Wyndham Clark chased down Scottie Scheffler and Si Woo Kim to win The CJ Cup Byron Nelson last week. While his form had been better over the last couple of months, he wasn't on my radar last week.
It was an impressive performance, and it's good to see him back in the winner's circle. He said he was going to celebrate by "opening some grape," which led to many rants on Twitter. Not because he was celebrating with wine, but how he went about describing it.
As someone who provides betting picks every week, I like to be as transparent as possible. This has been my worst year of golf betting that I have ever had. The only outright that we've hit so far was at the Zurich Classic, and it was on the betting favorite.
The good news is that there's still a lot of golf left to be played this year. I'm hoping to find some form heading into this week's Charles Schwab Challenge.
Let's take a look at my 2026 Charles Schwab Challenge picks and PGA TOUR predictions for this week's event.
Charles Schwab Challenge Preview: Colonial Country Club
Colonial Country Club is one of my favorite stops on the PGA TOUR. It's one of the toughest courses that golfers play all year, featuring narrow fairways and small greens. The course is a Par 70 that measures 7,289 yards.
We typically see the winning score in the -8 to -14 range, which is a far cry from what we saw at The CJ Cup Byron Nelson last week.
Most of the fairways at Colonial are 25-30 yards wide, which makes them tough to hit off the tee.
This has historically been a less-than-driver course, but we've seen golfers get more aggressive off the tee in recent years.
In fact, the field hit the driver on 69% of non-Par 3 tee shots in 2025. You certainly don't need Driving Distance to contend here, but you will have to drive the ball well.
The Greens in Regulation rate from the fairway is nearly 30% higher than it is from the rough.
The greens are 5,000 square feet on average, which means even the best ball strikers are going to miss a handful of greens each round.
We've seen a lot of short game wizards play well here in the past, so I'm certainly looking at golfers who are good around the green.
The greens themselves are lightning-fast (13 on the stimpmeter) and feature pure bentgrass.
Approach play is always important, and that's especially the case this week with these small greens. In 2025, 66% of approach shots came from 50-175 yards, which is a much higher mark than on most courses.
Golfers will have a lot of wedges and short irons into these greens, so focusing on golfers with good proximity numbers from those ranges makes a lot of sense.
Course history hasn't been super predictive here over the years, but having good course history is never a negative. If you like to look at course comps, Harbour Town Golf Links and Sedgefield Country Club have a lot of similarities to this week's course.
Charles Schwab Challenge Picks, Predictions
Rickie Fowler +2400
When Rickie Fowler won the Rocket Mortgage Classic in 2023, everyone saw it coming.
His form was solid all year up to that point, and he had several top 10 finishes leading into the event. This year has mirrored 2023 for Fowler, as he's back to playing some extremely solid golf.
He's positive in all four of the strokes gained categories, and he's finished in the top 10 in four of his last eight events.
This is one of the weakest fields that he's played in all season, so he shouldn't be intimidated by anyone if he's in contention on Sunday.
While course history isn't super important this week, Fowler has two top 20 finishes at this event in the last three years.
Alex Smalley +3500
Alex Smalley doesn't have the best course history here, but he's in better form than almost anyone in the field.
We don't know how he's going to respond after falling short at the PGA Championship, but he finished that round strong and should feel good about his best finish at a major (T3).
He has now rattled off five straight top 20 finishes with three top seven finishes during that stretch.
Like Fowler, he has been positive in all four of the strokes gained categories this year, which is tough to do.
It takes a solid all-around game to win at Colonial, and Smalley has that with some elite incoming form.
Bud Cauley +5000
I have always considered Bud Cauley a slightly less talented version of Jordan Spieth.
He's not a great driver of the ball, but he is an excellent iron player and a wizard around the green.
While he's not as good a putter as Spieth, the two share a lot of the same characteristics. The reason why I bring this up is that Spieth has been absolutely dominant at Colonial over the years.
It stands to reason that Cauley should have some success here as well, as he has only played here once in the last five years, but he finished T3 here last year.
His recent ball striking has been tremendous, and he's posted five straight top 40 finishes.
Mac Meissner +6000
My final pick of the week might be the best value on the board.
Mac Meissner rates out as the 11th best golfer in my model this week, yet he's +6000 in the outright market.
He's good on approach, around the green, and he's a good putter. Bogey Avoidance tends to come in handy on difficult courses, and Meissner is sixth in this field in that statistic over the last six months.
He's posted five straight top 30s on TOUR, and he's 2-for-2 in making cuts at this event with finishes of T28 and T5.
