Charles Schwab Challenge 2025: Superb Scheffler all set for Colonial success

• Form at Deere Run well worth considering 

• Colonial a tough place to play catch up

• Read my Soudal Open preview here

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Tournament History

Formally known as, the Fort Worth Invitational, the Dean & Deluca, the Crowne Plaza, the Bank of America, the MasterCard and the Southwestern Bell, the Charles Schwab Challenge was first staged in 1946.

Winners of the event are given a plaid tartan jacket, and their names are etched on to a Wall of Champions adjacent to the first tee.

Local resident, Ben Hogan, won the first two renewals before going on to win it again three more times in the '50s. Nobody else has won the title more than twice.

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Venue

Colonial Country Club, Fort Worth, Texas.

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Course Details

Par 70 - 7,289 yards 
Stroke Average in 2024 - 70.82 

Designed by John Bredemus and opened in 1936, Colonial Country Club staged the US Open as soon as 1941, after Perry Maxwell had altered holes three, four and five. 

This wonderful classic course has hosted this event since its inception and on the PGA Tour, only the US Masters has been staged at the same venue for longer, but it looked significantly different at last year's renewal. 

As soon as the 2023 edition of the event concluded, PGA Tour player and Colonial member, Ryan Palmer, consulted with renowned course designers, Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, as they moved in to undertake a $20 million renovation. 

Using footage and photos from the US Open in 1941, Hanse and Wagner restored the course as close as possible to the original design. 

As many as 20 bunkers were removed, the Trinity River was brought into play on two holes, trees were removed and greens were moved and lowered. Barrancas were incorporated into nine holes in total and the par three eighth and 13^th holes were remodelled.

It was an extensive project and the renovation was very well received. This what the US Ryder Cup captain, Keegan Bradley said about the changes. 

"I very rarely come to a golf course that's been redone and think it's better, but this is definitely better."  

The clip below provides some great insight into the renovation.

 

Colonial is a tight, tree-lined track with 12 dog-legged holes and small bentgrass greens that usually run at around 12 on the Stimpmeter. The course is littered with strategically placed fairway bunkers and water is theme throughout. 

The par five first hole is consistently the easiest hole on the course and the par four second historically ranks as the second or third easiest but the next three faced, which were the only holes Maxwell altered prior to the US Open in 1941, are tougher and nicknamed the 'Horrible Horseshoe'. 

Colonial CC is often affectionately referred to as 'Hogan's Alley' after the five-time winner Ben. 

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Weather Forecast

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TV Coverage

Live on Sky Sports all four days, starting at 17:00 on Thursday.

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Last Eight Winners with Pre-event Exchange Prices

2024 - Davis Riley -14 600.0599/1
2023 - Emiliano Grillo -9 90.089/1 (playoff)
2022 - Sam Burns -9 32.031/1 (playoff)
2021 - Jason Kokrak -14 75.074/1
2020 - Daniel Berger -15 120.0119/1 (playoff)
2019 - Kevin Na -13 90.089/1
2018 - Justin Rose -20 16.015/1
2017 - Kevin Kisner -10 32.031/1

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What Will it Take to Win the Charles Schwab Challenge?

The 2022 playoff protagonists, the runner-up, Scottie Scheffler, and the winner, Sam Burns, ranked first and third for Driving Distance and the 2021 winner, Jason Kokrak, ranked first for DD but that's unusual.

Davis Riley ranked as high as 18^th last year but as demonstrated by the 2023 winner, Emiliano Grillo, who ranked 66^th for DD, this is not a track that can be overpowered and length off the tee is usually an irrelevance.

Colonial is short by modern standards and there are just two par fives. Irons are taken off several tees and the average DD ranking of the ten winners before Kokrak was exactly 30^th.

Driving Accuracy is a more important stat than DD and that was the case again last year after the changes.

Riley only ranked 38^th but Keegan Bradley, who finished tied for second, ranked third and the most accurate driver in the field that week was Collin Morikawa, who finished fourth.

Hitting it straight off every tee isn't absolutely essential though. Jordan Spieth only ranked 54^th when he won in 2016 and Chris Kirk ranked 60^th ten years ago!

Kirk was one of the strangest winners, statistically, that I've ever seen on the PGA Tour. He basically just putted incredibly well all week long, averaging an amazing 1.57, so we should perhaps ignore the fact that (in addition to only ranking 40^th for DD, 60^th for DA and 39^th for Scrambling) he ranked a lowly 62^nd for Greens In Regulation.

