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The Austin Championship brings us to the Fazio Canyons Course at Barton Creek in Austin Texas, as the PGA Tour’s 2026 Fall Series continues. The field of 120 players is headlined by Ben James, Austin Smotherman, and Andrew Novak. Find longer golf odds at the best sports betting sites to increase your potential Austin Championship payouts.
The penultimate event of the 2026 PGA Tour season is here. Good Good is long gone, but the show goes on for the sponsor-less Austin Championship at Fazio Canyons Course. Barton Creek has hosted PGA events in the past, but it will be the Canyons’ first time in the limelight for this inaugural PGA Tour event.
The stakes are high for this late fall classic, as players continue to jockey for position in the FedEx Cup standings with just two weeks remaining on the season. This field of 120 may lack star power, but there is a large contingent of trending, motivated talents who are looking to end this season on a high note.
The brand new Fazio Canyons Course was renovated in 2022 to accommodate PGA Tour-level competition, and has never hosted a professional event before. Standing at 7,451 yards as a par-72, the Canyons course features fairly generous fairways and oversized greens, designed to reward players who take strategic angles. It remains to be seen just how well this new course will stand up to PGA Tour competition, but quotes from the tournament directors suggest they will be able to pull the levers they need to to ensure this is not a pure birdie fest or unfair grind.
Ahead, we’ll go through everything you need to know about The Fazio Canyons Course at Barton Creek in preparation for the 2026 Austin Championship.
Austin Championship Odds: The Favorites
Here are the favorites with odds shorter than 20-1 this week. Click on the odds and navigate to the sportsbook for longshots.
The Field at a Glance
The inaugural Austin Championship field may lack a single OWGR top-50 player, but it figures to be a highly competitive tournament with a swath of red-hot players peaking at the right time. Austin Smotherman and Andrew Novak have three wins between them this fall, and will each make their first starts since their most recent wins at the Bermuda Championship and Mexico Open, respectively. They project to lead an appealing cast of favorites this week that also includes Ben James, Doug Ghim, Jackson Koivun, Chris Kirk, and Blades Brown, who have each been regular contenders throughout this fall.
There is a much higher concentration of OWGR top-100 players this week (28) relative to the World Wide Technology Championship last week, which featured just 20. Other notables in this week’s field include Matt Wallace, Marco Penge, Jordan Smith, Brian Harman, and Johnny Keefer.
The Austin Championship will be the fifth event contested in Texas this year, following the Charles Schwab Challenge, CJ Cup Byron Nelson, Texas Children’s Houston Open, and Valero Texas Open. Texas locals tend to shine in the Lone Star State, and there is plenty in store for a homecoming this week. There are five Texas Longhorn alumni in the field this week, who will feel the support of the Austin locals here: Beau Hossler, Pierceson Coody, Doug Ghim, Tommy Morrison, and Christiaan Maas.
Introduction To The Fazio Canyons Course
Fazio Canyons is Tom Fazio’s second design at Omni Barton Creek (following Fazio Foothills) and the more pristine of the two. It opened in 1999 on roughly 210 acres of Hill Country west of downtown Austin, routed along Short Springs Branch, a limestone-bed creek that winds throughout the course.
Golfweek named Canyons the No. 1 course in Texas in 2002, and following the 2022 renovation, it reclaimed its place as a top-2 course you can play in the state. For all that pedigree, it has never hosted a professional Tour event before this week, but Fazio’s 2022 restoration project launched to change that.
The 2022 restoration is the reason the Tour is here. What began as a bunker project grew into a seven-month, $5 million restoration directed by Fazio and his team, which reopened in October 2022. The course updates included new back tees added more than 400 yards, redefined corridors, rebuilt bunkers, redesigned greens, and a state-of-the-art irrigation system.
Tom Fazio built Canyons as a resort course first, playable at every level, built into a serene and inviting Austin-adjacent landscape. The Omni property marks a continuing trend of resort course hosts on the PGA Tour’s fall swing, a characteristic that tends to mean more simplistic or flat greens complexes and generous fairways.
The birdie fests should stop here, however, as Canyons’ combination of length, threatening water hazards, and angular treelines makes this more than a pure second-shot golf course. It’s not a claustrophobic course, but misfires will be penalized over the course of the week here, as accuracy and creating angles into tucked pin locations are the true game plan to score here.
