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.
Venue
The Cliffs at Walnut Cove, Ashville, North Carolina.
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."
Weather forecast
TV coverage
Live on Sky Sports all four days, starting at 18:00 on Thursday.
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.
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.