Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club
nikita gehlod
4 months ago
The “Texas Swing” comes to an end with the Charles Schwab Challenge played at the legendary Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. This year the course is celebrating its 80th anniversary and marking eight decades as the PGA Tour’s longest running host venue for a non-major event.
Though the event’s name has changed numerous times, Colonial CC has hosted this tournament since 1946, making it the longest-running event on the PGA Tour held at the same location. From its beginning, the tournament has seen the most illustrious names in golf among its champions, including Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, and Tom Watson.
Colonial is one of those rare gems that has stood the test of time, challenging the world’s best golfers year after year. Colonial is a challenging, tree-lined shot-makers course with tight fairways, numerous doglegs, and small greens. It is perhaps the PGA Tour’s quintessential positional course that places a premium on accuracy off the tee and mid-iron play on approach. Ball-strikers with past success on strategic courses, who can be creative and shape their shots, and spike with their putter on the bentgrass greens will have an edge.
Jordan Spieth, perhaps, summed up Colonial best by saying, “Fit it into tight windows, hit fairways, and control the ball on the green.” With an average winning score of 12-under over the last 15 years, the list of recent past champions here is full of quality ball-strikers who can get hot with the flatstick, including players like Ben Griffin, Sam Burns, Daniel Berger, Kevin Na, Justin Rose, Jordan Spieth, Chris Kirk, and Zach Johnson.
The Field
The 2026 Charles Schwab Challenge field looks noticeably different this year as the PGA TOUR’s Signature Event schedule continues to reshape participation at several longtime stops. For the first time in his career, Texas native and past champion Jordan Spieth will not tee it up at Colonial Country Club, while fellow Dallas-area star Scottie Scheffler is also absent from the field. Spieth acknowledged the difficult scheduling situation earlier this season, saying, “It’s just a rock and a hard place for myself and Scottie and guys who are local, who grew up here. There is just such a premium on the elevated events.”
Even without those two headliners, the field still features strong depth at the top with seven of the top 20 players in the Official World Golf Ranking scheduled to compete. J. J. Spaun enters the week as the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 9 in the world, followed by Russell Henley at No. 11 and Ludvig Aberg at No. 13. Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama, Robert MacIntyre, and defending champion Ben Griffin also headline a field that still brings plenty of high-end ball-striking talent to one of the TOUR’s most demanding positional courses.
Several former champions also return this week, including Davis Riley, Emiliano Grillo, Kevin Kisner, Chris Kirk, and Zach Johnson, while other notables including Akshay Bhatia, Rickie Fowler, Keegan Bradley, Harry Hall, and last week’s Byron Nelson winner, Wyndham Clark will look to add their names to the tournament’s historic list of winners and earn Colonial’s iconic tartan jacket.
Colonial Country Club – History
Located on the south bank of the Clear Fork of the Trinity River and just to the northwest of Texas Christian University sits Colonial Country Club. Founded in 1936 by Marvin Leonard, it was created out of his stubborn resolve to prove the naysayers wrong regarding the successful establishment of bentgrass greens in Texas.
Leonard convinced two visionaries in the golf architecture world, John Bredemus and Perry Maxwell to assist and help design the layout of the course. Bredemus drew up much of the original plan with Maxwell coming in after to improve the course by adjusting the routing of the holes. Maxwell specifically focused on toughening up holes 3-5 which today make up the “Horrible Horseshoe”.
When the course opened in 1936 it was quite similar to other layouts built during the same period. Narrow tree-lined fairways and tiny greens were the norm. And yes, Leonard defied the odds as Colonial sported the first bentgrass greens in Texas. Though unspectacular in many ways, throughout the years, Colonial has become the most iconic course in Texas. It hosted the U.S. Open in 1941 and became a mainstay as an annual Tour event starting in 1946. It was nicknamed “Hogan’s Alley” because of Ben Hogan winning five different times here on his home course.