Riley ranked sixth for Greens In regulation and 14 of the last 17 winners have ranked inside the top ten for that stat. As many as 12 of those 17 ranked inside the top-seven and Grillo ranked eighth two years ago so it's been a really key stat over the years.

Kevin Kisner ranked second for Scrambling when he won here in in 2017 and Spieth ranked first nine years ago but the last seven winners have all got across the line with unusually ordinary Scrambling stats - ranking 42^nd, 25^th, 15^th, 30^th, 32^nd, 46^th and 16^th but all six putted brilliantly.

The last seven winners have had a Putting Average ranking of ninth, eighth, fifth, fifth, fourth, fourth, and first and other than Kisner in 2017, every winner in the last 20 years has ranked 17^th or better. And 14 of the 20 have ranked inside the top-five for Putting Average.

We've only had nine years' worth of Strokes Gained Data, but Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green is definitely the key SG stat to consider.

Grillo only ranked 20^th for SG: T2G two years ago but Riley ranked first last year and the worst any of the other seven winners have ranked was ninth (Burns in 2022).

Justin Rose is the only winner in the last nine years to rank outside the top eight for SG: Putting but the second and third that year, Brooks Koepka and the 2023 winner, Grillo, ranked second and first, so they're the two SG stats to concentrate on.

Given we're in Texas, an ability to handle windy conditions is usually essential.

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Is There an Angle In?

Augusta form holds up well here but Deere Run, home of the John Deere Classic, is the course that appears to correlate the best.

Zach Johnson has won this title twice recently so of the ten men to win the last 17 editions, four have also won the US Masters - Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Phil Mickelson, and Adam Scott.

The 2018 winner, Justin Rose, has now lost two playoffs at Augusta and the two-time US Masters winner, Scheffler, has a great record here too but they're all top-class players that can win anywhere so Deere Run is the best place to start for clues.

David Toms, Kenny Perry, Steve Stricker, Zach Johnson, and Jordan Spieth have all recently won this title and the John Deere Classic, staged at Deere Run in Illinois. The 2017 runner-up, Sean O'Hair's first PGA Tour success was at Deere Run, and Brandt Snedeker and Tim Clark have both finished runner-up in both tournaments.

Sebastian Munoz, who topped the Strokes Gained Putting stats when finishing third here in 2021 went on to lead the John Deere Classic through three rounds a couple of months later. Lucas Glover, who had finished eighth at Colonial went on to win, and the 2019 Colonial winner, Kevin Na, finished tied for second.

Riley has only played Deere Run once and he failed to make it through to the weekend but the 2023 result cemented the link between the two courses brilliantly...

The winner, Grillo, had previously finished runner-up at Deere Run and behind Grillo in sixth place was the surprise 2018 JDC winner, Michael Kim. That was only his third top-six finish on the PGA Tour since he'd won at Deere Run five years earlier.

Adam Schenk, who was beaten by Grillo in extra time, only had five top six finishes on the PGA Tour prior to his second here and two of them were at Deere Run! He finished sixth in 2019 and fourth in 2021. 

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Is There an Identikit Winner?

With length an irrelevance, the wily old pros have a great chance to add to their silverware here. 

Most winners here have already bagged plenty of titles, but the profile of the winners appears to be changing somewhat and last year's champ, Riley, was winning his first individual title at the age of 27. 

As many as four of the last nine winners have been in their 20s, and Grillo was 30 when he won two years ago, but prior to Spieth's victory nine years ago, Sergio Garcia, in 2001, was the last player under the age of 30 to take the title and eight of the last 26 winners have been aged 40 or over. 

Colonial is a course that takes a bit of getting to know and debutants have a poor record. 

Historically, the winners have already played the event around eight times on average and it's rare to see someone win their first PGA Tour event here. 

Riley had won the Zurich Classic pairs event in 2023 alongside his good friend, Nick Hardy so Sergio Garcia was the last first timer to win, in 2001, but he'd already won in Europe. 

Before that, Australia's Ian Baker-Finch won his first PGA Tour title in this event in 1989 but he too had already tasted success, having already won Down Under. We all know how good the 2017 US Masters winner, Sergio, is and Baker-Finch won an Open Championship. 

Given how impeccably good all areas of a player's game need to be to win here, it's probably not surprising to see so many major champions, Ryder Cuppers and Presidents Cup players have been successful here. 

