Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions for the Charles Schwab Challenge  

Charles Schwab Challenge Fantasy Preview

If nothing else, Xander Schauffele is a quick learner.

Barely a week after shelling a handsome lead at the Wells Fargo, the Californian found himself in another position of power after 54 holes – this time at the PGA Championship.

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But this time, Schauffele would not be denied. He made just one bogey on Sunday, picking up seven birdies along the way and finding 14/18 GIR – despite the pressures of being chased home by the fast-finishing Bryson DeChambeau and Viktor Hovland.

It was his first victory since the summer of 2022 – crazy for a player of his unquestionable talent, but means that at the age of 30, Schauffele is now a major champion and eight-time winner on the PGA TOUR all told.

You suspect he won’t have to wait another two years for his next title, although he will have to wait a couple of weeks or so for the chance – Schauffele is not in the field for this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge.

Last Event’s Fantasy Results

Last week was all about the Xander-Bryson combo. 

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Those two together on a roster would have been the key to success, ours however was in the hands of Rory who fell to a T12 finish. 

Charles Schwab Challenge Field

What a few weeks it’s been for Scottie Scheffler, who has become a father for the first time and also made his debut as a prison lag in Louisville in a mad moment on Friday morning.

The world number one prepared for his second round at the PGA Championship from a jail cell, which it goes without saying isn’t ideal preparation. Scheffler is scheduled to play the Charles Schwab this week – as he has every year since 2020, but you wouldn’t be surprised if he withdrew and enjoyed some time away from the spotlight.

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Max Homa, Collin Morikawa and Jordan Spieth will also be making the trip to Fort Worth, as will reigning British Open champion Brian Harman, who has three top-10s at Colonial to his name.

Tony Finau, Keegan Bradley, Taylor Moore, and Austin Eckroat are just some of those who head to Texas on the back of a PGA Championship top-20, while Thomas Detry, Billy Horschel, Justin Rose, and Robert MacIntyre will be looking to follow up their top-10 finishes at Valhalla.

This Week’s Course Preview

Colonial Country Club is one of the great survivors of top-tier golf – first designed in 1936 by John Bredemus and Perry Maxwell, it continues to outfox elite pros almost a century later.

It’s a layout that proves that simply adding length to protect the course is not necessary. Colonial plays to about 7,200 yards for its Par 70, but smart routing and some tight doglegs prevents it from being overpowered off the tee.

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Twelve of the holes dogleg in one direction or the other, while even the straighter fairways are flanked by thick trees. Water is in play on six holes, there’s more than 80 bunkers, and the Bentgrass greens are on the small side – some are elevated too, to maximize approach play difficulty.

It was the done thing once upon a time to have a trio of difficult, named holes when designing courses, and Colonial has its own such stretch – the ‘Horrible Horseshoe’, specifically holes three through five, played as three of the four toughest holes on the real estate in 2023.

The third hole is an extraordinary dogleg left at the sharpest of angles, while the fourth is a long Par 3 (think 250 or so yards) played into an elevated green. And the fifth is a humdinger: a narrow chute of fairway is flanked by water right and left, while the small green features a considerable slope from back to front.

With several tough holes and only two Par 5s to play with, Colonial provides a tough old test of golf.

Weather Forecast for Fort Worth, TX

Another week on the PGA TOUR, another set of freakish weather on the cards.

The dreaded T-word – thunderstorms – is mentioned a few times in the Fort Worth forecast, with rain at some point (potentially Thursday and Friday) seemingly a formality.

The weekend gives way to some extraordinary temperatures – warnings are in place for the mercury hitting 95 degrees by Sunday, with the wind also expected to hit 15mph by the weekend.

FORT WORTH WEATHER

Last Year’s Results from the Charles Schwab Challenge

Winning golf tournaments is hard – watch the final round at the 2023 Charles Schwab back for evidence of that.

Harry Hall led the way by three shots after 36 holes, was co-leader with Adam Schenk after 54, before proceeding to play his final 16 holes on the Sunday in +5.

Schenk himself had been rock solid for 54 holes, before finding the going tough on Sunday – he didn’t make a birdie until the 16th hole, and by then his title charge was all but over.

Or so he must have thought. Emiliano Grillo had played his final round in -4 up until the final hole, but the Argentine too found getting over the line difficult – he did the unthinkable, taking a two-shot lead into the eighteenth but turning it into a horror show. He just about escaped with a double-bogey; potentially snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

He and Schenk shared the first extra hole, before Grillo pulled off a masterful approach into the Par 3 sixteenth – tucking away the clutch putt and, at the end of an energy-sapping day, finally getting his hands on the trophy.

Where to Play Fantasy Golf for this Week’s Charles Schwab Challenge

This is more like it: a regulation PGA TOUR event at a layout we’ve seen many times before. Let’s try and make it count by entering the following pair of contests:

• PGA $300k Drive the Green: Here’s your standard $5 in, hopefully $50k out as winner. This contest appeals because there’s so many sizeable consolation prizes to be won even if you don’t claim the outright ‘W’.

• PGA $40k Albatross: With a solid top-tier to our lineup draft this week, perhaps a single-entry contest gives us a great opportunity to leverage our advantage – this $12 entry game pays $4,000 to its champion.

This Week’s Fantasy Notes

A tight, almost claustrophobic layout a week after a major has to be considered something of a field-leveller.

Last year, the playoff protagonists Grillo and Schenk had both missed the cut at the PGA Championship, while Hall hadn’t even teed it up in the major. Mind you, in 2022, Sam Burns beat Scheffler in a playoff, so it’s one of those weeks where writing off the studs is foolhardy, but at the same time ‘lesser’ players also have a chance to shine.

The first to note about Colonial is that it doesn’t really seem to matter much what the players do off the tee. For context, at last year’s event just four of the first 20 players home ranked inside the top-20 in the field for Driving Distance, and that number crept up to just 7/20 when considering Driving Accuracy.

Colonial is what we might call a second-and-third shot course. Hitting approaches into small, sometimes elevated, greens is rarely an easy task, so it’s no surprise that nine of the top-20 on the leaderboard last year ranked inside the top-20 for SG: Approach on the week.

But it’s reliability around the greens that can prove vital at this layout, particularly when the wind is up. Effective chipping and scrambling really was the value-adder for the likes of Hall and Paul Haley (T5) last year, who names are not regular features on the first page of PGA TOUR leaderboards.

Of course, our picks will need to show a sure hand putting on Bentgrass greens too, while an ability to combat freaky weather may also prove vital if the forecast is anything to go by.

There’s a couple of recent(ish) course correlations that catch the eye. Memorial Park, home of the Houston Open, is a Texas track with similar dimensions to Colonial, while the RBC Heritage is played out in breezy conditions with hard-to-hold greens. Plenty of players with previous at Colonial have shown up at one or both of those.

Our Top 5 (and Top 2 Sleeper) Fantasy Picks and Odds to Win the Charles Schwab Challenge   

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Fantasy Golf Predictions – This Season 

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