2026 Charles Schwab Cup Championship preview: A two-man show for the Cup

The PGA Tour champion season comes to a conclusion this week with two opportunities on the line of the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, winning the season-ending tournament and winning the season-long race for the Charles Schwab Cup. I'm Ryan Ballagy with Golf News Net here with a preview of the Charles Schwab Cup Championship played at Phoenix Country Club out in Arizona. This is a tournament reserved for the top 36 players in the Charles Schwab Cup point standings after the Simmons Bank Championship, the second of three playoff events that was played in Little Rock a couple of weeks ago. Took a week off. Now they have the season-ending $3 million tournament this week. Matt Gogol is not able to play. He qualified on points but can't play because he is serving a suspension that will carry into next season. Otherwise, all the players who are eligible to compete this week can and are. This is a 72-hole tournament, different than most of the 54-hole tournaments you get on the PGA Tour Champions outside the majors, which are 72 holes. They are playing for that $3 million purse and $528,000 goes to the winner. There have really been three players who have done the most damage on the PGA Tour champions this year, but only two of them have a chance to win the Charles Schwab Cup after this tournament. Steve Alker is in third place. He has had a fantastic year, but he is more than 1,056,000 points behind both leaders heading into the season-ending tournament. Zach Johnson is in second. He has about 3.75 million Charles Schwab Cup points, and Stewart Cink has 3.94 million Charles Schwab Cup points. So with 1,056,000 points going to the winner, double points, double the dollars. Available in points here this week and throughout the playoffs, there are really only two guys who can win the season-long race, but that doesn't mean there's still not a lot of opportunity for players to earn a lot of money this week. And if you do finish in the top five in the season-ending Schwab Cup standings, you're going to get some share of a $2.1 million set of annuities from Charles Schwab Cup that goes to the top five finishers in the season-long race.