How It Breaks Down
At 7,451 yards, Canyons is on the longer side of PGA Tour courses we’ve seen this season. But as a par-72, it’s not overwhelmingly long. All four par-5s figure to be reachable in two for the longest players in the field, and four sub-410-yard par-4s should invite scoring opportunities for the best wedge players in this field.
Generous fairways and large, sloping greens demonstrate the resort course feel on the front nine. The back nine is where the canyon earns its name. It features forced carries, ravines, blind shots, and dramatic elevation changes, and a truly demanding final four holes.
The par-3s are likely to tell the story this week, with three measuring beyond 220 yards. Contenders will do well to tread water on these holes, and if they can get through the week at even par on them, there are plenty of opportunities to score on the short par-5s and par-4s.
It remains to be seen just how difficult this course will play in our first time seeing it against PGA Tour competition, but on paper, this is a venue that is going to surrender a fair share of birdie opportunities. Total Driving, consistent approach play from beyond 150 yards, and Bermuda Putting will be the most important skill sets to bring to Austin this week.
Fazio Canyon Course Specs
- Yards: 7,451
- Par: 72 (4x 3s / 10x 4s / 4x 5s)
- Greens, Fairways, & Rough: Bermuda
- Architect: Tom Fazio
- Comp Courses: TPC San Antonio, TPC Craig Ranch, TPC Twin Cities, PGA National, Detroit Golf Club, Muirfield Village, Bay Hill Resort
- Hole-by-hole Breakdown:
COURSE COMPS
With this marking the inaugural event at Barton Creek in Austin, there is no event history to glean from. With that being the case,I will be putting a much heavier emphasis on comp courses this week that embody many of the same characteristics as the Fazio Canyons Course. Those defining characteristics include long par-72s, expected moderate scoring conditions, SG: OTT and SG: APP emphasis, Bermuda-based agronomy, and navigating intermittent winds.
The Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio is eerily similar to this week’s setup. It is the closest geographical course on the PGA Tour schedule to Barton Creek, and is nearly identical in its hole distribution. Both courses are par-72s on Texas Bermuda grass and feature the same mix of moderate par-5s, a range of short and long par-4s, and moderate par-3s. I’m putting a much heavier emphasis on TPC San Antonio than the other comp courses this week. The top-5 players in SG: TOT at TPC San Antonio in this field include Sam Stevens, Kevin Yu, Sami Valimaki, Matt Wallace, and Brian Harman.
Expecting the Texas Winds and ever-present creek hazard to play a role in this tournament, TPC Craig Ranch’s long and generous fairways bears plenty in common with the Fazio Canyons Course.
Looking beyond the Texas comp courses, Muirfield Village and Bay Hill Resort are most similar by scorecard yardage and hole distribution, although Canyons will not play nearly as difficult as these two courses do.
TPC Twin Cities, PGA National, Caves Valley, and Detroit Golf Club each share plenty in common with Canyons as well, offering plenty of birdie opportunities for long drivers who can avoid hazards off the tee. PGA National and Caves Valley get bonus points for their shared Fazio connection with the Canyons Course.
Combining performance across this list, the top-10 players in Comp Course History here are Doug Ghim, Max Greyserman, Daniel Berger, Rasmus Hojgaard, Andrew Putnam, Matt Wallace, Emiliano Grillo, Marco Penge, Taylor Moore, and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen.
Key Stats To Consider With Austin Championship Odds
- Recent Form (SG: TOT L16)
- SG: T2G
- SG: APP / Prox: 150+
- SG: OTT
- SG: ARG
- Birdies or Better Gained
- SG: P (Bermuda)
- SG: TOT (>7,400 yards & not difficult)
- Comp Course History
When in doubt, start modeling with SG: T2G to prioritize the top-trending players leading into the week. I’ll be doing just that in a week like this with such limited prior course history data. The top-10 players in SG: T2G are Doug Ghim, Kristoffer Ventura, Ben Kohles, Blades Brown, Jackson Koivun, Jackson Suber, Ben James, Chris Kirk, Matt Wallace, and Kevin Roy.