The cream tends to rise to the top here, although five of the last six winners have been fairly big in the market, going off at 90.089/1, 75.074/1, 120.0119/1, 90.089/1 and a whopping 600.0599/1.

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Winner's Position and Exchange Price Pre-Round Four

2024 - David Riley - led by four strokes 2.26/5
2023 - Emiliano Grillo - T4 - trailing by four 24.023/1
2022 - Sam Burns T17 - trailing by seven 250.0249/1
2021 - Jason Kokrak - solo second - trailing by one 3.3512/5
2020 - Daniel Berger T7 - trailing by two 29.028/1
2019 - Kevin Na led by two strokes 3.4549/20
2018 - Justin Rose led by four strokes 1.42/5
2017 - Kevin Kisner T5 - trailing by three 11.010/1

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In-Play Tactics

Riley won wire-to-wire last year and four of the last eitght winners were in front with a round to go but it's not always easy to convert from the front here and no 54-hole leader or co-leader won here between 2008 and 2016.

Being up with the pace is typically the way to go though and being on the heels of the leaders is usually the ideal place to be.

The two winners that preceded Spieth's victory in 2016 were seven and six strokes adrift and outside the top-ten at halfway but that's unusual.

Prior to Adam Scott's victory 11 years ago, Rory Sabbatini in 2007 and Sergio Garcia in 2001, had been the only two winners this century to be outside the top-ten and more than four strokes adrift through 36 holes and 19 of the last 23 winners have been no more than two strokes off the lead with a round to go.

Grillo trailed by four and recent winners, Kevin Kisner and Chris Kirk, trailed by three, so although it's hard to win from the front, winning from miles back is very rare but we did witness it three years ago.

Having been matched at a high of 570.0569/1 and having begun the final day trailing by seven strokes and trading at 250.0249/1, Sam Burns teed off an hour and 25 minutes before the final two-ball and when he set the clubhouse target of nine-under-par, it didn't look like it would be enough.

With still eight holes to play, the third-round leader, Scheffler, who had started the day trading at odds-on and leading by a stroke on -11, was tied with four others on ten-under-par and although conditions weren't great and the wind was still picking up, it was still very long odds-on that someone would remain ahead of Burns but nobody got past him and he ended up beating Scheffler in a playoff.

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Superb Scheffler all set for Colonial success

The Sportsbook went 11/43.75 yesterday (Monday) about Scottie Scheffler winning this week and unsurprisingly, it didn't last long.

Scheffler 11/4 with @Betfair to win the @CSChallengeFW looks more than fair

-- Steve Rawlings (@SteveThePunter) May 19, 2025

He finished 55^th on debut back in 2020 and missed the cut here in 2021 but in the last three years he's finished second, third and second again last year.

He traded at as short as 1.75/7 in 2022 when he led the event by two with a round to go before losing in extra-time to his close friend, Sam Burns. Scheffler missed out on the playoff by a stroke 12 months later and he was matched in-running at 1.910/11 last year, despite sitting tied for 79^th after round one and despite only ever getting to within three strokes of the wire-to-wire winner, Davis Riley.

He clearly loves the layout and the changes to the course before last year's edition didn't change that, so he looks a very fair price at anything around the 5/23.50 mark.

There's a chance he might be fatigued after his victory last week but he's very professional and he's shown on numerous occasions that he can maintain a run of form.

Scheffler won his first major title at the US Masters in 2023, a fortnight after winning the now defunct WGC Match Play in his previous start. He defended the Players Championship one week after he'd  won the Arnold Palmer Championship last year. After finishing runner-up at the Houston Open in his next start, he won the US Masters and the RBC Heritage in consecutive weeks.

Although that produced a set of figures reading 1-1-2-1-1, Scheffler has never won three events in-a-row but it's only a matter of time before he does and he has a fabulous chance to achieve the feat here.

His victory in the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, where he was odds-on after nine holes of round one and a 1.011/100 chance with 18 to play, certainly didn't take much out of him and that was now three weeks ago.

He's back in the sort of form that saw him win seven in 12 last summer and he's just won at a venue that he wasn't familiar with.

His only previous outing at this year's US PGA Championship venue - Quail Hollow - was in the Presidents Cup back in 2022, when he performed poorly, so last week's five-stroke margin victory was quite the win.

We're now in the realms of having to ponder whether short prices about Scheffler are worth taking, much like we had to do week after week with Tiger Woods. As with Woods in his pomp, when the venue suits, the price is often fair.

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*You can follow me on Twitter @SteveThePunter

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