The tour comes back from a 3 month hiatus in Fort Worth, Texas at the famed Colonial Country Club for the Charles Schwab Challenge.

The top 5 players in the world are all competing. That would be No.1 Rory, No.2 Jon Rahm, No.3 Brooks Koepka, No.4 Justin Thomas and No.5 Dustin Johnson.

The defending champion is Kevin “Nah”

The last time the Tour was functioning was at the Players Championship. But the Coronavirus shut everything down and there was no Players and the rest of the tournaments thereafter until now. We’ll miss some tournaments this season including the 149th Open Championship, which was scheduled to be played Royal St. George’s in England. The Open will return to Royal St. George’s July 15-18th of 2021. The next major will be the 102nd PGA Championship, which will be played at Harding Park in San Francisco August 6th-9th. The 120th U.S. Open will be played at the historic and challenging Winged Foot Country Club in Mamarowek, New York. The 84th Masters Tournament will take place November 15th-18th. I see this as a pretty spectacular situation. You can have big time college football and big time professional golf going on at the same time. Can’t argue with that.

Also, the 43rd Ryder Cup will be held at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wisconsin, September 25-27. The Summer Olympics, scheduled to take place at Kasumigaseki (yes that is spelled correctly), Japan, has been postponed until 2021. So we’ll miss a couple of big ones, but some super stuff coming up on tour. Just need some sports and golf is what resonates in the summer months, so awesome it’s back.

Colonial Country Club is also known as Hogan’s Alley where the great Ben Hogan won 5 times in the ‘40’s and 50’s. Long time ago, but Ben Hogan is timeless. Hogan won 9 major championships, . 2 Masters, 4 U.S. Opens,, 1 Open Championship and 2 PGA’s. It doesn’t matter how long ago that was, those are spectacular achievements.

Colonial has the toughest 3 hole stretch in golf, Numbers 3 through 5. It’s been the toughest 3 hole stretch on the PGA Tour since 2003. The score to par the last 37 years is 7,613 over.

No.3 is a 483 yard par 4 dogleg left. Working the ball right to left is crucial off the tee. So a draw is the shot of choice. There are 3 bunkers on the right and 1 on the left guarding the green for a tenuous approach. The greens are bentgrass and will be stimping anywhere from 11 1/2 to 12 1/2, so pretty quick.

No.4 is a 247 yard par 3. That’s a driver for me now at 58. It could have been a 3 wood in my 20’s and 30’s, but that probably would have been a layup. It’s a hybrid or long iron for the players. 2 bunkers on the left and 1 on the right.

No.5 is a 481 par 4. This is a dogleg right, so it’s a left to right cut off the tee. 3 bunkers guarding the green.

After those 3 nightmares, the course gets more reasonable.

Weather

Somewhat brutal.

Thursday, Sunny, 93, winds 5-9 MPH.

Friday, Sunny, 94, winds 6-9.

Saturday, Sunny 95, winds 7-10.

Sunday, Sunny 96, winds 7-12. A little more challenging on Sunday wind wise.

TV

Thursday-Friday, 3-6 PM CT, Golf Channel.

Saturday-Sunday, 12-2 PM CT, GC. 2-5 PM CT CBS.

Winner

Now this is a challenge. I look forward to seeing my commenters’ predictions as well. There’s some rust for sure, so the scores may not be as low. Plus the heat could be tough on some of these guys.

I’ll take the Dallas native here. I see the 26 year old bouncing back on one of his home courses. He and Ryan Palmer played Colonial several times last week and he told the Golf Channel he played well. And he seems much more relaxed in interviews. He is the 2016 Charles Schwab champion. I like this young stallion to capture his first PGA tour victory since the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in England. He also captured the 2015 Masters and 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay. And while Chambers Bay was a disaster venue, this young guy proved what a stellar competitor he is. Give me JS.

Jordan Spieth

***Early next week, Monday or Tuesday***

2020 College Football preview

Early, but really never too early to talk about it. Some

interesting possibilities for Alabama, Auburn,

Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia, Florida and others.

Will go in depth next week.

The 2020 SEC Media Days scheduled for July 11-14th

is cancelled but there will be a virtual media days,

meaning coaches will all speak by Zoom. So will

have plenty of coverage on that. Dates and times to

be determined. Will let you know as soon as they are.