 1.

There wouldn't seem to be any cause for alarm with the 27-year-old Korda, but her next victory will be an important one.

The buzz word when Brian Rolapp began as CEO of PGA Tour Enterprises was “scarcity," which seemed to indicate a leaner schedule to lend greater importance of tournaments. And then over the next few months, the tour announced fall stops in Austin, Texas, and Asheville, North Carolina.

Where will it all lead?

The big acronym at the tour's GH (Global Home) is FCC (Future Competitions Committee), which is led by TW (Tiger Woods). And the big question is whether a new model can be defined in time for 2027, or whether there will be a bridge year. Also to be considered are media rights that by the current contract go through 2030.

Does the PGA Tour wait until after the Super Bowl to start? Also on the plate is a push to get into bigger markets. The U.S. Open (New York), PGA Championship (Philadelphia) and Presidents Cup (Chicago) combined to give golf a presence in the top five media markets in 2026. Next year, the tour will not be in five of the top 10 markets.

This might be shaping up as a make-or-break year for Jordan Spieth, who has not qualified for a U.S. team since the 2018 Ryder Cup. He hasn't played on the last two teams.

Coming off surgery on his left wrist in August 2024, Spieth narrowly missed out on advancing to the second FedEx Cup playoff event, which would have qualified him for the $20 million signature events. And then he took off the entire fall in a bid to have mind and body ready to go for 2026.

He gets another chance for the career Grand Slam at the PGA Championship outside Philadelphia (his parents grew up in eastern Pennsylvania).

He has played 50 consecutive majors and has been exempt for 49 of them dating to the 2013 U.S. Open. He goes into 2026 with his spot not yet secure for the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.

This has become an annual question for the FCC chairman because of injuries and surgeries, particularly coming off his first year as a pro that Woods did not play in a single tournament.

Woods turned 50 on Dec. 30, making him eligible for the PGA Tour Champions. He can ride a cart on the senior circuit. Woods never liked the idea of riding a cart in real competition. On the PGA Tour, Woods has not finished closer than 16 shots to the winner in the 11 tournaments he has played since his February 2021 car crash outside Los Angeles.

The target is April for the Masters, where Woods has never missed the cut as a pro.

Central to his 2026: Does he have interest in being Ryder Cup captain for Ireland in 2027?

On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season. AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

FILE - Tiger Woods bites down on his club after missing a putt for par on the 18th green during the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational golf tournament, March 25, 2013, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

FILE - Brooks Koepka, of the United States, acknowledges the crowd on the 5th green during the first round of the British Open golf championship at the Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison, File)

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's nuclear watchdog said Wednesday it is scrapping the safety screening for two reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in central Japan after the plant's operator was found to have fabricated data about earthquake risks, in a setback to Japan's attempts to accelerate reactor restarts to boost nuclear energy use.

Chubu Electric Power Co. had applied for safety screening to resume operations at the No. 3 and 4 reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in 2014 and 2015. Two other reactors at the plant are being decommissioned, and a fifth is idle.

The plant, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Tokyo, is located on a coastal area known for potential risks from so-called Nankai Trough megaquakes.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said it started an internal investigation in February after receiving a tip from a whistleblower that the utility had for years provided fabricated data that underestimated potential seismic risks.

The regulator suspended the screening for the reactors after it confirmed the falsification and the utility acknowledged the fabrication in mid-December, said Shinsuke Yamanaka, the watchdog's chair. The NRA is also considering inspecting the utility headquarters.

“Ensuring safety is the first and foremost responsibility for nuclear plant operators and (data fabrication) is an act of betrayal to their task and one that destroys nuclear safety," Yamanaka said.

The scandal surfaced Monday when Chubu Electric President Kingo Hayashi acknowledged that workers at the utility used inappropriate seismic data with an alleged intention to underestimate seismic risks and apologized. He pledged to establish an independent panel for investigation.

The screening, including data that had been approved earlier, would have to start from scratch or possibly be rejected entirely, Yamanaka said.

The move is a setback at a time Japan's government seeks to accelerate reactor restarts to cope with rising energy costs and pressure to reduce carbon emissions.

Public opinion in Japan remains divided due to lingering safety concerns after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns.

Of Japan's 57 commercial reactors, 13 are currently in operation, 20 are offline and 24 others are being decommissioned, according to NRA.

This aerial photo shows Hamaoka nuclear power plant, owned by the Cubu Electric Power Co., in Omaezaki, central Japan, March 26, 2025. (Minoru Iwasaki/Kyodo News via AP)