Brooks Koepka has withdrawn from this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge, ending his chance to play his way into next week’s Signature Event at the Memorial Tournament. Wyndham Clark also pulled out of the Fort Worth, Texas, event, adding another late absence to a field already shaped by withdrawals and ranking pressure.
Koepka, a five-time major champion who re-joined the PGA Tour at the start of the year after leaving for LIV Golf, needed a strong finish at Colonial Country Club to climb into The Memorial Tournament through the AON Next 10 or AON Swing 5 leaderboards. Instead, he left his last start at 18 under and tied for 14th place at TPC Craig Ranch, a solid result but not enough to keep his Signature Event path open.
Clark arrives at the week on a very different note. He shot a final-round 60 on Sunday at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson to beat Si Woo Kim by three shots, one of the sharpest closing rounds of the PGA Tour season so far. Even so, he will not tee it up at Colonial, where the tournament is set for its 80th playing and where the field will again gather on one of the circuit’s most familiar layouts.
The Charles Schwab Challenge dates to 1946 and is tied closely to Ben Hogan, who won it five times and made Fort Worth part of his golfing identity. Colonial Country Club has hosted the event for all 80 editions, and the course this week will measure 7,289 yards with a par 70. Seven players share the course record of 61, with Kevin Na the last to post it in 2018, and Zach Johnson still holding the tournament’s lowest 72-hole winning total at 21-under par when he won in 2010.
That history gives the week a familiar feel, but the competitive stakes are sharper than the old setting suggests. The AON Next 10 and AON Swing 5 offer some players a route into Signature Events, and Koepka’s withdrawal closes one of those doors. Colonial’s third through fifth holes, known as the Horrible Horseshoe, will still punish any player who is slightly off, which is part of why the event has remained such a demanding stop for nearly eight decades.
The bigger picture is simple enough: Fort Worth lost two of its most recognizable names before the first tee shot. For Koepka, the miss means the Memorial is out of reach; for the tournament, it leaves a classic event to carry on without the late-season urgency one of its biggest draws needed from it.
