The 2026 PGA Tour season reaches its penultimate event with the Austin Championship from Fazio Canyons at Barton Creek.
As the name suggests, the course was designed by famed golf architect Tom Fazio, whose body of work includes PGA National, Quail Hollow, Congaree, Corales, Shadow Creek, Caves Valley, Sea Island and Conway Farms.
While there isn’t one overriding feature of Fazio’s courses, they frequently present generous fairways and risk-reward holes but ultimately require good iron play. Although many landing areas off the tee are wide, there are pinch points in fairways that may require longer hitters to club down.
With the four par-5s all clocking in around the mid-to-high-500s and three of the par-3s clearing 200 yards, good long-iron skills will be required this week.
When reaching the green, several of which around the turn will grab players’ attention due to the creek surrounding them, Bermuda grass surfaces must be navigated.
Blades Brown became the PGA Tour’s youngest winner in nearly a century with his outstanding victory over fellow prodigy Ben James to capture last week’s World Wide Technology Championship.
Both feature on our Power Rankings for this week; read on to find out where they sit.
5 - Doug Ghim
Another player Fazio Canyons should suit this week is Jackson Koivun. There doesn’t appear to be much of a benefit to blasting your way around the course and as one of the best iron players in the field, Koivun should be licking his lips at this particular test.
Despite a three-off-the-tee double-bogey on Sunday at the World Wide Technology Championship last week, Koivun still recorded a final-round 67 to sit a respectable T21.
While Koivun has actually had better results on other surfaces, he has gained strokes putting in three of his four starts on Bermuda greens and should have no problems there.
The 3M Open showed what Koivun can do when he’s on, and a second win of the season can’t be ruled out at the Austin Championship.
4 - Jackson Koivun
Another player Fazio Canyons should suit this week is Jackson Koivun. There doesn’t appear to be much of a benefit for blasting your way around the course and as one of the best iron players in the field, Koivun should be licking his lips at this particular test.
Despite a three-off-the-tee double-bogey on Sunday at the World Wide Technology Championship last week, Koivun still recorded a final-round 67 to sit a respectable T21.
While Koivun has actually had better results on other surfaces, he has gained strokes putting in three of his four starts on Bermuda greens and should have no problems there.
The 3M Open showed what Koivun can do when he’s on, and a second win of the season can’t be ruled out at the Austin Championship.
3 - Michael Kim
Last week was very much a case of what could have been for Michael Kim. His opening round of 73 killed any chances he had of winning, needing a 66 on Friday just to make the weekend.
A bogey on his final hole of the day meant he needed favours from elsewhere to play the weekend, favours he got and took advantage of. Kim played his final 30 holes of the week in a ridiculous 15-under-par. Extrapolated over the rest of the week would have seen Kim card a score of 36-under-par, 13 shots clear of winner Blades Brown.
The fact that Kim battled to a solo-third, and even briefly found himself on the fringes of contention on Sunday, is a huge credit to him and bodes well for this week.
Fazio Canyons, like El Cardonal, doesn’t look like the stiffest driving test, and Kim’s iron play should create plenty of chances.
Kim ranked third for SG:P last week and 13th for SG: APP, and you have to go back to The Open in July for the last time Kim lost strokes on the greens.
Kim has three top-20s on his last four trips to Colonial, up the road from Austin, and was T2 at the Valero Texas Open this season, and a return to the Lone Star State should very much be to Kim’s liking.
2 - Blades Brown
While he actually made his PGA Tour debut at the Myrtle Beach Classic in 2024 and made a handful of appearances in 2025, it wasn’t until the start of 2026 that Blades Brown began to capture the wider attention of the golfing public.
The prodigious teenager with a name made to be a golfer, Brown has shown bags of talent in his handful of professional starts.
While Brown has mixed the PGA Tour with the Korn Ferry Tour this season, the 19-year-old doesn’t even feature on the FedEx standings due to not holding a PGA Tour card, and as a result of last week’s efforts, he’s now a PGA Tour winner.
In seven of his last eight PGA Tour starts dating back to May, Brown has finished in the top 20, showing remarkable consistency, but the nature of his win is what’s so exciting.
Brown was hanging with Ben James on Saturday before James accelerated away to sit seven shots ahead of Brown going into Sunday.
Of course, James was as big an influence in Brown’s win owing to his semi-collapse on Sunday to allow the field back in, but Brown was eight-under-par over his final 14 holes.
Seeing James hole a long eagle putt will have felt like a gut punch for Brown, but he picked himself up to win in a play-off.
Brown absolutely has the talent to go back-to-back this week, but what sort of impact will that dramatic win have?
1 - Ben James
You’d need a heart of stone not to have some sympathy with Ben James after his final round at the World Wide Technology Championship. Even-par after five and one-over at the turn, James let more and more players get within touching distance of him and the birdies just wouldn’t come as he eventually surrendered his lead.
To his immense credit, James holed a lengthy eagle putt on the 72nd hole to force a play-off, but would lose from there.
The defeat will bring with it scar tissue that James must quickly get used to if he is to win that inevitable first PGA Tour event.
James is, at least, the second-best player in the field this week, and his results since mid-July of T4-MC-T38-3-2-T5-MC-T16-2 show how comfortable he is at this level.
His game looks ideal for this week’s venue, and the T4 at the Fazio-designed Corales is worth considering.
It will be fascinating to see how James responds to last week’s heartbreak, and there’d be few more popular winners than the 23-year-old in Austin.
