Brooks Koepka knows every blade of grass at PGA National. He grew up playing the Champion Course in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, teeing it up there since he was nine years old. Now, after his high-profile stint on LIV Golf, the five-time major champion is finally coming home.

The Cognizant Classic marks Koepka's first appearance at PGA National since 2022 and just his third PGA Tour start of the 2026 season. For a player who has built his career on performing at the biggest stages, there is something fitting about returning to the course where it all began.

"This is my hometown course," Koepka has said of PGA National, a layout that has tested the best players in the world for decades with its notorious Bear Trap stretch of holes. His history there speaks for itself — a tie for second in 2019 that remains one of the best finishes the tournament has produced in recent memory.

Koepka arrives in Florida looking to fine-tune his game after a frustrating outing at Torrey Pines. One notable change: he has ditched his blade putter in favor of a mallet, a switch aimed at steadying his stroke on the greens. It is the kind of quiet adjustment that can pay dividends for a player of his caliber, and PGA National's slick, undulating putting surfaces will provide an immediate test.

But if Koepka's return provides a compelling storyline, the rest of the field tells a more troubling tale. On Monday, a wave of withdrawals sent ripples through the tournament. Ben Griffin, Adam Scott, and Jacob Bridgeman — three of the top betting favorites — all pulled out, leaving organizers scrambling and fans wondering what happened to the star power.

The answer, as it often is on today's PGA Tour, comes down to scheduling and priorities. With the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship looming on the calendar in the weeks ahead, many of the game's top competitors are choosing to conserve their energy for those lucrative Signature Events rather than grind through a standard-field tournament in late February.

It is a dynamic that has become painfully familiar for events like the Cognizant Classic, and one that new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp is acutely aware of. Rolapp, along with Tiger Woods and his Future Competitions Committee, has been exploring ways to reshape the tour's schedule with the concept of "scarcity" at its core — the idea that fewer, more stacked events would generate greater excitement and higher television ratings than a bloated calendar full of half-empty fields.

The logic makes sense on paper, but for tournaments caught on the wrong side of that equation, the future looks uncertain. When your top three favorites all withdraw in a single day, it becomes difficult to sell fans on the product, no matter how storied the venue.

For now, Koepka's presence provides a lifeline of star quality. A five-time major winner playing on his childhood course is the kind of narrative that can carry a broadcast and fill grandstands. Whether it is enough to sustain the Cognizant Classic in a rapidly evolving PGA Tour landscape is another question entirely.

As the tour continues its transformation under new leadership, this week in Palm Beach Gardens serves as both a homecoming and a warning. The game's biggest names are increasingly selective about where they compete, and tournaments that cannot guarantee elite fields may soon find themselves on the outside looking in. Koepka may be coming home, but for the Cognizant Classic, the road ahead has never looked more uncertain.