Biltmore Championship Ashville: Experienced trio chanced in North Carolina

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Brand-new event kicks off the FedEx Fall Series

The inaugural edition of the Biltmore Championship Ashville is the first of the eight rejigged Fall Series events in 2026.

The now defunct Procore Championship, which was won last year by Scottie Scheffler as he warmed up for the 2025 Ryder Cup, has been dropped from the schedule, and so too has the Sanderson Farms Championship.

After a week off to accommodate the Presidents Cup, the Series will restart with the third edition of the Bank of Utah Championship in two weeks' time before it heads to Japan for the Baycurrent Classic and Bermuda for the Bermuda Championship.

The Series' fifth event, the Mexico Open, which will be played at the end of October, one week before the World Wide Technology Championship in Mexico, has moved from its early year slot that it's held since 2022, and the Series' penultimate event, like this week's tournament, is a brand-new one called the Austin Championship.

As usually, the final FedEx Fall Series event will be the RSM Classic at the end of November.

As Scottie demonstrated at the Procure Championship last year, anyone can play in the Fall Series but only those outside of the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings after the Tour Championship will accumulate further points over the duration of the eight-event Series.

The top 10 players on the FedEx Cup points list at the end of the Fall Series, who are not already exempt, will earn eligibility for two early season Signature Events in 2027 - the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the genesis Invitational - and anyone that finishes inside the top 125 of the FedEx Cup standings at the end of the eight events will keep their cards.

Those finishing 126 to 150 will have conditional status in 2027 but anyone outside the top 150 will lose their cards, although they can attempt to win one of five cars available at Q-School.

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Venue

The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, Ashville, North Carolina.

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Course details

Par 71, 7,249 yards 

The Cliffs is a Jack Nicklaus design with two distinctive nines that only opened in 2005.

The front nine holes wind across open fields of former farmland, playing across soft ridges that feature bunkers that can create multiple risk and reward opportunities.

The back nine is very different and plays through native woodland vegetation, criss-crossing over and around mountain streams.

The course has fast bentgrass greens, bentgrass tees and fairways and Kentucky bluegrass rough.

The course is at altitude, so club selection is trickier than normal and water is in play on seven holes.

This is what Nicklaus said about the layout.

"Walnut Cove provides an extraordinary natural setting for golf. Areas on this course make you feel as if you are playing through a national forest."

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Weather forecast

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TV coverage

Live on Sky Sports all four days, starting at 18:00 on Thursday.

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Look to Ohio and California for clues

We're clearly operating in the dark with a brand-new venue and the fact that it's the first opportunity on the PGA Tour for those ranked outside the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings in at least a month doesn't help either.

Nicklaus venues tend to offer up plenty of space off the tee but the back nine could be tighter than his traditional layouts but we do have a couple of courses we can look at for clues.

The high-profile Memorial Tournament has been staged at the Nicklaus-designed Muirfield Village since 1976 and that too has bluegrass rough and bentgrass fairways and tees.

Anyone that's played well at Muirfield may be worthy of consideration and anyone that's performed nicely at the Barracuda Championship should be of interest too.

There was no Barracuda Championship this year due to the conclusion of its sponsorship agreement with Barracuda Networks but the event, previously known as the Reno Tahoe Open, could yet return to the schedule in future.

Like Walnut Cove and Muirfield Village, the Barracuda's venue, the old Greenwood Course at the Tahoe Mountain Club is a Nicklaus design with bentgrass fairways and greens and given it's tree-lined with risk reward holes in a mountain setting at altitude, it may correlate very nicely.

Collin Morikawa won the once only staged Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village a year after he got off the mark on the PGA Tour in the Barracuda and Ryan Gerard lost a playoff to JT Poston at this year's Memorial, a year after winning the last edition of the Barracuda, so those two Nicklaus courses have crossover form.

Looking a little further back, the PGA Championship was staged at Valhalla in 2024, another Nicklaus course with bentgrass greens and the Canadian Open was regularly held at Glen Abbey, another Nicklaus layout, but not since 2018.

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Outsiders have faired well in the FedEx Fall opener

It may be worth chancing a few long-shots this week.

Although Scheffler won the FedEx Cup Fall opener, the Procore Championship, lasy year, outsiders have fared well in the event recently.

Patton Kizzire won the tournament at 310.0309/1 in 2024 and between 2018 and 2020, all three winners went off at triple-figure odds.

Most of the field this week will not have played for at least a month, and a long-shot candidate may well take the title.

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Can The Postman deliver in his home state again?

The younger generation dominate the market here, but I've plumped for three experienced multiple winners who all have form at Jack Nicklaus layouts.

Like many pro golfers, JT Poston now lives in Sea Island, Georgia, but given he's from Hickory, North Carolina, which is a little over an hour away from Ashville, the four time PGA Tour winner may well have some experience of this week's venue. And even if he doesn't, having won the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village in June, he may well take to the place anyway.

As a winner this year sitting at number 32 on the FedEx Cup standings, Poston is here to win the title and for no other reason. That clarity of purpose may serve him well.

He's already a winner in his home state, having won the Wyndham Championship in 2019, and this looks like a great opportunity for The Postman to deliver again.

I'm in absolute agreement with Dave Tindall, who likes the chances of the Muirfield winner, Billy Horschel, who has decided to play here this week, instead of Wentworth, where he would be bidding to win the BMW PGA Championship for a third time.

Just a few months off his 40^th birthday, Horschel is sitting at number 100 on the FedEx Cup standings, so it makes sense to stay at home and try and secure his future.

Colombia's Nico Echavarria is an interesting candidate given he has no such concerns about his future after winning the Cognizant Classic at PGA National in March, a track Jack Nicklaus completely revamped in 1990.

That was Echavarria's third PGA Tour title and his second was another Fall event, the Baycurrent Classic.

He's also played well at another couple of Fall Series events, the World Wide Technology Championship and the RSM Classic, so it makes sense for him to continue playing and he looks fairly priced.

Echavarria benefitted form a late Shane Lowry collapse at the Cognizant so seeing the Irishman win easily at the weekend may also provide some inspiration. I was happy to chance Echavarria at 75.074/1.

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