Approach play is pivotal on any given week. Even though we’ve yet to see this venue stand up to the PGA Tour’s best, we should expect the most precise players with their irons to be able to attack here. The top-10 players in SG: APP entering this week are Davis Thompson, Austin Smotherman, Blades Brown, Jackson Suber, Ben Kohles, Billy Horschel, Chris Kirk, Joel Dahmen, Lucas Glover, and Zac Blair.
As a resort course with generous fairways and rough that is not especially penal, I’m not expecting this to be a pure grind for these players. Looking across 7,400+ venues that are not difficult in scoring, the top-10 in this category include Jackson Koivun, Blades Brown, Sami Valimaki, Michael Kim, Ben James, Matt Kuchar, Harry Hall, Billy Horschel, Matt Wallace, and Rico Hoey.
The ideal player for this week should be above average in Comp Course History, SG: T2G, SG: APP, SG: OTT, Approach Fit, SG: P (Bermuda). Only seven players meet each of those criteria: Jackson Koivun, Zach Bauchou, Billy Horschel, Michael Kim, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Harry Hall, and Eric Cole.
Player Spotlight: Doug Ghim
Admittedly, there was a fully drafted version of this section that touted Matt Wallace to contend at the inaugural Austin Championship with strong conviction, given his success at TPC San Antonio and strong play overseas. But alas, his Sunday withdrawal leads us to the other player who I had sharpied into my betting card: Doug Ghim.
This is not the first time I’ve touted Ghim in the fall, but his persistently elevated play gives me no reason to back off of him now. And with Blades Brown, Austin Smotherman, and Andrew Novak each making their first starts since their own respective impressive victories, I expect Ghim’s odds to push back to a secondary tier.
Ghim is the only player in this field to have finished top-20 in each of his last five starts, and is second only to Ben James in terms of total strokes gained over that period. That sustained form is no random heater, either. It’s directly correlated with the distance he’s added off the tee and the improved putting baseline he’s established since the middle of the 2026 season. Ghim has now gained strokes on the greens in eight of his last 10 starts, something we never thought was possible from the former Team No-Putt chairman.
He hasn’t broken through for a PGA Tour win just yet, but a trip to Texas may be the final piece he needs to break through. Ghim has finished top-30 in each of his last three starts in Texas, and should feel especially comfortable in this inaugural Austin event, considering he dominated in this city throughout his standout college career at the University of Texas.
It remains to be seen exactly how the Canyons course will play out, but on paper, no one stacks up better than Ghim, the No. 1 player in my model. He’ll be a fixture on my betting card in Austin this week, especially if his hot recent form goes overlooked in favor of the other recent winners who headline this field.
2026 Austin Championship Odds: DFS Player Pool
With all the course-fit profiles in mind, I’m leaning early toward the player pool below. Naturally, I’m looking their way in the 2026 Austin Championship odds as well. I’ve broken the list down by projected pricing/odds tier for DraftKings.
Austin Championship Odds: Model Results & Breakdown
2026 Austin Championship Model Breakdown
In my model, I’m emphasizing SG: T2G, SG: APP, Comp Course History, Prox:150+, Weighted Putting (L36, Bermuda), followed by a more balanced mix of Total Driving, Birdies or Better Gained, and SG: TOT (> 7,400 & not difficult).
Model Favorites
The stars may all be aligning for Doug Ghim, who returns to the city he dominated in during his collegiate days at the University of Texas amidst the best stretch of his PGA Tour career. Ghim claims the top spot in my model this week, and it’s no longer a surprise to his name atop the list with finishes of T17, 2nd, T17, and T6 in his first four starts of the fall swing. Ghim is still chasing his first career PGA Tour victory, but faces his best opportunity yet on this ideal course fit.
After Ghim, the rest of my model’s top 10 features Blades Brown, Ben Kohles, Jackson Koivun, Ben James, Billy Horschel, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Matt Wallace, Chris Kirk, and Zach Bauchou.
When the odds open on Monday, I’ll look to center my card around Doug Ghim, Brian Harman, and Kevin Roy, depending on where the odds ultimately fall.
Check back later this week for more updates, and best of luck navigating the 2026 Austin Championship odds!
Austin Championship Odds Comparison Table
- TBD
