Stewart Cink looks to defend Charles Schwab Cup title as Zach Johnson closes in
by Ashling Filippi, Cronkite News
November 11, 2026
PHOENIX – The PGA Tour Champions season comes down to its final competition in Phoenix, where Zach Johnson, who trails reigning Charles Schwab Cup champion Stewart Cink by 186,002 points in the season-long standings, hopes to make his move.
It may also mark the end of Phoenix Country Club hosting this event. Renovations are moving the 2027 tournament to Papago Golf Club, and its future residence remains uncertain.
The event, which runs Nov. 12-15, features two separate competitions: the individual tournament title and the season-long Charles Schwab Cup.
One player can win both titles. Cink and Johnson are battling for the season-long points title, while each of the 35 players competing are gunning for the individual tournament title.
Cink sits atop the standings for the season-long title with 3,943,830 points. On this tour, prize money dictates points total, with this year’s winner securing $528,000 of the $3 million dollar purse.
Cink hopes to use his experience in this tournament and at this course to his advantage. During the 2025 Charles Schwab Cup Championship, he finished 20 under par and two strokes ahead of Steven Alker.
Johnson, meanwhile, has made a strong impression in his first season on tour.
He came into this rookies season with 12 PGA Tour victories and two major championships. He never took the challenges of the transition for granted.
“Why am I going to assume that it’s going to be that easy?” Johnson told PGATour.com in February. “These guys are good.”
His introductory season demonstrates how quickly he adapted after securing six individual wins, including two consecutive. His six victories tie for the fourth-most by a rookie in a PGA Tour Champions season.
"To add this majestic spot to the list of wins is, again, my dreams never got that far," Johnson told the Associated Press after his victory at the PURE Insurance Championship in Pebble Beach, California. "I've got an attitude of gratitude right now. I never thought I’d ever amount to this."
At a Charles Schwab Cup pre-tournament press conference, Johnson referred to his time on the tour as “one of the purest forms of professional golf I’ve experienced.”
He said he appreciated “going to communities that really desire and want us, that want high-level golf. Playing great golf courses, that's amazing, against phenomenal competition, good dudes, amazing. Again, we're serving great communities. So it checks every box and I think that's the coolest thing about this tour.”
Johnson has put himself in contention for the season-long points title in his first year on the tour, a feat no rookie has accomplished since the competition began.
“Ultimately, I kind of feel like I’ve already won out here,” Johnson said. “Just to have the opportunity to compete still at 50, that's amazing.”
Although the season-long points title is down to two, the individual tournament title is up for grabs.
Alker is entering the championship in third place in the tour standings. A two-time season-long Charles Schwab Cup winner, he finished just behind Cink during the 2025 competition, making him one of the field’s more experienced competitors.
Other familiar faces returning to Phoenix include Pádraig Harrington, who won the tournament in 2022 and holds the event's 72-hole scoring record at 27 under par. Vijay Singh, who won the championship in 2018, is also back, along with established players such as Ernie Els and Retief Goosen.
Along with the familiar faces, an array of players will make their first appearance in this event, including Scott Hend, Ben Crane, Vaughn Taylor, Rory Sabbatini and Darren Fichardt.
Phoenix Country Club has an impressive history with professional golf in Arizona. Before the Phoenix Open moved to TPC Scottsdale in 1987, Phoenix Country Club had already hosted the tournament 40 times.
The course has also produced some of the championship's lowest scores. Cink finished 20 under par in his 2025 victory, while Alker won at 18 under in 2023.
The support of the Phoenix golf community ahead of the tournament has also stood out to players such as Johnson, who called the community “knowledgeable and enthusiastic.”
“I love that, love that support,” he said. “This is a golf-knowledgeable, golf-enthusiastic community.”
As the season nears its end, Cink and Johnson head to Phoenix with the same opportunities but with different goals.
Cink is teeing up to become the first player to win the season-long competition in consecutive years since Bernhard Langer, who won three straight Cups from 2014-16.
But Johnson has a different aspiration: He wants to make history during his first season on the tour.
The friendship established between the season-long points leaders adds a personal aspect to their competition.
“He's been a great resource,” Johnson said Tuesday about Cink. “He's legitimately one of my best friends in the world. I would say the family is as well. The fact that one of us will hold it and the other one – I'm telling you, I'll be the first one to give him a hug if I don't win it… Well (his) wife will be, but I'll be in the top two or three after Lisa.”
Cink has acknowledged Johnson's impressive season but made it clear that he is not looking to give up his top spot.
"He's going to have to beat me to do it," Cink told Golfweek recently.
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
